The Project Team in Lancaster
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Hans Gellersen
Principal Investigator
Hans is a Professor of Interactive Systems at Lancaster University and also affiliated with Aarhus University. He has a long-standing background in HCI and Ubicomp, and over recent years became particularly interested in eye movement. He was awarded the ERC Advanced Grant for GEMINI in 2021.
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Ludwig Sidenmark
Postdoc
Ludwig is a Senior Research Associate on GEMINI. He first came to Lancaster in 2018 for a PhD on eye-head coordination and interaction on which we now build in the project. He has also worked on eye-tracking and gaze as a Master's student at KTH and Tobii, and during internships with Sony and Reality Labs.
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Anam Ahmad Khan
Postdoc
Anam joined Lancaster as a Senior Research Associate on March 2023. Previously, she completed her PhD in Computer Science at The University of Melbourne. Her PhD studied the use of eye movements and speech for improving reading workflow. Coming from a background in data science, Anam’s interest is in using computational methods for modelling sensor-based data to design intelligent interfaces.
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Florian Weidner
Postdoc
Florian joined Lancaster as a Senior Research Associate on March 2023. In 2021, he completed his PhD in spatial augmented reality for automotive user interfaces at Ilmenau University of Technology, Germany. His research interests include mediated reality, physical computing, avatars and agents, and the fundamental processes of perception and cognition when working with these technologies.
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Yasmeen Abdrabou
Postdoc
Yasmeen joined in April 2023 as a Senior Research Associate. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich, Germany where she focused on using eye gaze to enhance security mechanisms. She also conducted eye-tracking research during her internship with Tobii and her research stay at the University of Glasgow.
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Franziska Prummer
PhD Student
Franziska joined the project in Jan. 2022 for a PhD. She has a background in communication science and cognitive psychology from prior studies at LMU Munich and Utrecht University. Franziska’s interest is understanding human behaviour in the context of HCI. In her PhD, she is conducting groundwork on eye dominance in 3D user interfaces.
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James Hou
PhD Student
James joined the team as PhD student in Jan. 2022, from a background in biomedical engineering. James’ interest is in modelling human behaviour as context for interaction, and in his PhD he is developing novel classifiers for eye-head movements. Previously, he was a Master's student and Research Assistant at the Technical University of Denmark, where he worked on gaze and brain-computer interface for accessibility.
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Haopeng Wang
PhD Student
Haopeng joined the project in October 2022. He graduated from University College Dublin and Beijing University of Technology, where he studied Computer Science and Internet of Things. In the GEMINI project, he will study novel techniques for eye-based interaction. His PhD will focus on target selection techniques that leverage interactive methods with multiple modalities including eye, hand, and head in Extended Reality.
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Hock Siang Lee
PhD Student
Hock Siang joined the project as a PhD Student in Jan 2023. Previously a Computer Science Bachelor's student at the University of Nottingham Malaysia, he later stayed on to research gamification and technology-assisted education for both the university and Mixed Reality Lab, eventually joining the Lancaster team after developing an interest in the Gemini Project and the accessibility benefits it could bring.
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Guanlin Li
PhD Student
Guanlin joined the project in January 2023. He graduated from University College London in 2021, studying MSc Computer Science. Before that, he has another Master's degree in the University of Edinburgh in Power Electrical Engineering. In the GEMINI project, he will study novel techniques for 3D interaction. His PhD will focus on how to apply ergonomics in Extended Reality interaction.
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Joshua Newn
Postdoc
Joshua joined Lancaster as a Senior Research Associate on GEMINI, from a background of research in Human-AI interaction at The University of Melbourne. He has a long-standing interest in eye tracking and its use in collaborative systems. His PhD studied gaze-based intent recognition as part of a wider interest in using gaze in multi-user contexts.
The Aarhus Team
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Ken Pfeuffer
Ken is an Assistant Professor in HCI at Aarhus University, with research interests across UI design, AR/VR, gaze and multimodal interaction. Ken is closely collaborating with us on gaze-assisted interaction techniques. Among our shared interests is the symbiotic combination of input from eye and hand, a topic on which Ken first worked with Hans during his PhD at Lancaster.
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Pavel Manakhov
Pavel started a PhD at Aarhus University in August 2022 under supervision by Hans and Ken. He was previously a teaching-track Associate Professor at HSE University in Moscow, with professional background in interaction design. His research interest is in interaction paradigms for XR, and in his PhD he is investigating gaze as interactive modality in mobile contexts.
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Uta Wagner
Uta is a PhD student at Aarhus University since December 2021. Her research interest is in HCI for Extended Reality, and in her PhD she is investigating multimodal interaction techniques that combine input from eye and hand, jointly supervised by Ken and Hans. Uta previously graduated from FH Hagenberg, Austria, with a Masters in Human-Centred Computing.
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Mathias Nørhede Lystbæk
Mathias is a PhD student at Aarhus University, supervised by Ken and Hans, since May 2022. His PhD is investigating gaze-assistance for interactive tasks and workflows in AR, sponsored by MADE, a Danish collaborative project on digital innovation in industry. Mathias has already worked with us on gaze in AR since 2020, as a Master’s student and Research Assistant.
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Juan Sánchez Esquivel
Juan is a PhD student under the supervision of Hans and Ken at Aarhus University since February 2024. His interests lie in the intersection of interaction techniques and mixed reality. His PhD is investigating multimodal interaction techniques in mixed reality with eye gaze. Juan studied computer science at UC3M (Spain), UWaterloo (Canada) and AU (Denmark) and had several international industry internships.
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Qiushi Zhou
Qiushi is a Postdoc at Aarhus University, exploring novel affordances of multimodal bodily interaction in XR. Qiushi obtained his PhD from The University of Melbourne on exploring the novel uses of mirror reflections for Augmented Reality interactions. In Gemini, he inverstigates the intuitiveness of using the combination of gaze and other bodily input modalities, such as hand gestures and body movement.
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Thorbjørn Mikkelsen
Thorbjørn is a PhD student at Aarhus University, supervised by Hans and Ken since November 2024. His research in XR interaction techniques intersects behavioural science, investigating manual input and gestural interfaces in a multimodal context. Thorbjørn has a background in Computer Science with a Masters from Aarhus University, indie game development, and as a Research Assistant working with the Aarhus team.
Collaborators
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Christopher Clarke
Chris is a Lecturer in Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Bath. Among his specific interests is motion correlation as an input principle, a topic he developed in his PhD at Lancaster. In GEMINI we will be collaborating on novel gaze-based techniques that build on motion correlation.
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Riccardo Bovo
Riccardo is a PhD Student in computer science at Imperial College London since 2019. His research interests lie within HCI, virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR), and AI. He conducts research in VR/AR and train and evaluates behavioural inference models aimed to power Intelligent user interfaces and supports collaboration in VR/AR. Previously He worked on 3D web customizers for the 3D printing industry. He enjoys working in a multi-disciplinary team and aims to use technology to help people.
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Daniele Giunchi
Daniele is a research associate at University College London, where he focuses on applying machine-learning algorithms to the visual pipeline for content creation, visual perception for image quality assessment, and collaboration in virtual reality. Prior to obtaining his Ph.D., he worked for companies such as SCS-CINECA and Leonardo, S.p.A. He has published articles on computer graphics, human-computer interaction (HCI), and information retrieval.
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Visiting Students
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Alexandra Gerbert
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Yassin Fayed
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Mohamed Abdelwahab