William Raffe

About

Associate Professor William Raffe has over a decade of experience in teaching and researching real-time visualisation technologies, games production pipelines, and mixed reality systems and experiences. He combines these areas with his keen interest in both human-computer interaction design and machine learning algorithms to push the state of the art in intelligent user-centric 3D visualisation tools, including collaborative computational creativity, agent decision making in virtual environments, and personalised procedural content generation. He also applies these skillsets to create digital experiences for social good, such as digital twins and serious games for health and education. William has been a chief investigator on projects in these areas amounting to over $1.2 million dollars, including ARC Linkages, NHMRC grants, and direct funding from multi-national industry partners. He was previously a Director of the UTS Games Studio research lab (2017-2023) and has over 40 publications in international conferences and journals in the fields of games, human-computer interaction design, and machine learning. He has also been the Chair, Co-Chair, and Treasurer of nine domestic and international conferences. William is highly skilled in designing, implementing, and delivering high quality educational programs. He was previously the Deputy Head of School (Teaching and Learning) (2022-2023) and Associate Responsible Academic Officer (Teaching and Learning) (2021-2022) of the School of Computer Science at the University of Technology Sydney. Prior to this, he was the Course Director of the UTS Bachelor of Games Development (2017-2022). During this time, he undertook numerous internal and industry-based accreditations and has twice acted as an external reviewer for TEQSA accreditations.

Work

Deakin University
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Associate Professor of Emerging Technology

Australia

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University of Technology Sydney
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Associate Professor - Deputy Head of School (Teaching and Learning)

Australia

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University of Technology Sydney
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Senior Lecturer

Australia

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RMIT University
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Research Fellow

Australia

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Independent Software Developer
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Independent Game Developer / Web Designer

Australia

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RMIT University
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Casual Academic

Australia

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Education

RMIT University
Australia

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Ph.D. of Computer Science

RMIT University
Australia

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Bachelor of Computer Science (Honours)

RMIT University
Australia

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Bachelor of Computer Science (Games, Graphics, and Digital Media)

Publications

Visual representation of emotions in Virtual Reality

Summary

preprint

Educator Perceptions of XRAuthor: An Accessible Tool for Authoring Learning Content with Different Immersion Levels

Summary

conference-paper

Leaving the NavMesh: An Ablative Analysis of Deep Reinforcement Learning for Complex Navigation in 3D Virtual Environments

Summary

book-chapter

Real-time affect detection in virtual reality: a technique based on a three-dimensional model of affect and EEG signals

Published by

Frontiers in Virtual Reality

Summary

journal-article

Gamification Framework for Participatory Modeling: A Proposal

Published by

Group Decision and Negotiation

Summary

journal-article

Fitbits for monitoring depressive symptoms in older aged persons: Qualitative outcomes of a feasibility study.

Published by

JMIR formative research

Summary

journal-article

Fitbits for Monitoring Depressive Symptoms in Older Aged Persons: Qualitative Feasibility Study

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JMIR Formative Research

Summary

journal-article

Development of a gamified cognitive training app “Social Brain Train” to enhance adolescent mental health: a participatory design study protocol

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Wellcome Open Research

Summary

journal-article

Fitbits for Monitoring Depressive Symptoms in Older Aged Persons: Qualitative Feasibility Study

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JMIR Formative Research

Summary

journal-article

Affective Visualization in Virtual Reality: An Integrative Review

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Frontiers in Virtual Reality

Summary

journal-article

Exploration Of Encoding And Decoding Methods For Spiking Neural Networks On The Cart Pole And Lunar Lander Problems Using Evolutionary Training

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2021 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC)

Summary

conference-paper

Heuristic Evaluation for Virtual Reality for Paediatric Cancer Patient: Perceptions of Healthcare Professionals

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2021 IEEE 9th International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health(SeGAH)

Summary

conference-paper

A Review of Agency Architectures in Interactive Drama Systems

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2020 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG)

Summary

conference-paper

Emotion Recognition Techniques for Geriatric Users: A Snapshot

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2020 IEEE 8th International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH)

Summary

conference-paper

Generative Audio and Real-Time Soundtrack Synthesis in Gaming Environments: An exploration of how dynamically rendered soundtracks can introduce new artistic sound design opportunities and enhance the immersion of interactive audio spaces

Published by

OzCHI '20: 32nd Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction

Summary

conference-paper

Learning on Country A Game-Based Experience of an Australian Aboriginal Language

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International Conference of Innovation in Media and Visual Design (IMDES 2020)

Summary

conference-paper

Staying Motivated During Difficult Times: A Snapshot of Serious Games for Paediatric Cancer Patients

