Prof. dr. Max Louwerse
Virtually within distance: From embodied conversational agents to innovations in education
Developments in virtual reality and artificial intelligence move quickly, providing endless opportunities for both research and applications. This presentation will provide a glimpse in these developments, ranging from the development of embodied conversational agents for healthcare to the use of virtual reality in education, and the successes achieved so far. Special attention will be given to the collaborations that are already in place between Breda University of Applied Sciences and Tilburg University.
Prof. dr. Max Louwerse is Professor in Cognitive Psychology and Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence at Tilburg University. Louwerse published over 130 articles in journals, proceedings and books in cognitive science, computational linguistics, and psycholinguistics (symbolic and embodied cognition, language statistics, virtual reality, multimodal communication) and holds two patents.
Louwerse served as principal investigator, co-principal investigator, or senior researcher on projects totaling €30 million in both the United States and the Netherlands. In the US he was involved as a Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator in projects totaling almost $10 million funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Institute of Education Sciences. In the Netherlands he serves as co-principal investigator in the €12 million project Campione (33 partners) investigating training in virtual reality and as principal investigator on the €7 million project VIBE (12 partners) developing animated embodied conversational agents for health care. Most recently he is involved in activities of SpaceBuzz, creating ambassadors of planet earth, by developing innovative technologies for education, including virtual reality, intelligent tutoring systems and artificial intelligence.
Louwerse has been founder of the DAF Technology Lab, the virtual and mixed reality lab on the Tilburg University campus, was involved in setting up the Jheronimus Academy of Data Science (www.jads.nl), and is co-founder of MindLabs (www.mind-labs.eu).