Dr Nell Baghaei
Dr

Nell Baghaei

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Background

Dr Nilufar (Nell) Baghaei is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at The University of Queensland (Associate Professor from January 2026), and Co-Director of the Mixed Reality Lab. She leads a high-impact, interdisciplinary research group focused on designing immersive technologies and games, and studying their effectiveness in improving health and education outcomes.

She has built a strong national and international reputation through prolific publications in top-tier venues, editorial and leadership roles in major journals and conferences, securing more than $3M in successful external grants (as lead CI or technical lead CI), and successful supervision of research students (Google Scholar h-index: 28; citations: 2,800+). Dr Baghaei is currently supervising 12 HDR students (7 as principal supervisor) and serves on several UQ committees. She is an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Virtual Reality, and Games for Health Journal, and serves as the Organising Committee Member/Associate Chair for IEEE ISMAR and ACM CHI (A*-ranked conferences in immersive tech and HCI). She also acted as a Program Chair for the International Conference on Persuasive Technology in 2024.

Dr Baghaei's research has been cited in policy and patent documents, and featured in media outlets including Psychology Today, MedicalXpress, and 7NEWS Australia. Prior to joining UQ, she led the Games and Extended Reality Lab at Massey University, New Zealand.

Availability

Dr Nell Baghaei is:
Available for supervision
Media expert

Research interests

  • Virtual Reality, Game-based Learning, Digital Health, AI in Education, Persuasive Technology

Research impacts

  • EECS HDR awards: My PhD students, Vibhav Chitale and Achintha Abayasiri, were awarded the Most Innovative Thesis Topic (for a project on mobile games and mental health assessment) and Most Interesting Thesis Topic (for a project on VR visual illusions and balance) respectively.

  • Andrew Wong (my thesis student, co-supervised by Yinshu Zhao) won the Most Innovative Use of XR award at 2024 UQ innovation Showcase for his project on "Effects of Customised AI Shopping Assistant in Virtual Reality Shopping".

  • Best Paper award - Honorable Mention for "Breaking the Isolation: Exploring the Impact of Passthrough in Shared Spaces on Player Performance and Experience in VR Exergames" IEEE VR (A*-ranked conference) 2024

  • Yinshu Zhao (my PhD student) won an Honorable Mention for best DC presentation at IEEE ISMAR 2023 (A*-ranked conference) for her project on "Impact of Avatars on Shoppers’ Perception and Behaviour in Immersive Virtual Stores".

  • Suki Zhang (my thesis student) won the Most Innovative Use of XR award at 2023 Innovation Showcase for her thesis project on Juiciness in VR Exergames.

  • Nominated for Best Paper award "Augmented Reality Applications in the Classroom: Teachers’ Experience", Al Omair, H., Mendoza, A., Boden, M., Baghaei, N., International Conference on Computers in Education (2022)

  • Featured in Psychology today for VR and Mental Health project (published in JMIR 2021): New Research Finds Virtual Reality Can Help Treat Anxiety: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/urban-survival/202109/new-research-finds-virtual-reality-can-help-treat-anxiety https://www.massey.ac.nz/about/news/new-research-finds-virtual-reality-could-help-treat-anxiety/

  • Nominated for Best Paper award "Persuasive Virtual Reality: Promoting Earth Buildings in New Zealand", Don Samarasinghe, Nilufar Baghaei and Lehan Stemmet, International Conference on Persuasive Technology (2020)

  • Edu-games guru, Dr Baghaei talks to Careers with STEM about some of her research projects, challenges faced along the way and gives some advice to young women who want to learn about and pursue a career in ST (2018)

  • Runner-up Award for leading a research project entitled “Feasibility of Diabetic Mario Mobile Game to Improve Diabetes Self-management”, funded by Health Research Council, in collaboration with the University of Auckland - Unitec (2017)