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IEEE Transactions on Games

Summary

journal-article

Staying Motivated During Difficult Times: A Snapshot of Serious Games for Paediatric Cancer Patients

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IEEE Transactions on Games

Summary

journal-article

Targeting social learning and engagement: what serious games and gamification can offer to participatory modeling

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Environmental Modelling & Software

Summary

journal-article

Targeting social learning and engagement: What serious games and gamification can offer to participatory modeling

Published by

Environmental Modelling & Software

Summary

journal-article

Emotion visualization in Virtual Reality: An integrative review

Summary

preprint

Reducing Perceived Waiting Time in Theme Park Queues via an Augmented Reality Game

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ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI)

Summary

journal-article

Assessment of Manual Dexterity in VR: Towards a Fully Automated Version of the Box and Blocks Test

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Studies in Health Technology and Informatics

Summary

journal-article

Evaluating A VR-based Box and Blocks Test for Automatic Assessment of Manual Dexterity: A Preliminary Study in Parkinson’s Disease

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2019 IEEE 7th International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH)

Summary

conference-paper

Mysterious Murder - MCTS-driven Murder Mystery Generation

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2019 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG)

Summary

conference-paper

Last Island

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Proceedings of the Australasian Computer Science Week Multiconference on - ACSW 2019

Summary

conference-paper

Challenging AI: Evaluating the Effect of MCTS-Driven Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment on Player Enjoyment

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Proceedings of the Australasian Computer Science Week Multiconference on - ACSW 2019

Summary

conference-paper

Gamification of participatory modeling in the context of sustainable development: existing and new solutions

Published by

23rd International Congress on Modelling and Simulation

Summary

conference-abstract

Procedural Generation of Video Game Cities for Specific Video Game Genres Using WaveFunctionCollapse (WFC)

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Extended Abstracts of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play Companion Extended Abstracts - CHI PLAY '19 Extended Abstracts

Summary

conference-paper

Assessing user engagement with a fall prevention game as an unsupervised exercise program for older people

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Proceedings of the Australasian Computer Science Week Multiconference on - ACSW '18

Summary

conference-paper

Measuring player skill using dynamic difficulty adjustment

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Proceedings of the Australasian Computer Science Week Multiconference on - ACSW '18

Summary

conference-paper

Player retention in league of legends: a study using survival analysis

Published by

Proceedings of the Australasian Computer Science Week Multiconference on - ACSW '18

Summary

conference-paper

Serious Games and Models for Sustainable Futures

Summary

conference-abstract

Combining skeletal tracking and virtual reality for game-based fall prevention training for the elderly

Published by

IEEE 6th International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH)

Summary

conference-paper

Learning Options from Demonstrations: A Pac-Man Case Study

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IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games

Summary

journal-article

Monte Carlo tree search based algorithms for dynamic difficulty adjustment

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IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG)

Summary

conference-paper

An adaptive training framework for increasing player proficiency in games and simulations

Published by

CHI PLAY 2016 - Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play Companion

Summary

conference-paper

Dynamic choice of state abstraction in Q-learning

Published by

ECAI 2016: Volume 285 Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications (FAIA)

Summary

conference-paper

Predicting player churn in destiny: A Hidden Markov models approach to predicting player departure in a major online game

Published by

IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG)

Summary

conference-paper

Enhancing theme park experiences through adaptive cyber-physical play

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2015 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games, CIG 2015 - Proceedings

Summary

conference-paper

Integrated Approach to Personalized Procedural Map Generation Using Evolutionary Algorithms

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IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games

Summary

journal-article

Learning options for an MDP from demonstrations

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Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)

Summary

book

Player-computer interaction features for designing digital play experiences across six degrees of water contact

Published by

CHI PLAY 2015 - Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play

Summary

conference-paper

Combining Monte Carlo tree search and apprenticeship learning for capture the flag

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2015 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games, CIG 2015 - Proceedings

Summary

conference-paper

Personalized procedural map generation in games via evolutionary algorithms

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ACM SIGEVOlution

Summary

journal-article

Neuroevolution of content layout in the PCG: Angry bots video game

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2013 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, CEC 2013

Summary

conference-paper

A survey of procedural terrain generation techniques using evolutionary algorithms

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2012 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, CEC 2012

Summary

conference-paper

Evolving patch-based terrains for use in video games

Published by

Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO'11

Summary

conference-paper

A dual-layer clustering scheme for real-time identification of plagiarized massive multiplayer games (MMG) assets

Published by

Proceedings of the 2010 5th IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications, ICIEA 2010

Summary

conference-paper