Dr Nell Baghaei
Dr

Nell Baghaei

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Background

Dr Nilufar (Nell) Baghaei is a Senior Lecturer within the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at The University of Queensland and the Co-Director of the Mixed Reality Lab. Her research interests are Virtual Reality, Game-based Learning, AI in Education and Persuasive Technology (Google Scholar h-index: 26, citations: ~2300). She is an Associate Editor of Int Journal Human-Computer Studies, Virtual Reality and Games for Health, and is on the Editorial Board/Programme Committee of several other journals and international conferences. She was one of the Programme Chairs for the International Conference on Persuasive Technology 2024. Dr Baghaei is supervising a number of HDR students on Games and VR related topics and sits on various UQ committees. Before joining UQ, she directed the Games and Extended Reality Lab at Massey University, New Zealand, and held multiple leadership positions in the ITP sector. Prior to that, she was a researcher at CSIRO.

Availability

Dr Nell Baghaei is:
Available for supervision
Media expert

Research interests

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

Research impacts

  • 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

135 works between 2004 and 2025
All (135) Journal Article (45) Book Chapter (3) Conference Publication (84) Book (2) Edited Outputs (1)

101 - 120 of 135 works

2014

Conference Publication

Enhancing children's numeracy & te reo skills using computer games

Nand, Kalpana, Baghaei, Nilufar and Casey, John (2014). Enhancing children's numeracy & te reo skills using computer games. 22nd International Conference on Computers in Education (ICCE), Nara, Japan, 30 November - 4 December, 2014. Taoyuan City, Taiwan: Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education.

Enhancing children's numeracy & te reo skills using computer games

2013

Conference Publication

Enhancing engagement and collaborative learning skills in multi-touch software for UML diagramming

Basheri, Mohammed, Burd, Liz, Munro, Malcolm and Baghaei, Nilufar (2013). Enhancing engagement and collaborative learning skills in multi-touch software for UML diagramming. Conference on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, Madison, Wisconsin, June 15-19.

Enhancing engagement and collaborative learning skills in multi-touch software for UML diagramming

2013

Conference Publication

Designing a socially assistive companion robotic wheel chair: RoboChair

Jayawardena, Chandimal, Baghaei, Nilufar, Ganeshan, Kathiravelu and Sarrafzadeh, Abdolhossein (2013). Designing a socially assistive companion robotic wheel chair: RoboChair. 6th IEEE Conference on Robotics, Automation and Mechatronics (RAM), Manila and Pico de Loro, Philippines, 12-15 November. IEEE Computer Society. doi: 10.1109/RAM.2013.6758589

Designing a socially assistive companion robotic wheel chair: RoboChair

2012

Conference Publication

A multi-touch interface for enhancing collaborative UML diagramming

Basheri, Mohammed, Burd, Liz and Baghaei, Nilufar (2012). A multi-touch interface for enhancing collaborative UML diagramming. OzCHI '12: The 24th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference, Melbourne, VIC Australia, 26-30 November 2012. New York, NY USA: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/2414536.2414541

A multi-touch interface for enhancing collaborative UML diagramming

2012

Conference Publication

Massively distributed authorship of academic papers

Tomlinson, Bill, Ross, Joel, Andre, Paul, Baumer, Eric P. S., Patterson, Donald J., Corneli, Joseph, Mahaux, Martin, Nobarany, Syavash, Lazzari, Marco, Penzenstadler, Birgit, Torrance, Andrew W., Callele, David J., Olson, Gary M., Silberman, Six, Ständer, Marcus, Palamedi, Fabio Romancini, Salah, Albert Ali, Morrill, Eric, Franch, Xavier, Mueller, Florian, Kaye, Joseph, Black, Rebecca W., Cohn, Marisa L., Shih, Patrick C., Brewer, Johanna, Goyal, Nitesh, Näkki, Pirjo, Huang, Jeff, Baghaei, Nilufar and Saper, Craig (2012). Massively distributed authorship of academic papers. CHI '12: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Austin, TX, United States, 5-10 May 2012. New York, NY, United States: ACM. doi: 10.1145/2212776.2212779

Massively distributed authorship of academic papers

2012

Conference Publication

Collaborative software design using multi-touch tables

Basheri, Mohammed, Burd, Liz and Baghaei, Nilufar (2012). Collaborative software design using multi-touch tables. International Conference on Engineering Education (ICEED), Penang, Malaysia, 5-6 December. IEEE Computer Society. doi: 10.1109/ICEED.2012.6779276

Collaborative software design using multi-touch tables

2011

Journal Article

Editorial

Kimani, Stephen and Baghaei, Nilufar (2011). Editorial. International Journal of Medical Informatics, 80 (12), 813-814. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2011.09.001

Editorial

2011

Conference Publication

Designing games to educate diabetic children

Chen, Gang, Baghaei, Nilufar, Sarrafzadeh, Abdolhossein, Manford, Chris, Marshall, Steve and Court, Gudrun (2011). Designing games to educate diabetic children. OzCHI '11: The Annual Meeting of the Australian Special Interest Group for Computer Human Interaction, Canberra, ACT Australia, 28 November-2 December 2011. New York, NY USA: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/2071536.2071546

