- Nonverbal communication in virtual reality: Nodding as a social signal in virtual interactions Aburumman, Nadine; Gillies, Marco; Ward, Jamie A. and Hamilton, Antonia F.de C.. 2022. Nonverbal communication in virtual reality: Nodding as a social signal in virtual interactions. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 164, 102819. ISSN 1071-5819
- A Comparison of the Effects of Haptic and Visual Feedback on Presence in Virtual Reality Gibbs, Janet K.; Gillies, Marco and Pan, Xueni. 2022. A Comparison of the Effects of Haptic and Visual Feedback on Presence in Virtual Reality. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 157, 102717. ISSN 1071-5819
- The Impact of Self-Representation and Consistency in Collaborative Virtual Environments Collingwoode-Williams, Tara; O'Shea, Zoe; Gillies, Marco and Pan, Xueni. 2021. The Impact of Self-Representation and Consistency in Collaborative Virtual Environments. Frontiers in Virtual Reality, 2, 648601. ISSN 2673-4192
- Thinking and Doing: Challenge, Agency, and the Eudaimonic Experience in Video Games Cole, Tom and Gillies, Marco. 2021. Thinking and Doing: Challenge, Agency, and the Eudaimonic Experience in Video Games. Games and Culture, 16(2), pp. 187-207. ISSN 1555-4120
- A Discussion of the Use of Virtual Reality for Training Healthcare Practitioners to Recognize Child Protection Issues Drewett, Olivia; Hann, Gayle; Gillies, Marco; Sher, Carmel; Delacroix, Sylvie; Pan, Xueni; Collingwoode-Williams, Tara and Fertleman, Caroline. 2019. A Discussion of the Use of Virtual Reality for Training Healthcare Practitioners to Recognize Child Protection Issues. Frontiers in Public Health, 7(255),
- Understanding the role of Interactive Machine Learning in Movement Interaction Design Gillies, Marco. 2019. Understanding the role of Interactive Machine Learning in Movement Interaction Design. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 26(1), 5. ISSN 1073-0516
- Introduction to the Special Issue on Human-Centered Machine Learning Fiebrink, Rebecca and Gillies, Marco. 2018. Introduction to the Special Issue on Human-Centered Machine Learning. ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems, 8(2), ISSN 2160-6455
- Designing natural gesture interaction for archaeological data in immersive environments Albertini, Niccolò; Brogni, Andrea; Olivito, Riccardo; Taccola, Emanuele; Caramiaux, Baptiste and Gillies, Marco. 2017. Designing natural gesture interaction for archaeological data in immersive environments. Virtual Archaeology Review, 8(16), pp. 12-21.
- Virtual character personality influences participant attitudes and behavior – an interview with a virtual human character about her social anxiety Pan, Xueni; Gillies, Marco and Slater, Mel. 2015. Virtual character personality influences participant attitudes and behavior – an interview with a virtual human character about her social anxiety. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 2, 1. ISSN 2296-9144
- Fluid gesture interaction design: applications of continuous recognition for the design of modern gestural interfaces Zamborlin, Bruno; Bevilacqua, Frédéric; Gillies, Marco and d'Inverno, Mark. 2014. Fluid gesture interaction design: applications of continuous recognition for the design of modern gestural interfaces. ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems, 3(4), 22. ISSN 2160-6455
- Customizing by Doing for Responsive Video Game Characters Kleinsmith, Andrea and Gillies, Marco. 2013. Customizing by Doing for Responsive Video Game Characters. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 71(7-8), pp. 775-784. ISSN 1071-5819
- Socially Anxious and Confident Men Interact with a Forward Virtual Woman: An Experimental Study Pan, Xueni; Gillies, Marco; Barker, Chris; Clark, David M. and Slater, Mel. 2012. Socially Anxious and Confident Men Interact with a Forward Virtual Woman: An Experimental Study. PLoS ONE, 7(4), e32931.
