Meet Dr Vanessa Camilleri, a senior lecturer at the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the Faculty of ICT. She lectures in Intelligent Interfaces and her research interests are in the areas of Creative Computing, VR & AR, Virtual Worlds and Serious Games. She is also the mother of a 12-year old boy, and in her free time she runs marathons.
Q: When were you first interested in Artificial Intelligence, VR & AR ?
A: It has to be said that my first degree was way back in the late 1990’s in Chemistry Education. During this degree I had co-designed and developed a 2D platformer game for young people to learn more about the topic of electricity. This first interest in the application of technology for games and education, evolved naturally as I started exploring novel and emerging technologies and development of techniques for augmenting their potential. My second Masters degree helped me gain a more in-depth understanding of how AI can contribute to diverse educational and training practices.
Q: Who inspires you from the world of Technology and why?
A: One of the persons who has inspired me for quite some time is Jane McGonigal. What she has inspired me most in is the fact that she’s driven by a need to design games that help improve the quality of life of people - in her own terms “to change the world” (for the better of course). She is the Director of Games Research & Development at the Institute for the Future, Palo Alto, California.
Q: What do you think about the stage that Malta and Maltese companies are in when it comes to applying Virtual Reality and Augmented reality in their practices?
A: I think that there is a certain shift in the direction of VR/AR by our local industry. However I do believe that in general the perception is that VR/AR are applications that are more adequate for leisure games, rather than for on-the-job training or work-related practices.
Q: Do you feel it is difficult and challenging being a female in the Information & Technological sector?
A: Personally I don’t see major issues with being a woman working in the ICT sector. Unfortunately I feel that there are certain stereotypical perceptions about the fact that the subjects may be better aligned to men. These perceptions seem to arise from primary and secondary schools so I do believe that we need to work to shift that mentality and educate about the matter, both from the early/middle/secondary schooling, as well as for the general public.
Q: How do you think women cope when having a family to take care of and being active in research as well as lecturing at a University?
A: I am a single parent of a 12-year old boy and this in itself is already challenging. However I do feel that the university work policies, as well as all my faculty colleagues are very understanding when it comes to juggling work and family responsibilities. To be honest, my colleagues who are also parents, still have to juggle both responsibilities, irrespective of whether they are men or women. I feel that as a faculty we are all quite understanding towards each other. Whenever I need help I do tend to reach out to my colleagues and they do the same. So I think that in this way it is easier to balance work and family life. When it comes to research it requires an extra effort at times to work during weekends or during the night when the daily activities become slightly less hectic. Having said this, the fact that we have a flexible schedule helps a lot to support us and our work.
Q: What would you say to young women thinking about starting a career in Technology?
A: I would tell them not to be scared, or to doubt themselves. I would encourage them to be confident in their abilities and as long as they have a real interest in the subject, the most important two values they need to nurture are persistence and determination. And these would apply to both men and women.
Q: How do you think virtual learning is changing the traditional ways of Education?
A: Virtual learning is not something that is new and that has emerged from this pandemic. We have to appreciate that ever since we started roaming the web, we have started our virtual learning. Every time we connect, either with another human being or more, or we connect with various sources of information which we find online, then we are learning virtually. What has happened during this pandemic is that many lecturers and educators have pushed more content to be accessible online. On the other hand, this does not necessarily mean that traditional education is changing. What I am seeing is that the traditional way of teaching has simply shifted content and sources of knowledge to be more accessible online and virtual. What I think is that there needs to be much more work to improve the models of virtual learning that are emerging. Educators and learners alike need to shift the mentality from the traditional to a digital form of learning and this is easier said than done. We need to understand that digital learning or virtual/online learning may target an entirely different skill set and thus has different requirements from a traditional classroom/lecture hall based education and learning.
Q: Did you ever have the opportunity to visit one of the big company giants in Technology such as Google or Microsoft?
A: In 2018 I had the opportunity to visit the Google Development Group offices in Madrid for a 3-day GDG Pan-EU Summit discussing various technology-driven topics. Together with a number of colleagues I was also then responsible for the setting up and organisation of the launch for Google’s Women TechMakers chapter here in Malta.
Q:What does your future look like? And are working on something interesting at the moment?
A: At the moment my future work seems to be oriented towards a more game-based and game-oriented research, as I am working towards bringing together game-development, VR/AR, and gamification practices for the improvement of the quality of need-driven learning.
