Organisers


Fiona French is a senior lecturer in the School of Computing and Digital Media at London Metropolitan University. She is course leader for BSc Computer Games Programming and has organised several gamejams and other play related public events. Her research interests include Animal Computer Interaction, physical computing and toy and game design and development.  Fiona is currently investigating the design of playful interactive systems for elephants, as part of a PhD in the Animal Computer Interaction Lab at The Open University.

Mark Kingston-Jones is a Workshop Coordinator and Level 1 Instructor for The Shape of Enrichment, having been involved in 46 workshops, in the UK, Indonesia, South Africa, Uganda, Romania, Russia, Lithuania, Vietnam, Armenia, India and Croatia. Previous to becoming self-employed in 2014, he worked at Howletts and Port Lympne Wild Animal Parks, as ‘Head  of Education and Research’. In addition to organizing talks, workshops and conferences, he has run over 70 team building enrichment workshops for corporate and university groups, as well as working with keepers to design and implement enrichment ideas. Mark is the SHAPE-UK & Ireland Events Co-Coordinator, an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Kent, an external advisor for the PASA captive Care Group and a Trustee for Lakeview Monkey Sanctuary.

Mark Campbell is a senior lecturer in Computer Science, and course leader for MSc Systems Development in the School of Computing at London Metropolitan University. He has a vast wealth of experience in both academia and industry and currently specialises in IoT technology, robotics and systems building, network and cloud security, and mobile distributed application development. Mark is also a STEMNet Ambassador who regularly visits schools to demonstrate new technology. 

Sarah Webber is a PhD candidate at the Microsoft Research Centre for Social Natural User Interfaces at the University of Melbourne. Her PhD research examines the use, design and evaluation of digital technology for animal-human encounters at the
zoo. She has a professional and academic background in interaction design, user research and user-oriented technology evaluation. 

Heli Väätäjä is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Pervasive Computing at Tampere University of Technology, Finland. She is the responsible teacher for M.Sc. level courses on experience design and evaluation, user interface design, and user-centered product development. As a
hobby, she teaches as part of her dog training classes about dog’s psychological needs and natural behaviors, and enrichment of eating and hunting behaviors. Her research interests include serious gaming, IoT and big data, and in ACI specifically animal welfare and enrichment with technology, and design methodologies for animals.

David T Schaller is the Principal of Eduweb, an award winning developer of learning games and simulations, based in Minnesota, USA. Dave has over twenty-five years of experience in natural history and social science interpretation, working in print, exhibit, and digital media.Since 1996, he has developed over 200 digital games and interactives about science, art, and history. As a Principal Investigator on the WolfQuest project, he worked with biologists, zoo curators, and educators to design a scientifically-accurate game about wolf ecology. He holds a B.A. in Humanities from Macalester College and an M.A. in Geography and Museum Studies from the University of Minnesota.