Research output per year
Research output per year
BSc, MSc, PhD
Aston Triangle
B4 7ET Birmingham
United Kingdom
Accepting PhD Students
PhD projects
A Mixed Reality System for Emergency Management to improve Situational Awareness using Scenario Engineering and Gamification
Gamification models and frameworks using VR, AR, and psycho-physiological feedback
Virtual Companions in e-Health using mobile augmented reality and Game Technology
Kavakli has been a Professor of Gamification and Simulation Technology at Aston University’s College of Physical Science and Engineering and the Program Leader for Gamification at SPR DFI (The Sir Peter Rigby Digital Futures Institute) since September 2023. She is currently working on Digital Twins, Gamified System Design, and Mixed Reality Simulations.
Prof Kavakli is an interdisciplinary researcher primarily interested in Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Human Machine Interaction (HMI), Virtual and Augmented Reality, Integrated System Design, and Game Engineering. She has a complimentary background as an educator in both Architectural Design (12 years) and Computer Science (26 years) in professorial roles, as well as experience in Departmental & Research Administration in three separate Directorship roles.
She has obtained 63 grants and generated a total research income and infrastructure over £25.8 million. She established interdisciplinary facilities such as the first Virtual Reality Lab in Sydney in 2005, the first Simulation Hub and a Research Center (CEPET: Centre for Elite Performance, Expertise, and Training) with her colleagues from Psychology and Physiotherapy in 2015, and a Virtual Production Studio in Canberra in 2022, after receiving 10 competitive grants from a number of scientific international organisations including British Academy, UKRI Innovate UK, EU Horizon, NSF China, The ACT Government Grant, Commonwealth Grant, 5 ARC (Australian Research Council) grants (DP0988088, DP0558852, LP160101803, LX0560117, and LP0216837), and 2 grants from State Planning Organisation in Turkish Republic.
Prof Kavakli is the founding Head of SIGMA (Simulation, Interaction, and Gamification Models and Architecture) Research Group at Aston University, Birmingham and VISOR (Virtual and Interactive Simulations of Reality Research Group) at Macquarie University, Sydney. She has an extensive experience in research supervision and supervised 16 postdoctoral fellows and 119 postgraduate students (17 PhD, 3 MSc, 7 Honours, 34 MIT (Master of IT) projects, 48 MIT Special Topics, 10 French MEng internships), and 60 MIT/MEng internships. She currently supervises 4 PhD students as an Associate supervisor at Aston University and 1 PhD student at Macquarie University, Sydney.
She is an academic conducting highly interdisciplinary research for over 36 years. Her research studies are not domain specific and can be applied to many different areas in the industry, as well as design and engineering as demonstrated by 63 competitive grants and 240 refereed papers with over 4290 citations (h-index 27 and i10 75).
Grants received at Aston University:
2026 the British Academy, Horizon Pump Priming Grant, PPHE26\100306, AI-powered Multimodal Transport Services for Enhanced Resilience using Digital twins, Horizon Europe Pump Priming collaboration between UK and E partners 2026 | The British Academy, £10K (Kavakli, Lee (Cranfield Uni), Nasri, Pavel (TU Delft), Guastella (Aix Marseille), Jeong (KRRI), Kim (KICT))
2024-2026 Ali Jabran, Surej Mouili, Manolya Kavakli, Andrea Jester, Children’s Hospital, Glove Project Birmingham Women’s & Childrens Research Program, Development of a Smart Glove System for Remote Monitoring of Children With Hand Differences (submitted on 28th April 2024) (£24998)
2025-2026 UKRI Innovate UK Council Reference: TS/U004618/1 Proposal Title : DIATOMIC (Digital InnovAtion TransfOrMatIve Change) 10157662 Proposal Scheme : Technology Strategy Board - CR&D Proposal, Diatomic 1 Year Extension (Competition name: Innovation project commission West Midlands – Extension, 1 April 2025- 31 March 2026, Duration: 12 months (£1.8m Aston’s share in the extension in Year3 £125K) Work Stream 2 Lead Professor Manolya Kavakli-Thorne, Aston University
