PLASMA 2025 Speaker Series Presents: Maria Roussou

"Designing reflexivity into eXtended Reality experiences"

Dr. Maria Roussou is an Associate Professor in Interactive Systems at the Department of Informatics & Telecommunications, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her research interests span across various areas including Human-Computer Interaction, eXtended Reality, Games, and Data Visualization.

With over two decades of experience in the field, Maria has specialized in projects combining interactive technologies with education and culture. She founded in 2003 and co-directed makebelieve, an experience design and consulting company. Previously, she established (in 1998) and directed (1998-2003) the Virtual Reality Department at the Foundation of the Hellenic World (FHW), a cultural heritage institution based in Athens, Greece. At FHW, she was responsible for recruiting a team of artists and programmers, setting up the VR exhibits & infrastructure, and managing the research, design and development of the VR programs and related visitor experiences. For most of the nineties (1993-1997), during her extensive work with the CAVE® at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory in Chicago, she focused on the design, application, and evaluation of virtual and digital media environments for education and the representation of cultural information. Maria also collaborated with many museums, such as the Acropolis Museum and the Walker Art Center, where she helped to design and create interactive art education material for the Web.

Maria's projects and collaborations have been featured internationally at events such as ACM SIGGRAPH (1993-2002) and the Ars Electronica festival (in the 90s, with her artwork as part of the permanent collection of the museum). She has been a regular member of the program and organizing committees of numerous exhibitions and conferences, has lectured extensively, and serves as Expert Evaluator to the European Commission FP5, FP6, FP7, H2020, and Horizon Europe funding programmes. She is a member of the Steering Committee of Interaction Design and Children and on the Editorial Boards of journals, including ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction, and Multimodal Technologies and Interaction.