Professor Mark Billinghurst (Adelaide University)
Professor Mark Billinghurst is a world-leading researcher in human-computer interaction, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), with more than 900 publications and a career spanning academia and industry, including work with Amazon, Google, Nokia, British Telecom and the MIT Media Lab. He is an IEEE Fellow and Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, and has received major international honours including the 2013 IEEE VR Technical Achievement Award, the 2019 IEEE ISMAR Career Impact Award. In 2024, he was inducted into the Augmented World Expo (AWE) XR Hall of Fame, recognising his significant contributions to augmented and virtual reality research, innovation and commercialisation.
Professor Stephan Lukosch (University of Canterbury)
Professor Stephan Lukosch’s research explores how immersive technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), and serious games can augment human capabilities and foster meaningful interaction in complex environments. He investigates the design and evaluation of systems that enhance perception, cognition, and collaboration, enabling individuals and teams to perform better in domains such as safety, sports, education, and community engagement.
Before joining the HIT Lab NZ at the University of Canterbury in 2019, he was an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He received a Dr. rer. nat. in Computer Science with distinction from the University of Hagen in Germany.
Professor Tim Dwyer (Monash University)
Prof. Tim Dwyer is Australia’s foremost Information Visualisation researcher with over 100 publications, cited more than 10,000 times, in premier journals and conferences such as IEEE TVCG, ACM CHI, ACM SIGGRAPH, and others. He has served as general chair for the premier international virtual reality and visualisation conferences, respectively IEEE VR 2027, IEEE VIS 2023. He continues to serve on the steering committee for the IEEE VIS conference.
From 2018 to 2026 he has been recognised in The Australian newspaper’s Research Magazine as Australia’s foremost Computer Graphics Researcher. Since 2014 he has been one of the founders of the new research area of Immersive Analytics, which explores information visualisation using emerging immersive display and interaction technologies.
His work combines expertise in algorithms, optimisation and interaction design and evaluation. His career has spanned industry and academia. He has developed techniques for network and set visualisation and multidimensional data analysis, implemented in commercial and open-source software, including Microsoft Visual Studio.
Professor Holger Regenbrecht (Otago University)
Professor Holger Regenbrecht is a computer scientist and has been working in the fields of Virtual and Augmented Reality for over 25 years. He was initiator and manager of the Virtual Reality Laboratory at Bauhaus University Weimar (Germany) and the Mixed Reality Laboratory at DaimlerChrysler Research and Technology (Ulm, Germany). At the University of Otago in Aotearoa New Zealand he is leading the Human-Computer Interaction Lab.
His research interests include Human-Computer Interaction (HCI); Virtual | Augmented | Mixed | Extended Reality; Pervasive Augmented Reality; Presence and Telepresence in 3D environments; and perceptual, cultural, and ethical aspects of xR.
Professor Gina Grimshaw (Victoria University of Wellington)
Professor Gina Grimshaw is Director of Mahuki – the Mind and Brain Research Network at te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington, and a Principal Investigator in Te Pūnaha Matatini, the NZ Centre for Research Excellence in Complex Systems. She is a cognitive neuroscientist who uses virtual reality and other technologies to understand the human mind. She regularly collaborates with researchers in Psychology, Engineering, Computer Graphics, Design and applied fields to assess the cognitive, affective, physical, and behavioural impacts of VR.
Professor Grimshaw is excited about the potential of VR to create psychological experiments that better reflect the complexities of the real world. Her research has been funded in New Zealand by the Royal Society Marsden Fund, the Neurological Foundation, and the Department of Conservation.
Associate Professor Gun Lee (Adelaide University)
Dr. Gun Lee is an Associate Professor at Adelaide University. As a member of the Australian Research Centre for Interactive and Virtual Environments (IVE), his research investigates interaction and visualization methods for sharing virtual experiences in xR (Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality).
Recently, developing immersive technology for telepresence and virtual training has been his main research focus. Sharing richer communication cues and supporting large groups to collaborate across space and time with assistance from virtual agents are the research topics he is currently exploring.
Associate Professor Craig Anslow (RMIT University)
Associate Professor Craig Anslow is an Associate Professor in Software Engineering at RMIT University. Craig’s research focuses on AR/VR at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction and Software Engineering. Craig explores innovative ways to develop software for visualization, interaction techniques, and collaborative environments. Craig is particularly interested in digital health and medical simulation training. Craig has published extensively in these areas and actively participates in international conferences and journals including IEEE VR, IEEE ISMAR, ACM CHI, ACM VRST, IEEE VL/HCC, IEEE VISSOFT, and XP among others.
Craig is passionate about advancing the field of AR/VR by improving the user experience and making software development more intuitive.
Dr. Yun Suen Pai (University of Auckland)
Dr. Yun Suen Pai is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Computer Science, University of Auckland, Director of the Inclusive Reality Lab, and the Associate Director of the Empathic Computing Lab, Auckland Bioengineering Institute.
His research interest is redefining a future inclusive space. He envisions a future of an “Inclusive Reality”: a seamless world where the physical and virtual blur to dissolve all barriers – a prosocial space where age, ability, and even species no longer limit how we connect and empower one another. To achieve this, his research is broken down into three categories: 1) understanding cognitive and emotional states, 2) designing and developing tools to assist users, and 3) augmenting abilities to push beyond human limitations.
He has received several paper awards at ACM CHI, IMWUT, SUI, SIGGRAPH and AHs, as well as a number of patents and grants for assistive/empathic interfaces, embodied interactions and bioresponsive systems.
Dr. Benjamin Tag (University of New South Wales)
Dr. Benjamin Tag is a researcher in Human-Computer Interaction, specialising in physiological sensing, ergonomic Extended Reality, and Digital Emotion Regulation. His work bridges affective computing, cognitive science, and ubiquitous computing to enhance human experiences in virtual environments. He has authored over 90 peer-reviewed publications, including in ACM CHI, IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, IEEE VR, and ISMAR, and has received multiple accolades, including several ACM CHI Honourable Mention Awards.
He currently serves as an Associate Editor for PACM IMWUT and contributes to various conference organising committees. Dr Tag collaborates with global partners across academia and industry to create impactful real-world applications.
Dr. Maxime Cordeil (University of Queensland)
Dr. Maxime Cordeil’s research explores how Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies enable users to better understand and interact with complex data. He also focuses on the engineering and evaluation of interactive visualization systems and the design of Augmented Reality interfaces for industry applications.
Dr. Cordeil has authored over 60 publications in top-ranked Human Computer Interaction and Information Visualisation conference proceedings and journals, including in ACM CHI, ACM UIST, ACM ISS, IEEE InfoVis/TVCG, IEEE VR. In 2021 and 2022, he was nominated as Australia’s Field Leader researcher in Computer Graphics (The Australian Research magazine yearly ranking).
Dr. Allison Jing (RMIT University)
Dr Allison Jing is a Lecturer at RMIT whose research focuses on Empathic Extended Intelligence (EXI) – the integration of extended reality and artificial intelligence to augment human capabilities. Her work explores how XR can enrich interactions and environments, support collaboration across physical and virtual realities, and combine bio-signals with behavioral cues to foster trustworthy, empathic human–AI interaction.