- Comparing and Evaluating Real Time Character Engines for Virtual Environments Gillies, Marco and Spanlang, Bernhard. 2010. Comparing and Evaluating Real Time Character Engines for Virtual Environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 19(2), pp. 95-117. ISSN 1054-7460
- Piavca: a framework for heterogeneous interactions with virtual characters Gillies, Marco; Pan, Xueni and Slater, Mel. 2010. Piavca: a framework for heterogeneous interactions with virtual characters. Virtual Reality, 14(4), pp. 221-228. ISSN 1359-4338
- E-Drama: Facilitating Online Role-play using an AI Actor and Emotionally Expressive Characters. Zhang, Li; Gillies, Marco; Dhaliwal, Kulwant; Gower, Amanda; Robertson, Dale and Crabtree, Barry. 2009. E-Drama: Facilitating Online Role-play using an AI Actor and Emotionally Expressive Characters. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 19(1), pp. 5-38. ISSN 1560-4292
- Learning Finite State Machine Controllers from Motion Capture Data Gillies, Marco. 2009. Learning Finite State Machine Controllers from Motion Capture Data. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, 1(1), pp. 63-72. ISSN 1943-068X
- Responsive Listening Behavior Gillies, Marco; Pan, Xueni; Slater, Mel and Shawe-Taylor, John. 2008. Responsive Listening Behavior. Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds, 19(5), pp. 579-589. ISSN 1546-4261
- Customisation and Context for Expressive Behaviour in the Broadband World Gillies, Marco; Crabtree, I. Barry and Ballin, Daniel. 2004. Customisation and Context for Expressive Behaviour in the Broadband World. BT Technology Journal, 22(2), pp. 7-17. ISSN 1358-3948
- Behaviourally rich actions for user-controlled characters Gillies, Marco and Dodgson, N.. 2004. Behaviourally rich actions for user-controlled characters. Computers & Graphics, 28(6), pp. 945-954.
- Eye Movements and Attention for Behavioural Animation Gillies, Marco and Dodgson, N.. 2002. Eye Movements and Attention for Behavioural Animation. Journal of Visualization and Computer Animation, 13(5), pp. 287-300. ISSN 1049-8907
Professor Marco Gillies
Professor of Computing. Co-director SEEVR lab and MA/MSc V&AR
Staff details
Links
Goldsmiths Research Centres/Groups
Marco is co-director (with Xueni 'Sylvia' Pan) of both the Masters in Virtual and Augmented Reality and the Social, Empathic and Embodied Virtual Reality Lab. He has been researching Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence since the late 1990s and has particularly worked on virtual humans and movement based interaction with VR.
In the past he has also been Academic Director: Distance Learning and Academic Director of Goldsmiths' Teaching and Learning Innovation Centre. He co-founded the BSc Creative Computing degree at Goldsmiths, which was a key part of establishing Goldsmiths Computing as a key centre for applying computing to the arts and creative sectors. He co-created the first MOOC from an English University and was instrumental in developing Goldsmiths' large scale online degrees: BSc Computer Science and MSc Data Science.
Academic qualifications
- PhD in Computer Science, University of Cambridge 2001
- BA in Computer Science, University of Cambridge 1997
Teaching and supervision
Marco Co-directs and teaches on the Masters in Virtual and Augmented Reality.
He supervises Masters and PhD projects in many areas relating to Virtual Reality and Immersive media, particularly the interface of VR and AI/Machine Learning, Movement-based and Embodied forms of interaction and social interaction in VR and AR.
Research interests
Marco's research covers a wide range of areas of virtual reality and immersive media, particularly in three major areas:
- The application of AI and Machine Learning to VR
- The use of full body movement for interaction with immersive media
- Social interaction in VR, AR and MR
These three strands are tightly intertwined. Machine learning is a key technology for recognising and designing movement based interaction; body movement and body language are a vital part of what makes VR a powerful medium for social interaction, and social interaction can be with AI characters as well as real people.
Marco is also interested in human-centred approaches to AI and machine learning that use HCI methods and epistemologies to enable machine learning as a creative tool.
His work is highly interdisciplinary and includes applications and collaboration with fields such as dance and performance, medicine, education, games development, critical disability studies, developmental psychology and social neuroscience.
Publications and research outputs
Article
- My virtual self: the role of movement in children's sense of embodiment Dewe, Hayley; Gottwald, Janna; Bird, Laura-Ashleigh; Brenton, Harry; Gillies, Marco and Cowie, Dorothy. 2022. My virtual self: the role of movement in children's sense of embodiment. IEEE Transactions on Visualization & Computer Graphics, 28(12), pp. 4061-4072. ISSN 1077-2626
- Immersive Machine Learning for Social Attitude Detection in Virtual Reality Narrative Games Dobre, Georgiana Cristina; Gillies, Marco and Pan, Xueni. 2022. Immersive Machine Learning for Social Attitude Detection in Virtual Reality Narrative Games. Virtual Reality, 26(4), pp. 1519-1538. ISSN 1359-4338
- Developing an Evaluation Framework for Analysing Educational Simulation Games Slyman, Souad; Gillies, Marco and Lytra, Vally. 2022. Developing an Evaluation Framework for Analysing Educational Simulation Games. Proceedings of the 16th European Conference on Games Based Learning, 16(1), pp. 526-534. ISSN 2049-0992
Conference or Workshop Item
- Nods of Agreement: Webcam-Driven Avatars Improve Meeting Outcomes and Avatar Satisfaction Over Audio-Driven or Static Avatars in All-Avatar Work Videoconferencing Ma, Fang; Zhang, Ju; Tankelevitch, Lev; Panda, Payod; Asadi, Torang; Hewitt, Charlie; Petikam, Lohit; Clemoes, James; Gillies, Marco; Pan, Xueni; Rintel, Sean and Wilczkowiak, Marta. 2025. 'Nods of Agreement: Webcam-Driven Avatars Improve Meeting Outcomes and Avatar Satisfaction Over Audio-Driven or Static Avatars in All-Avatar Work Videoconferencing'. In: The 27th ACM SIGCHI Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW). San José, Costa Rica 9 - 13 November 2024.