Designing games to educate diabetic children

2011

Journal Article

Engaging families in lifestyle changes through social networking

Baghaei, Nilufar, Kimani, Stephen, Freyne, Jill, Brindal, Emily, Berkovsky, Shlomo and Smith, Greg (2011). Engaging families in lifestyle changes through social networking. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 27 (10), 971-990. doi: 10.1080/10447318.2011.555315

Engaging families in lifestyle changes through social networking

2011

Conference Publication

Personalized techniques for lifestyle change

Freyne, Jill, Berkovsky, Shlomo, Baghaei, Nilufar, Kimani, Stephen and Smith, Gregory (2011). Personalized techniques for lifestyle change. 13th Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine,, Bled, Slovenia, July 2- 6. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-22218-4_18

Personalized techniques for lifestyle change

2011

Conference Publication

Promoting and supporting healthy living by design

Baxter, Gordon, Dow, Lisa, Kimani, Stephen and Baghaei, Nilufar (2011). Promoting and supporting healthy living by design. 13th IFIP TC 13 International Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, 5-9 September 2011. Berlin, Germany: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-23768-3_140

Promoting and supporting healthy living by design

2011

Conference Publication

PETAC: from visualisation to personalisation of tag clouds

Christie, Timothy, Lueg, Christopher and Baghaei, Nilufar (2011). PETAC: from visualisation to personalisation of tag clouds. CHINZ '11: 12th Annual Conference of the New Zealand Chapter of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction, Hamilton, New Zealand, 4-5 July 2011. New York, NY USA: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/2000756.2000766

PETAC: from visualisation to personalisation of tag clouds

2011

Conference Publication

The effects of domain and collaboration feedback on learning in a collaborative intelligent tutoring system

Holland, Jay, Baghaei, Nilufar, Mathews, Moffat and Mitrovic, Antonija (2011). The effects of domain and collaboration feedback on learning in a collaborative intelligent tutoring system. 15th International Conference Artificial Intelligence in Education, Auckland, New Zealand, June 28 - July 2011. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-21869-9_72

The effects of domain and collaboration feedback on learning in a collaborative intelligent tutoring system

2010

Conference Publication

Tag clouds as social signallers

Christie, Timothy, Lueg, Christopher and Baghaei, Nilufar (2010). Tag clouds as social signallers. Conference of the Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group of Australia on Computer-Human Interaction, Brisbane, Australia, November 22-26. New York, NY, USA: ACM. doi: 10.1145/1952222.1952302

Tag clouds as social signallers

2010

Journal Article

Preface

Floreano, Dario, Zufferey, Jean-Christophe, Srinivasan, Mandyam V. and Ellington, Charlie (2010). Preface. Flying Insects and Robots, 13213 LNCS, v-vi. doi: 10.1007/978-3-540-89393-6

Preface

2010

Conference Publication

Improving health information access through social networking

Freyne, Jill, Berkovsky, Shlomo, Kimani, Stephen, Baghaei, Nilufar and Brindal, Emily (2010). Improving health information access through social networking. 2010 IEEE 23rd International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS), Perth, WA Australia, 12-15 October 2010. Piscataway, NJ USA: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. doi: 10.1109/CBMS.2010.6042666

Improving health information access through social networking

2010

Conference Publication

Physical activity motivating games: virtual rewards for real activity

Berkovsky, Shlomo, Coombe, Mac, Freyne, Jill, Bhandari, Dipak and Baghaei, Nilufar (2010). Physical activity motivating games: virtual rewards for real activity. SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Atlanta, GA, United States, 10-15 April 2010. New York, NY, United States: ACM. doi: 10.1145/1753326.1753362

Physical activity motivating games: virtual rewards for real activity

2010

Conference Publication

Gender and role differences in family-based healthy living networks

Kimani, Stephen, Baghaei, Nilufar, Freyne, Jill, Berkovsky, Shlomo, Bhandari, Dipak and Smith, Greg (2010). Gender and role differences in family-based healthy living networks. CHI '10: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Atlanta, GA USA, 10-15 April 2010. New York, NY USA: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/1753846.1754129

Gender and role differences in family-based healthy living networks

2010

Conference Publication

Activity awareness in family-based healthy living online social networks

Kimani, Stephen, Berkovsky, Shlomo, Smith, Greg, Freyne, Jill, Baghaei, Nilufar and Bhandari, Dipak (2010). Activity awareness in family-based healthy living online social networks. IUI '10: 15th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, Hong Kong, China, 7 - 10 February, 2010. New York, NY, United States: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/1719970.1720025

Activity awareness in family-based healthy living online social networks

2009

Conference Publication

Physical activity motivating games: you can play, mate!

Berkovsky, Shlomo, Freyne, Jill, Coombe, Mac, Bhandari, Dipak and Baghaei, Nilufar (2009). Physical activity motivating games: you can play, mate!. OZCHI '09: Proceedings of the 21st conference of the computer-human interaction special interest group of Australia on Computer-human interaction: design, Melbourne, VIC Australia, 23-27 November 2007. New York, NY USA: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/1738826.1738872

Physical activity motivating games: you can play, mate!

Availability

Dr Nell Baghaei is:
Available for supervision

Before you email them, read our advice on how to contact a supervisor.

Available projects

  • Virtual Reality & 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

  • 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

Enquiries

Contact Dr Nell Baghaei directly for media enquiries about:

  • AI in Education
  • Persuasive Technology
  • Serious Games
  • User Modeling
  • Vitual Reality

Need help?

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

communications@uq.edu.au