Heather Elizabeth Dodds, Ph.D. is a compassionate and enthusiastic research design advocate. Heather is a founding Chapter Counselor for Kappa Delta Pi, the International Education Honor Society. She has current UX certifications and holds a Master’s degree in e-Education from the University of Phoenix in addition to a Doctorate in Instructional Design for Online Learning from Capella University. Heather's 2013 dissertation is on the quantitative effects of virtual worlds (Second Life) on scientific inquiry skills. In the past two years, Heather has authored two book chapters, one on the use of XR in STEM education and one for instructional designers guiding the use of XR in higher education. Recently, she also taught one of the first college courses ever to incorporate the Oculus Quest 2 headset. She actively publishes about the design and use of XR for learning via LinkedIn and her blog.

Currently Professor in ICT and virtual reality in education at the Department of Primary Education, School of Education, University of Ioannina, Greece. Dr. Anastasios Tassos Mikropoulos holds a B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Ioannina and a Ph.D. in optical signal processing from the University of Athens. He is the director of the “Educational Approaches to Virtual Reality Technologies laboratory – earthlab”. Anastasios Mikropoulos is the elected chair of the Hellenic Association of ICT in Education. His research interests are on learning technologies in mainstream and special education, and especially on virtual and augmented reality in education, and educational neuroscience. Mikropoulos’ work has been published in numerous referred journals, conferences, and volumes with more than 2700 citations. He is a member of the editorial board and reviewer for many international journals and foundations, as well as chair on special tracks of international conferences. He has been project director, principal investigator and consultant in many research and development and educational projects. He also serves as a consultant for the Greek Ministry of Education in topics such as digital school and in-service teachers’ further training.

Leonel Morgado is Associate Professor with Habilitation, at the Portuguese Open University, where he lectures on research methods and software architectures. He is also Secretary of the Assembly of the Portuguese Society of Videogame Sciences, and Vice-President for Scientific Quality of the international research association, Immersive Learning Research Network. His research focuses on immersive learning environments, which has pursued since 2000, focusing on immersive environments since 2006. He authored over 200 papers, in journals, conferences, and as book chapters. Before pursuing an academic career, he was business and technical manager of a hardware import, distribution, and retail company, terminologist for the localization teams of MS Office 97 and Oracle InterOffice, language quality specialist for IBM/Lotus, a coordinator of Web-development and software-deployment teams, and manager of a cooperative extension team fighting the digital divide in rural villages. He also plays Portuguese Guitar and is learning trombone.

Dennis Beck is an Associate Professor of Educational Technology at the University of Arkansas. In his teaching, he enjoys teaching teachers how to use technology in their classrooms. His research focuses on and advocates for digital, educational equity for vulnerable populations, with an emphasis on culturally and linguistically diverse and special education students at the primary and secondary levels. In this stream, he has examined the use of immersive learning environments for providing life skills training for low functioning young adults on the autism spectrum. Additionally, in order to better understand the impacts of immersive environments in cyber schooling on vulnerable populations, he has studied an immersive art curation environment in partnership with a local museum. He also has helped to lead the Immersive Learning Research Network, an international collaboration of scholars and practitioners who are committed to learning more about how to use immersive technologies in education. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking, travel, and other activities with his family and friends.

Daphne Economou is a Senior Lecture at the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Westminster, London, UK. She has 20 years’ experience in higher education, she is a Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy and in 2019 she won the Westminster Learning & Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Westminster.

She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and she is research active in the areas of user experience, human computer interaction, immersive learning and serious games, in which areas she has published a long list of outputs. She is currently leading the Serious Games at Westminster Research group that looks at aspects of gamification to motivate and engage users interacting with technology. She is Senior Executive Board Member of IEEE Technical Committee on Immersive Learning (IEEE TC-ILE) and she volunteers as Executive Board Member of The Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN).

Dr. Anasol Peña-Rios is an AI and Optimisation Research Manager at BT Research Labs in Adastral Park, Ipswich. She has been personally driving the agenda on exploring the use of AI, digital twins, and immersive technologies (VR & AR) in the context of BT’s field and network operations. In 2020 she was awarded a TechWomen100 Award for her work. Previously, she was shortlisted for the Computing Women in IT Excellence Awards 2018 and highly commended at the IET Innovation Awards 2018.

In addition, Anasol is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Essex, from where she holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science. She is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and she volunteers as Executive Board Member of two non-profits that promote immersive technologies for education and innovation: The Immersive Learning Research Network and the Creative Science Foundation. Besides this, she serves as Associate Editor of EAI Endorsed Transactions on e-Learning and Review Editor of Frontiers’ Human-Media Interaction theme. Her other professional contributions include numerous talks, peer-reviewed publications, and editorial work, including chairing and co-organizing multiple academic conferences and events. She has more than 15 years of professional experience in the industry, working closely with international multidisciplinary teams.

Melanie Platz passed the 1st state examination for the teaching profession at secondary schools at the University of Koblenz-Landau (Germany) in 2009 and received her PhD in mathematics at the interface to computer science in 2014 on the mathematical modelling of GIS tailored GUI design with the application of spatial fuzzy logic. Her research focus evolved further to the field of primary education with a focus on the development of substantial learning environments on contemporary topics that are subject and didactically justified and connectable in terms of the spiral curriculum, but rarely addressed in primary mathematics education, such as preformal proving, topics of computer science education or the creation of risk literacy (member of the UN Working Group Space & Global Health) and search literacy (co-moderator of the WG Applications of the Open Search Foundation). Since March 2021, she is University Professor for Didactics of Primary Education - focus on Mathematics - at Saarland University (Germany).

Prof Dr. Fridolin Wild is a full professor at the Institute of Educational Technology of The Open University, also leading the Performance Augmentation Lab (PAL). Fridolin seeks to close the dissociative gap between abstract knowledge and its practical application, researching radically new forms of linking directly from knowing something ‘in principle’ to applying that knowledge ‘in practice’ and speeding its refinement and integration into polished performance.