Maria Roussou

Dr. Maria Roussou is a designer-researcher-educator-consultant, engaged in combining innovative technology with education and culture.

Before founding her company, makebelieve design & consulting, she established and directed (for four+ years, 1998-2002) the Virtual Reality Department at the Foundation of the Hellenic World, a cultural heritage institution based in Athens, Greece, where she was responsible for the virtual reality infrastructure, programs, research, and design of the overall visitor experience. Previously, during her extensive work with the CAVE® at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory in Chicago, she focused on the design, application, and evaluation of virtual and digital media environments for education and the representation of cultural information.

She has collaborated with many museums, including contemporary art museums such as the Wal-ker Art Center, to design and create interactive art education material for the Internet. Her projects and collaborations have been featured internationally at events such as SIGGRAPH (since 1993) and the Ars Electronica festival (with her artwork as part of the permanent collection of the mu-seum), she has been a regular member of the program and organizing committees of numerous exhibitions and conferences, and has lectured extensively.

She is on the Board of Directors of the Institute for the Visualization of History, Massachusetts,
USA and on the International Advisory Board of the Child Art Foundation, Washington DC, and has served as Expert Evaluator to the European Commission FP5 & FP6 IST Programmes. She is also a lecturer of the Museum Studies master’s program of the University of Athens.

She holds a PhD in VR/HCI from the University of London (UCL), a MFA degree in Electronic Visualization, and a MSc in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Chicago.