- The Effect of Child and Adult Avatars on Spatial Perception in Urban-Scale Virtual Environment Lee, Jeongmin; Chen, Yuetong; Gillies, Marco and Pan, Xueni. 2025. 'The Effect of Child and Adult Avatars on Spatial Perception in Urban-Scale Virtual Environment'. In: AIxVR: 7th IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence & eXtended and Virtual Reality. Lisbon, Portugal 27-29 January 2025.
- Delivering Bad News: VR Embodiment of Self Evaluation in Medical Communication Training Collingwoode-Williams, Tara; Gillies, Marco; Nambyiah, Pratheeban; Fertleman, Caroline and Pan, Xueni. 2024. 'Delivering Bad News: VR Embodiment of Self Evaluation in Medical Communication Training'. In: 12th International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH). Funchal, Portugal 7 - 9 August 2024.
Book Section
- Digitally supported assessment Havemann, Leo; Katan, Simon; Anstead, Edward; Gillies, Marco; Stroud, Joanna and Sherman, Sarah. 2023. Digitally supported assessment. In: Linda Amrane-Cooper; David Baume; Stephen Brown; Stylianos Hatzipanagos; Phillip Powell; Sarah Sherman and Alan Tait, eds. Online and Distance Education for a Connected World. London: UCL Press, pp. 195-210. ISBN 9781800084810
- Non-representational Interaction Design Gillies, Marco and Kleinsmith, Andrea. 2014. Non-representational Interaction Design. In: Mark (J. M.) Bishop and Andrew Martin, eds. Contemporary Sensorimotor Theory. 15 Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, pp. 201-208. ISBN 978-3-319-05106-2
- Mediating Performance Through Virtual Agents Giannachi, Gabriella; Gillies, Marco; Kaye, Nick and Swapp, David. 2009. Mediating Performance Through Virtual Agents. In: Zsófia Ruttkay; Michael Kipp; Anton Nijholt and Hannes Högni Vilhjálmsson, eds. Intelligent Virtual Agents 2009. Amsterdam: Springer, pp. 439-445. ISBN 978-3-642-04379-6
Report
- Coney: Better Than Life Mees, Annettte; Wright, Tim; Donald, Nicky; Gillies, Marco; Milne, Austin and Prime, Sian. 2015. Coney: Better Than Life. Project Report. NESTA, LONDON.
- Practical behavioural animation based on vision and attention Gillies, Marco. 2001. Practical behavioural animation based on vision and attention. Technical Report. UCCL, Cambridge.
Software
- Gestyour Gillies, Marco. 2014. Gestyour.
Other
- CO3355 Advanced graphics and animation subject guide Devlin, Kate and Gillies, Marco. 2014. CO3355 Advanced graphics and animation subject guide. UCL, Goldsmtihs, University of London International Programme.
Research projects
2022:
The plasticity of the bodily self: how function and age shape the acceptance of virtual bodies.
A ESRC funded collaboration with Dorothy Cowie at the University of Durham that investigates how adults and children can adapt to virtual bodies with different appearances and functions
Immersive, Innovative, and Interactive Experience (IIIE): A Technology Driven London-Shanghai Partnership in Mixed Realities and Performing Arts
Led by Xueni 'Sylvia' Pan, this AHRC funded project aims to foster collaboration between the creative sectors in the UK and China around immersive media and performance
2019-2021:
4i: Immersive Interaction Design of Indie Developers using Interactive Machine Learning
An EPSRC funded collaboration with University of Coventry CDARE, UAL CCI and Gibson/Martelli, looking at using machine learning to enable dancers and artists to design movement interaction for VR
2018-2019:
AI-Driven Characters for Immersive Narrative Games
An InnovateUK funded collaboration with game studios Maze Theory and Dream Reality Interactive that applied machine learning to social interaction with immersive game characters for Peaky Blinders
2017-2020:
Understanding and generating real-time face-to-face social interactions
A Leverhulme funded project led by Antonia Hamilton of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience using motion capture and machine learning to understand non-verbal social interaction.