2025-2026 UKRI West Midlands Innovation Accelerator project Diatomic (Digital InnovAtion TransfOrMatIve Change) Global Strand Funds, Innovation Twin Partnership, Aston University, Project Lead: Prof Manolya Kavakli-Thorne (Total: £24K, Aston’s share £8K
2024-2026 EU Call: HORIZON-JU-ER-2023-01, EU-RAIL JU RIA Call 2023-01, 101177985 Activity: HORIZON-ER-JU-2023-EXPLR-02 Future Metro Systems, Application number: 10127470 Nexus: Next-Gen technologies for Enhanced Metro Operations, co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement (UK participants in this project are funded by the UKRI). (3m Euro = GBP 2,549,670)
2023-2025 UKRI Innovate UK West Midlands Innovation Accelerator project, Diatomic (Digital InnovAtion TransfOrMatIve Change) UK Accelerator, Connected Places Catapult partners: Aston University, Birmingham Chambers of Commerce, Birmingham City Council, Birmingham City University, and the University of Birmingham, Application number: 10055175 PCR number: 52454, Competition: Innovation project commission West Midlands: research and development, Amendment 1, Institutional Grant £6,207,573)
2024-2025 UKRI Diatomic City to City Demonstrator Project (£37K) Smart Cities – exploration and case study for Diatomic Digital Twin to demonstrate the capability of the platform. ASTON Team: Prof Manolya Kavakli ADFI, Dr Seif Allah El Mesloul Nasri, Dr James Pickering, Birmingham City Council: Andrew Radford and Raj Mack ULSAN Team: Prof Kang-Hyun Jo
2025-2026 UKRI West Midlands Innovation Accelerator project Diatomic (Digital InnovAtion TransfOrMatIve Change) Global Strand Funds, Innovation Twin Partnership – Birmingham & Ulsan, Academic Exchange Project, Aston University, Birmingham City University, University of Birmingham, Academic Exchange Project Lead: Prof Manolya Kavakli-Thorne (£60K)
2024-2025 SPR DFI Pump Priming Grant, TrackWise: AI-powered Personalised Virtual Health Coach for Chronic Disease Management Kavakli-Thorne, Hassan-Smith Z., Hassan-Smith G, Nasri, S., Ahmed, H., Fouad, S., Htait, A, Fakhimi, A, Patel, A., £2K (21 October 2024)
2024 ADFI Pump Priming, Aston University, Digitising mountain terrain for emergency planning and response (DRAGON), Dr Komal Aryal, Dr Lucy Bastin, Prof Manolya Kavakli-Thorne, Prof. Alexeis Garcia Perez, Prof. Pavel Albores, Ms. Renia Gkountiou, Ms. Laxmi Thapa, Mr. Sangam Acharya, Ms. Pragati Dhakal, Ms. Dibikshya Shrestha, (3K GBP)
2024 ADFI Pump Priming, Aston University, Autonomous pod with tethered drone using for birds eye view, Dr James Pickering, Prof Keith Burnham, Dr Jisun Kim, Dr Manimuthu Arunmozhi, William Utting, Paul Gretton, Joshua D’Souza, Prof Manolya Kavakli-Thorne (3K GBP)
2024 ADFI Pump Priming, Aston University, Designing a human-centric human interface for an explainable AI tool in radiology imaging, Dr Shereen Fouad, Dr Antonio Fratini, Dr Sarah Atkins (3K GBP) promoted by the Fringe Events – The Alan Turing Institute
2024-2028, NSF China (National Science Foundation Grant no: 72371064), Empirical Research on HCI & UX design of gamified XR emergency training systems, A/Prof Manning Li, Prof Manolya Kavakli, Northeastern University, China (5.5m USD=4.38mGBP)
Between 1989 and 1999 she worked as an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Architecture, Istanbul Technical University. In 2000, she started lecturing in Game Design at the School of Information Technology, Charles Sturt University and became the Acting Course Coordinator of the first Bachelor of Computer Science (Games Technology) degree in Australia. In 2003, becoming a Senior Lecturer in Computer Graphics and Game Design at the Department of Computing, Macquarie University, she established a Virtual Reality Lab in 2005, where she was promoted to Associate Professorship in 2010.
