Invited Speakers

Associate Professor Pratheep Paranthaman, Elon University, USA

Biography: Dr. Pratheep Paranthaman is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and the coordinator of the Game Design minor at Elon University. Dr. Paranthaman is currently overseeing the Game Design Minor Program in the computer science department. Dr. Paranthaman earned his Ph.D. from the University of Genoa, Italy. During his Ph.D. research phase, he investigated the impacts of Serious Games and designed games for promoting green and safe driving in the automotive sector. He was also associated with an Industrial European Union (EU–FP7) project on safe and collaborative transportation. He earned his Master’s Degree in Artificial Intelligence from Heriot-Watt University, U.K., where his research and analyses focused on Human-Robot Interaction. Dr. Paranthaman’s research interests include brain-computer interface, mixed reality, virtual reality, games user research, human-computation games, and artificial intelligence. Prior to joining Elon, Dr. Paranthaman worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at Northeastern University, Boston, MA. During his post-doc research phase, he developed a system called ARAPID (As Rapid As Possible Iterative Design) to streamline the video game playtesting process.

Assoc. Prof. Deepika Koundal, University of Eastern Finland, Finland

Biography: Dr. Deepika Koundal currently serves as a Senior Researcher at the University of Eastern Finland, an Adjunct Researcher at Ho Chi Minh City Open University in Vietnam, and a Senior Associate Professor (Sabbatical) at UPES, Dehradun, India. She is having a rich academic experience, specializing in artificial intelligence, computer vision, image processing, and deep learning. She holds a B.Tech, M.Tech, and Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering and has received several prestigious accolades, including the MSCA Seal of Excellence from the European Commission. Recognized as a top 2% researcher by Stanford University in 2023 and 2024. She has earned multiple research excellence awards from UPES and Chitkara University and has published numerous research articles, edited notable books, and holds several patents. Additionally, she contributes as a guest and associate editor for leading journals, including IEEE and Elsevier.