Speaker: Aris Alissandrakis (Chalmers, Sweden)

Topic: Using VR to visualize and explore urban climate

Bio: Aris Alissandrakis a senior lecturer at the Division of Interaction Design and Software Engineering in Chalmers, Sweden. Previously, he was a senior lecturer at the Department of Computer Science and Media Technology, Linnæus University, Sweden. His active research interests include Virtual and Augmented Reality, Quantified Self (Big Data), Serious Games, Human-Computer Interaction, Imitation and Social Learning in Adaptive Systems, Human-Robot Interaction, and Artificial Life. He received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science (Adaptive Systems Research Group, Department of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire, UK, 2003) for work on imitation in adaptive systems (proposing a framework for solving the correspondence problem in imitation), and the M.Eng. degree in Cybernetics (Department of Cybernetics, University of Reading, UK, 1999). From Feb. 2004 until Nov. 2007 was at the University of Hertfordshire, with the Adaptive Systems Research Group, as a research fellow in the European Integrated Project COGNIRON (“The Cognitive Robot Companion”), working on Imitation in the context of Human-Robot Interaction.

Abstract: Aris will give an overview of a recently published article that presents the development of an immersive interface for exploring urban climate data, in particular looking at the phenomenon of "urban heat islands" article. The related two year project (funded by the Norrköping Fund for Research and Development) involved a large interdisciplinary team of urban planners, urban climate researchers, and VIS / HCI researchers.