Prof Kavakli was the Director of the Virtual Reality Lab between 2005-2020 and the Director of Postgraduate Program between 2014-2018 at the Department of Computing, Macquarie University. Between 2018-2023 in her professorial appointment as the Academic Director, she established the AIE Institute receiving TEQSA accreditation for the Bachelor of Game Development degree with 3 majors; Game Art, Game Design and Game Programming. Currently, she holds an Honorary Professorship at Macquarie University.
Prof Kavakli gained her B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in 1987, 1990 and 1995 respectively, from Istanbul Technical University. She was awarded a NATO Science Fellowship in United Kingdom in 1996 for postdoctoral research, and a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of Sydney, Australia in 1998.
Prof Kavakli has strong links to European research organisations. She was a Visiting Research Professor at Image Institute, Laboratory, Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Arts et Metiers ParisTech, Chalon Sur Saone, France in 2013 and 2014, and at AIX Marseille Universite, France in 2019.
AWARDS (including Best papers and Runner ups)
2022 Best Paper Award, Networked Entertainment Systems (NES) Workshop -Co-Located with the 42nd IEEE Intl. Conf. on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS 2022), Technically co-sponsored by the IEEE and the IEEE Computer Society, July 10 - July 13, 2022, Bologna, Italy, 1-6, Best paper award (Research impact: 6.70)
2018a The Australian Rural Education Award nomination for ProVC 360 Outreach Project: ProVice-Chancellor (Programs &Pathways)’s 360 Outreach Project, the SPERA (Society for the Provision of Education in Rural Australia) conference, 29-30 Nov 2018, Curtin University, Perth https://www.spera.asn.au/australian-rural-education-awards-2018
2018b Final list paper award, ICIEA 2018 The 13th IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications [ERA A]
2018c Best presentation award, ICCAE 2018: 10th International Conference on Computer and Automation Engineering
2017a 2nd place in Herbert A. Simon Award for the Best Design Research Paper, DESRIST 2017: International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology, [CORE A] http://desrist2017.kit.edu
2017b Best paper award, ICVARS 2017: International Conference on Virtual and Augmented Reality Simulations
Session 2: Image, Signal Processing and Intelligent System
2017c Best paper award ICCAE 2017: 9th International Conference on Computer and Automation Engineering
Session4: Virtual Technology and Augmented Reality
2016 Nomination for the Best paper award APSCC 2016: The 10th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Services Computing
2014 Best Paper Award, CENTRIC 2014, The Seventh International Conference on Advances in Human-oriented and
Personalized Mechanisms, Technologies, and Services, IARIA Int. Academy, Research, and Industry Association
2013 Best Paper Award, ICIET 2013, International Conference on Information and Educational Technology,
International Association of Computer Science and Information Technology
2012 Best Paper Award, MMEDIA 2012, International Conferences on Advances in Multimedia,
IARIA International Academy, Research and Industry Association
1996 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkish Republic
1995 The Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey
1995 The Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey
1995 The United Kingdom Systems Society
1994 The International Society for the Design Science of Engineering Design
1994 The Austrian Society for Cybernetic Studies
1994 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkish Republic
Current Postgraduate students
PhD+ Funding – Academic Year 2026/27, Digital twin-enabled wearable sensing technologies for work-related risk assessment in construction, X (Principle Supervisor: Dr Maxwell Antwi-Afari, Prof Manolya Kavakli, rather Mershack Opoku Tetteh), full fee-waiver scholarship
2. PhD Funding – Academic Year 2026/27, Wearable sensors and exoskeleton systems for improving construction safety and health performance, X (Principle Supervisor: Dr Maxwell Antwi-Afari, Prof Manolya Kavakli, Dr Zhuangzhuang Dai.) EPS scholarship.
3. PhD Thesis, Design requirements to integrate autonomous shuttle services in multi-modal transport, Industry supported (in-kind) by Ohmio, The College Research and Enterprise Committee, Jiahui Qian, (Principle Supervisor: Dr Jisun Kim, Prof Manolya Kavakli, Dr Guilhermina Torrao, Dr James Pickering, Aston University, 1 October 2025-2028 (to start on 1st Jan 2026) EPS scholarship.
