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Professor, Director: Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta

Co-founder: modl.ai

PhD in Informatics: University of Edinburgh, School of Informatics, Institute of Perception, Action and Behaviour (2006)

Bio

I am a Professor and Director of the Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta (UM) and the co-founder of modl.ai. I received the PhD degree in Informatics from the University of Edinburgh in 2006. Between 2007 and 2012 I was an Associate Professor at the Center for Computer Games Research at the IT University of Copenhagen. I do research at the crossroads of artificial intelligence, computational creativity, affective computing, advanced game technology, and human-computer interaction. I pursue research concepts such as user experience modelling and procedural content generation for the design of personalized interactive systems for entertainment, education, training and health. I have published over 300 journal and conference papers in the aforementioned fields (Google Scholar Profile Page). My research has been supported by numerous national and European grants (including a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship) and has appeared in Science Magazine and New Scientist among other venues. I have been involved in a number of journal editorial boards and I am currently the Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Games and an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation. I have been the General Chair of key conferences in the area of game artificial intelligence (IEEE CIG 2010) and games research (FDG 2013, FDG 2020). I am the co-author of the Artificial Intelligence and Games textbook and the co-organiser of the Artificial Intelligence and Games summer school series.

Research Interests

Artificial Intelligence, Affective Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Games, Machine Learning, User Modeling, Procedural Content Generation, Computational Creativity, Preference Learning, Player Experience Modeling, Evolutionary Computation, Neural Networks

Awards and Honours (Selected)

IEEE CIS Outstanding Paper Award, IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games for the paper Crowdsourcing the Aesthetics of Platform Games.
Most Influential Paper Award, IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, for the paper Experience-Driven Procedural Content Generation. The award was presented at the Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction Conference, 2015.
European Learning Game Award by the Games and Learning Alliance (GALA) Network of Excellence for the Village Voices Game (funded by the SIREN project), 2013.

Current and Forthcoming Activities (Selected)

Editor in Chief of IEEE Transactions on Games.
Co-Author of the Artificial Intelligence and Games textbook, Springer Nature, 2018.
Co-Organizer of the Artificial Intelligence and Games Summer School Series (2018-present).
Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation.
New Horizon 2020 research project funded: Law-Game: An Interactive, Collaborative Digital Gamification Approach to Effective Experiential Training and Prediction of Criminal Actions: 2022-2025.
New RSSD Reserch Excellence Fund awarded: FRAME: ReFRAMing MachinE Learning via Ordinal Tensors and Deep Quality Diversity: 2020-2022.
New Horizon 2020 MSC IF research project funded: TAMED: Tensor-based machine learning towards general models of affect: 2020-2022.
New Horizon 2020 research project funded: PrismArch: Virtual reality aided design blending cross-disciplinary aspects of architecture in a multi-simulation environment: 2020-2022.
New Horizon 2020 research project funded: AI4Media: A European Excellence Centre for Media, Society and Democracy: 2020-2024.
New Erasmus+ research project funded: Learn to Machine Learn (LearnML): 2019-2022.

Past Activities (Selected)

Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing
Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games
Co-Editor of Emotion in Games: Theory and Praxis, Springer, 2016.
General Chair of the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) Conference, Malta, September 2020.
Program Chair of the IEEE Computational Intelligence and Games Conference, Santorini, Greece, 2016
Horizon 2020 research project completed: CoM_n_Play-Science: Learning science the fun and creative way: coding, making, and play as vehicles for informal science learning in the 21st century: 2018-2020.
Horizon 2020 research project completed: ENVISAGE: ENhance VIrtual learning Spaces using Applied Gaming in Education: 2017-2019
Erasmus+ research project completed: eCrisis: Europe in Crisis: 2016-2019
Horizon 2020 research project completed: CrossCult: Empowering reuse of digital cultural heritage in context-aware crosscuts of European history: 2016-2019
ESF (National funded; Reach High Scheme) research project completed: AutoSemanticGame: Autonomous Semantic Game Generators: 2016-2019
FP7 Marie Curie CIG research project completed: AutoGameDesign: Autonomous Computational Game Creators: 2014-2018
FP7-ICT research project completed: C2Learn: Creative Emotional Reasoning Computational Tools Fostering Co-Creativity in Learning Processes: 2012-2015
FP7-ICT research project completed: ILearnRW: Integrated Intelligent Learning Environment for Reading and Writing: 2012-2015
Guest Editor of the Special Issue on Intelligence in Serious Games, IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games
Guest Editor of the Special Issue on AI-based and AI-assisted Game Design, IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games
Guest Editor of the Special Issue on Emotion in Games, IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing
Chair of the IEEE Taskforce on Player Satisfaction Modeling, IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (2007-2013)
General Chair of the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) Conference, Chania, Greece, May 2013
Guest Editor of the Special Issue on Computational Aesthetics in Games, IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games
RTI research project completed: Games for Health: 2010-2012
FP7-ICT research project completed: Social games for conflIct REsolution based on natural iNteraction (SIREN): 2010-2013
FTP research project completed: Adaptive Game Content using Computational Intelligence (AGameComIn): 2009-2012
Tutorials and Special Sessions Chair of the IEEE Computational Intelligence and Games Conference, Granada, 2012
Co-Organizer of the ACII 2011 Emotion in Games (EmoGames) Workshop, Oct-9, Memphis, USA.
Co-Organizer of the ICMI 2011 AFFINE Workshop, November, Alicante, Spain.
Tutorials and Special Sessions Chair of the IEEE Computational Intelligence and Games Conference, Seoul, 2011
Chair of the EvoGames event of the EvoStar 2011 conference, Torino, Italy, April 2011
Tutorials Chair of the IEEE Games Innovation Conference, Hong Kong, December 2010
General Chair of the IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games, Copenhagen, Denmark, August 2010
Chair of the EvoGames event of the EvoStar 2010 conference, Istanbul, Turkey, April 2010
Sponsorship Chair of the IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games, Milan, Italy, September 2009
Chair of the Special Session on Player Satisfaction – IEEE Symposium on Computational
Intelligence and Games, Perth, Australia, December 15-18, 2008
Chair of AIIDE’07 Workshop on Optimizing Player Satisfaction, Stanford University, California, June 6-8, 2007
Chair of SAB’06 Workshop on Adaptive Approaches for Optimizing Player Satisfaction in Computer and Physical Games, Rome, Italy, October 1, 2006