Search Professor Nell Baghaei’s works on UQ eSpace

149 works between 2004 and 2025
All (149) Book (2) Journal Article (51) Edited Outputs (1) Conference Publication (93) Book Chapter (2)

81 - 100 of 149 works

2020

Conference Publication

Enhancing customers' knowledge and decision making using augmented reality

Boonrat, Wisanoo, Vaidya, Vimita, Baghaei, Nilufar, Sharifzadeh, Hamid, Ahmed, Ali and Casey, John (2020). Enhancing customers' knowledge and decision making using augmented reality. ICCE 2020 - 28th International Conference on Computers in Education, Online, 23 - 27 November 2020. Taoyuan County, Taiwan: Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education.

Enhancing customers' knowledge and decision making using augmented reality

2020

Conference Publication

An in-depth exploration of the effect of 2D/3D views and controller types on first person shooter games in virtual reality

Monteiro, Diego, Liang, Hai-Ning, Wang, Jialin, Chen, Hao and Baghaei, Nilufar (2020). An in-depth exploration of the effect of 2D/3D views and controller types on first person shooter games in virtual reality. 2020 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), Porto de Galinhas, Brazil, 9-13 November 2020. Piscataway, NJ USA: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. doi: 10.1109/ISMAR50242.2020.00102

An in-depth exploration of the effect of 2D/3D views and controller types on first person shooter games in virtual reality

2020

Conference Publication

Teaching cyber-security for distance learners: a reflective study

Ahmed, Ali, Lundqvist, Karsten, Watterson, Craig and Baghaei, Nilufar (2020). Teaching cyber-security for distance learners: a reflective study. 2020 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), Uppsala, Sweden, 21-24 October 2020. Piscataway, NJ USA: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. doi: 10.1109/FIE44824.2020.9274062

Teaching cyber-security for distance learners: a reflective study

2020

Conference Publication

LAMCO: A Layered Approach to Mobile Application Computation Offloading

Ballan, Yousef, Ahmed, Ali and Baghaei, Nilufar (2020). LAMCO: A Layered Approach to Mobile Application Computation Offloading. 16th International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference, IWCMC, Limassol, Cyprus, June 15-19. NEW YORK: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.. doi: 10.1109/IWCMC48107.2020.9148493

LAMCO: A Layered Approach to Mobile Application Computation Offloading

2020

Conference Publication

Time to get personal: Individualised virtual reality for mental health

Baghaei, Nilufar, Stemmet, Lehan, Hlasnik, Andrej, Emanov, Konstantin, Hach, Sylvia, Naslund, John A., Billinghurst, Mark, Khaliq, Imran and Liang, Hai-Ning (2020). Time to get personal: Individualised virtual reality for mental health. 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Honolulu, HI, United States, 25-30 April 2020. New York, NY, United States: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/3334480.3382932

Time to get personal: Individualised virtual reality for mental health

2020

Journal Article

Editorial: designing technologies for youth mental health

Baghaei, Nilufar, Naslund, John A., Hach, Sylvia and Liang, Hai-Ning (2020). Editorial: designing technologies for youth mental health. Frontiers in Public Health, 8 45. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2020.00045

Editorial: designing technologies for youth mental health

2020

Conference Publication

Persuasive virtual reality: promoting earth buildings in New Zealand

Samarasinghe, Don Amila Sajeevan, Baghaei, Nilufar and Stemmet, Lehan (2020). Persuasive virtual reality: promoting earth buildings in New Zealand. 15th International Conference on Persuasive Technology, PERSUASIVE 2020, Aalborg, Denmark, 20-23 April 2020. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature Switzerland. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-45712-9_16

Persuasive virtual reality: promoting earth buildings in New Zealand

2020

Conference Publication

SwarMotion: a 3D point cloud video recording tool for classification purposes

Monteiro, Diego, Wang, Jialin, Liang, Hai-Ning, Baghaei, Nilufar and Abel, Andrew (2020). SwarMotion: a 3D point cloud video recording tool for classification purposes. 13th International Conference on Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering (MUE 2019), Xi'an, China,, 24-26 April 2019. Singapore, Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore. doi: 10.1007/978-981-32-9244-4_27