4. PhD Thesis on Responsible AI-Driven Decision Support Systems for Enhanced Paediatric Healthcare, Ezzaldin Alkooheji (ID 180196319) (Principle supervisor: Dr Shereen Fouad, Ass supervisors: Dr Antonio Fratini, Prof Maia Angelova, Prof Manolya Kavakli), Aston University, 1 October 2024-2027. EPS scholarship.
Graduated Postgraduate students
As Principle supervisor
PhD
Masters
As Associate Supervisor
PhD
Masters
Honours Students Graduated:
Exchange Scholars
Master of Engineers:
Master of Science in Neuroscience:
Bachelor of Psychology, Major in Science:
Bachelor of Physiotherapy:
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7251664/game-on-for-next-level-education-in-the-act/?cs=14225
MEMBERSHIPS
Member IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 94283932
Member ACM Association for Computing Machinery, 4279528
Member International Simulation Alliance (Asia Pacific Simulation Alliance)
Member Virtual and Interactive Simulations of Reality Research Group (VISOR)
http://web.science.mq.edu.au/groups/visor/
Member Centre for Elite Performance, Expertise, and Training (CEPET)
http://www.psy.mq.edu.au/CEPET/members.htm
Member Turkish Scientists Society organised by the Turkish Ministry of Science, Industry, and Technology
Member Chamber of Architects, Section of UIA in Turkey
Member Committee of Cybernetics Implementation in the Field of Architecture,
Chamber of Architects of Turkey Istanbul Metropolitan Branch,
Union of Turkish Engineers and Architects
Ex Delegate Chamber of Architects, Section of UIA (Union internationale des Architectes- International Union of Architects) in Turkey
Member Informatics Association of Turkey
Member CAD Club, Istanbul Technical University,Faculty of Architecture
Member Deutsches Kultur-Institut, Goethe Institut
Member Taskisla Council of Education and Cultur
Member Istanbul Technical University, Social Club, ITU Foundation
Member Game Researchers
Game Culture http://www.game-culture.com/researchers.html
Member DiGRA - Digital Games Research Association
www.digra.org/wgmembers.htm
Member Scholars’ Network Australia
http://www.scholar8.bizland.com/scholarsinfo/acprofile/au/218-sturt/ap-5673.htm
Member Family Cooperative, Macquarie University
GUEST EDITOR
Special Issue of Algorithms – AI Algorithms for Positive Change in Digital Futures, MDPI, 2024, https://www.mdpi.com/journal/algorithms Impact factor: 2.3 Cite score: 3.7
Special Issue of the International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems - Human Machine Interaction (2012-2013)
http://journals.sagepub.com/home/arxa Impact factor: 0.987
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
ACM Computers in Entertainment (2011-2015) [ERA B] Entertainment Editorial Board https://cie.acm.org/about-board/
Journal of Applied Systems Studies. http://www.unipi.gr/jass/ (1998-2003) [ERA C]
EDITORIAL BOARD
Technical Chair
In Turkish:
Research Reports
Corpus ID: 219531818, 6 June 2020, Semantic Scholar, Computer Science, ArXiv (2 citations)
PhD, Istanbul Technical University
Award Date: 10 Aug 1995
MSc, Istanbul Technical University
Award Date: 1 Jul 1990
BSc, Istanbul Technical University
Award Date: 1 Jul 1987
Honorary Professor, Macquarie University
20 Aug 2020 → 20 Aug 2025
Professor and Academic Director of AIE Institute, Sydney, Australia, AIE Institute, Sydney, Australia
20 Aug 2018 → 7 Feb 2023
Associate Professor, Postgraduate Director for Master of IT, Macquarie University
15 Sept 2003 → 20 Aug 2018
Senior Lecturer in Game Design, Charles Sturt University
4 Jul 2000 → 15 Sept 2003
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Editorial › peer-review
Research output: Unpublished contribution to conference › Abstract › peer-review
Research output: Chapter in Book/Published conference output › Conference publication
Research output: Chapter in Book/Published conference output › Conference publication