Prof Alexiei Dingli

Prof Alexiei Dingli

Professor, Faculty of Information and Communication Technology

Prof Alexiei Dingli is an Associate Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Head of the Department of Artificial Intelligence within the Faculty of ICT at the University of Malta. He is also a founder member of the Google Developers Group Malta Section, the Web Science Research group, the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Malta and of the Gaming group at the same University. He also heads the Gaming in Education group and used to represented the University of Malta on the BeSmartOnline initiative.

Prof Dingli pursued his Ph.D. on the Future of the Web at the University of Sheffield in the UK under the supervision of Professor Yorick Wilks. His work was rated World Class by a panel of international experts whose chair was Professor James Handler (one of the creators of the Semantic Web) and was used as a core component of the application that won the first Semantic Web challenge.

His research in Mobile Technology and Smart Cities was also awarded a first prize by the European Space Agency and an e-Excellence Gold Seal at the prestigious CeBit Conference in Germany. His current project on Intelligent Transportation Systems has been shortlisted for another prize by the European Space Agency.

In 2017, he won the 1st Prize in the Malta Innovation Awards and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) award for Creativity. The British Council, selected him in 2018, out of 1700 individuals worldwide, as a runner-up for the Social Impact Award. He has published several posters, papers, book chapters and books in the area. He also pursued an MBA with the Grenoble Business School in France specialising in Technology Management.

Prof Dingli is also the Mayor of Valletta, the Capital City of Malta. He was the Mayor who submitted the bid for Valletta to become the European Capital of Culture in 2018 and is a founding member of the Valletta 2018 foundation. He is also involved in other committees such as the Valletta Services Directorate, the Valletta Community Network, the Valletta Alive Foundation, etc in order to ensure the regeneration of the Capital City.

Virtual Reality in Healthcare

Selected Publications:

  • Alexiei Dingli, Vanessa Camilleri and Foaad Haddod: “Increasing empathy using Virtual Reality (VR): Evaluation of an Autism Experience VR app” in the 3rd Annual Innovations in Psychiatry and Behavioral Health: Virtual Reality and Behaviour Change, Stanford, United States of America, October 6-7, 2017
  • Vanessa Camilleri, Alexiei Dingli, Vince Briffa and Matthew Montebello: “Walking in small shoes: investigating the power of VR on empathising with children’s difficulties”, at the 23rd International Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia, Dublin, Ireland, October 31 – November 2nd, 2017
  • Vanessa Camilleri, Vince Briffa, Alexiei Dingli, Matthew Montebello: “Emotional intelligence in VR – fostering empathy in teaching”, proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics, Los Angeles, California, USA, July 17-21, 2017
  • Joe Camilleri, David Scicluna, Vince Briffa, Vanessa Camilleri, Alexiei Dingli, Matthew Montebello: “If you aren’t experiencing it, you’re not understanding it! Using virtual reality to understand migrants.”, at the 9th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation, Seville, Spain, November 14-16, 2016
  • Steffi deMartino, Foaad Haddod, Vince Briffa, Vanessa Camilleri, Alexiei Dingli, Matthew Montebello: “Living Autism: An immersive learning experience”, at the 9th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation, Seville, Spain, November 14-16, 2016