SwarMotion: a 3D point cloud video recording tool for classification purposes

2019

Conference Publication

Feature enhancement and denoising of a forensic shoeprint dataset for tracking wear-and-tear effects

Francis, Xavier, Sharifzadeh, Hamid, Newton, Angus, Baghaei, Nilufar and Varastehpour, Soheil (2019). Feature enhancement and denoising of a forensic shoeprint dataset for tracking wear-and-tear effects. Ajman, United Arab Emirates, 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Signal Processing and Information Technology (ISSPIT), 10-12 December 2019. Piscataway, NJ USA: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. doi: 10.1109/ISSPIT47144.2019.9001841

Feature enhancement and denoising of a forensic shoeprint dataset for tracking wear-and-tear effects

2019

Conference Publication

An Adaptive Method for Vein Recognition Enhancement Using Deep Learning

Varastehpour, Soheil, Sharifzadeh, Hamid, Ardekani, Iman, Francis, Xavier and Baghaei, Nilufar (2019). An Adaptive Method for Vein Recognition Enhancement Using Deep Learning. IEEE International Symposium on Signal Processing and Information Technology (ISSPIT), Ajman, United Arab Emirates, 10-12 December 2019. Piscataway, NJ, United States: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. doi: 10.1109/ISSPIT47144.2019.9001834

An Adaptive Method for Vein Recognition Enhancement Using Deep Learning

2019

Conference Publication

Increasing self-compassion in young people through virtual reality

Baghaei, Nilufar, Hach, Sylvia, Khaliq, Imran, Stemmet, Lehan, Krishnan, Jamuna, Naslund, John, Liang, Hai-Ning and Sharifzadeh, Hamid (2019). Increasing self-compassion in young people through virtual reality. 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct), Beijing, China, 10-18 October 2019. Piscataway, NJ USA: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. doi: 10.1109/ISMAR-Adjunct.2019.00042

Increasing self-compassion in young people through virtual reality

2019

Journal Article

MoodJumper: an exploration of game interface preferences in users with/out mood disorder

Baghaei, Nilufar, Hach, Sylvia, Liang, Hai-Ning and Brucker, Marvin (2019). MoodJumper: an exploration of game interface preferences in users with/out mood disorder. Frontiers in Public Health, 7 220. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2019.00220

MoodJumper: an exploration of game interface preferences in users with/out mood disorder

2019

Conference Publication

Learning wear patterns on footwear outsoles using convolutional neural networks

Francis, Xavier, Sharifzadeh, Hamid, Newton, Angus, Baghaei, Nilufar and Varastehpour, Soheil (2019). Learning wear patterns on footwear outsoles using convolutional neural networks. 18th IEEE International Conference On Trust, Security And Privacy In Computing And Communications/13th IEEE International Conference On Big Data Science And Engineering (TrustCom/BigDataSE), Rotorua, New Zealand, 5-8 August. LOS ALAMITOS: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.. doi: 10.1109/TrustCom/BigDataSE.2019.00067

Learning wear patterns on footwear outsoles using convolutional neural networks

2019

Journal Article

Engaging children with educational content via Gamification

Nand, Kalpana, Baghaei, Nilufar, Casey, John, Barmada, Bashar, Mehdipour, Farhad and Liang, Hai-Ning (2019). Engaging children with educational content via Gamification. Smart Learning Environments, 6 (1) 6, 1-15. doi: 10.1186/s40561-019-0085-2

Engaging children with educational content via Gamification

2019

Conference Publication

Virtual reality models for promoting learners engagement in construction studies

Samarasinghe, Don Amila Sajeevan, Latif, Suhaimi Abd and Baghaei, Nilufar (2019). Virtual reality models for promoting learners engagement in construction studies. 2019 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 8-11 April 2019. Piscataway, NJ USA: IEEE Computer Society. doi: 10.1109/EDUCON.2019.8725120

