Dr Nell Baghaei
Dr

Nell Baghaei

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Background

Dr Nilufar (Nell) Baghaei is an Associate Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at The University of Queensland, 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.

Dr Baghaei 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: 2,900+). She is currently supervising 12 HDR students (6 as principal supervisor) and serves on several UQ committees. She was awarded the 2025 Faculty Research Excellence Award in the supervision category.

Dr Baghaei 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 & 2022. Her 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

  • I was awarded the 2025 Faculty Research Excellence Award in the supervision category.

  • My thesis student, Sarah Abdulkhalek, was named Valedictorian of the Class of 2025.

  • EECS 2024 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.

  • My thesis student, Andrew Wong (co-supervised by Dr 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

  • My PhD student, Yinshu (Claire) Zhao, 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".

  • My thesis student, Suki Zhang, 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

150 works between 2004 and 2025
All (150) Book (2) Journal Article (51) Edited Outputs (1) Conference Publication (94) Book Chapter (2)

121 - 140 of 150 works

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

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

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

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!

2009

Conference Publication

SOFA: an online social network for engaging and motivating families to adopt a healthy lifestyle

Baghaei, Nilufar, Freyne, Jill, Kimani, Stephen, Smith, Greg, Berkovsky, Shlomo, Bhandari, Dipak, Colineau, Nathalie and Paris, Cecile (2009). SOFA: an online social network for engaging and motivating families to adopt a healthy lifestyle. OZCHI '09: Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference of the Australian Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group: Design: Open 24/7, Melbourne, VIC Australia, 23-27 November 2009. New York, NY USA: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/1738826.1738871

SOFA: an online social network for engaging and motivating families to adopt a healthy lifestyle

2008

Book Chapter

Quality of service support in mobile multimedia networks

Baghaei, Nilufar and Hunt, Ray (2008). Quality of service support in mobile multimedia networks. Wireless Quality of Service: Techniques, Standards, and Applications. (pp. 1-25) Boca Raton, FL, USA: CRC Press.

Quality of service support in mobile multimedia networks

2007

Conference Publication

Performance of evolving IEEE 802.11 security architectures

Gin, Andrew, Baghaei, Nilufar and Hunt, Ray (2007). Performance of evolving IEEE 802.11 security architectures. 5th New Zealand Computer Science Research Student Conference, Auckland, New Zealand, April 10-13.

Performance of evolving IEEE 802.11 security architectures

2007

Journal Article

Supporting collaborative learning and problem-solving in a constraint-based CSCL environment for UML class diagrams

Baghaei, Nilufar, Mitrovic, Antonija and Irwin, Warwick (2007). Supporting collaborative learning and problem-solving in a constraint-based CSCL environment for UML class diagrams. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 2 (2-3), 159-190. doi: 10.1007/s11412-007-9018-0

Supporting collaborative learning and problem-solving in a constraint-based CSCL environment for UML class diagrams

2007

Conference Publication

From modelling domain knowledge to metacognitive skills: extending a constraint-based tutoring system to support collaboration

Baghaei, Nilufar and Mitrovic, Antonija (2007). From modelling domain knowledge to metacognitive skills: extending a constraint-based tutoring system to support collaboration. 11th International Conference, UM 2007, Corfu, Greece, 25-29 July 2007. Berlin, Germany: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-3-540-73078-1_25

From modelling domain knowledge to metacognitive skills: extending a constraint-based tutoring system to support collaboration

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