Virtual reality models for promoting learners engagement in construction studies

2018

Conference Publication

Correlating gamers' brainwaves to their subjective feelings in virtual reality games under different viewing perspectives

Monteiro, Diego, Liang, Hai-Ning and Baghaei, Nilufar (2018). Correlating gamers' brainwaves to their subjective feelings in virtual reality games under different viewing perspectives. 2020 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Connected Health: Applications, Systems and Engineering Technologies (CHASE), Crystal City, VA, United States, 16 - 18 December 2020. Piscataway, NJ, United States: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/1234567890

Correlating gamers' brainwaves to their subjective feelings in virtual reality games under different viewing perspectives

2018

Conference Publication

Designing a virtual reality flight simulator

Halim, Ilona, Casey, John and Baghaei, Nilufar (2018). Designing a virtual reality flight simulator. ICCE 2018 - 26th International Conference on Computers in Education, Manila, Philippines, 26 - 30 November 2018. Taoyuan City, Taiwan: Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education.

Designing a virtual reality flight simulator

2018

Journal Article

A refinement of an iterative orthogonal projection method

Jamil, Noreen, Mirza, Farhaan, Naeem, M. Asif and Baghaei, Nilufar (2018). A refinement of an iterative orthogonal projection method. Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, 341, 31-41. doi: 10.1016/j.cam.2018.02.025

A refinement of an iterative orthogonal projection method

2018

Journal Article

Train-for-life (T4L): an interactive learning platform for logistics, safety and security professionals

Barmada, Bashar and Baghaei, Nilufar (2018). Train-for-life (T4L): an interactive learning platform for logistics, safety and security professionals. Smart Learning Environments, 5 (1) 21, 1-15. doi: 10.1186/s40561-018-0072-z

Train-for-life (T4L): an interactive learning platform for logistics, safety and security professionals

2018

Conference Publication

Evaluating engagement of virtual reality games based on first and third person perspective using EEG and subjective metrics

Monteiro, Diego, Liang, Hai-Ning, Abel, Andrew, Bahaei, Nilufar and De Cassia Monteiro, Rita (2018). Evaluating engagement of virtual reality games based on first and third person perspective using EEG and subjective metrics. 2018 IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality (AIVR), Taichung, Taiwan, 10-12 December 2018. Piscataway, NJ United States: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. doi: 10.1109/AIVR.2018.00015

Evaluating engagement of virtual reality games based on first and third person perspective using EEG and subjective metrics

Current funding

  • 2026 - 2031
    Reducing ageism in healthcare
    ARC Linkage Projects
    Open grant

Availability

Dr Nell Baghaei is:
Available for supervision

Looking for a supervisor? Read our advice on how to choose a supervisor.

Available projects

  • Virtual Reality & Serious Games projects

    • Virtual Reality and Mental Health - The goal of this project is to enhance self-compassion in people with depression using individualised virtual reality. Example (built in Unity): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po3GpcDLUpQ
    • Virtual Reality and Education - The goal is to enhance people's education (in Construction, Australian history, maths or other fields) using virtual reality. A sample project (built using Unity): https://youtu.be/axpDf1d4X5k
    • Games for Health - The goal of this project is to create mobile games (or build further on top of existing ones) to support people with different health conditions. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4zk6M3Ec5U
    • Virtual Reality and shopping habits - The idea of this project is to use virtual reality to examine and experiment with people's shopping habits. Example (built in Unreal engine): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K32qXuUrE8Y

Supervision history

Current supervision

Completed supervision

Enquiries

Contact Dr Nell Baghaei directly for media enquiries about:

  • Games for Health
  • Immersive Technologies for Education
  • Immersive Technologies for Health
  • Persuasive Technology

Need help?

For help with finding experts, story ideas and media enquiries, contact our Media team:

communications@uq.edu.au