Dr. Minhua Ma is a Reader in Visualisation & Games Technology and Head of Academic Programmes at Digital Design Studio, Glasgow School of Art. Before joining Glasgow School of Art, she was a Reader in Visualisation & Virtual Reality and Programme Leader for MSc Computer Games Production at the School of Computing & Mathematics, University of Derby. She completed her Doctorate in Computer Science from the University of Ulster in 2005, MSc in Computing Science from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 2001, and MA and BA in linguistics in 1998 and 1995 respectively. Her research areas include serious games for education, medicine, and healthcare, 3D visualisation, Virtual Reality, and Natural Language Processing. Her principal lines of work have been published in more than 50 peer-reviewed books, journals as well as conference proceedings. She has received grants from EU, NHS, local government research development fund (East Midlands Development Agency), Charities (the Northern Ireland Chest, Heart and Stroke Association) and a number of other grants and awards for her research on Virtual Reality and serious games for stroke rehabilitation, cystic fibrosis, and autism, etc.

She has been supervising 5 PhD students (three completed) in video games and e-learning. With her team she has been developing serious games for healthcare and natural language 3D visualisation systems with broad impact in intelligent multimedia, serious games, forensic visualisation and other areas.

Dr. Ma is the Editor-in-Chief responsible for the Serious Games section of the Elsevier journal Entertainment Computing. She has published four books on serious games (Serious Games and Edutainment Applications and Serious Games Development and Applications) with Springer, and special issues for a number of journals. She also authored several book chapters and organised a number of conferences and workshops in serious games and 3D visualisation. Dr. Ma is serving on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Intelligent Decision Technologies, the International Journal on Intelligent Games and Simulation, and ACM Computing Reviews, and numerous conference Program Committees.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

• Digital games technology, serious games for education, medicine and healthcare
• 3D Visualisation, natural language visualisation, medical visualisation
• Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Virtual Environments
• HCI, embodied virtual humans, haptic interface, natural interface
• Physically-based simulation, automatic 3D animation generation

I would be very happy to discuss potential PhD projects with students who see a synergy with my research interests, particularly in the field of serious games for healthcare or education, Virutal Reality, and 3D visualisation.

PUBLICATIONS

I. Books

• Ma, Minhua, Fradinho Oliveira, M., and Baalsrud Hauge, J., Duin, H. and Thoben, K.D. (Eds.) (2012) Serious Games Development and Applications: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Serious Games Development and Applications (SGDA 2012), Lecture Notes in Computer Science series, LNCS 7528, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, ISBN 978-3-642-33687-4, 269 p. http://www.springerlink.com/content/978-3-642-33686-7/

• Ma, Minhua, Oikonomou, A., and Jain, L. (Eds.) (2011) Serious Games and Edutainment Applications. Springer: UK. ISBN 978-1-4471-2160-2, 504 p. http://www. springer.com/computer/book/978-1-4471-2160-2

• Ma, Minhua, Fradinho Oliveira, M., and Pereira, J. (Eds.) (2011) Serious Games Development and Applications: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Serious Games Development and Applications (SGDA 2011), Lecture Notes in Computer Science series, LNCS 6944, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. ISBN 978-3-642-23833-8, 147 p. http://www.springer.com/computer/image+processing/book/978 -3-64223 833-8

• Ma, Minhua, Antonopoulos, N., and Oliveira, M. (Eds.) (2011) Special issue on Serious Games Development and Applications. Entertainment Computing, 2(2), Elsevier: New York, USA, 149 p. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/ 18759521/2/2

• Ma, Minhua, Jain, L., Whitehead, A., Anderson, P. (Eds.) (2013) Virtual and Augmented Reality in Healthcare 1. Springer‐Verlag: Heidelberg, Germany.

II. Chapters in Books

• Ma, Minhua, K. Bale, and P. Rea (2012) Constructionist Learning in Anatomy Education: What Anatomy Students Can Learn through Serious Games Development. In M. Ma et al. (Eds.): Serious Games Development and Applications, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, LNCS 7528, 43-58, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, ISBN 978-3-642-33687-4.

• Ma, Minhua, Oikonomou, A., and Jain, L. (2011) Chapter 1. Innovations in Serious Games for future learning. In Serious Games and Edutainment Applications, Ma, M. et al. (eds.), 3-7, Springer: UK, ISBN 978-1-4471-2160-2.

• Ma, Minhua and Zheng, H. (2011) Chapter 9. Virtual Reality and Serious Games in Healthcare. In Advanced Computational Intelligence Paradigms in Healthcare 6: Virtual Reality in Psychotherapy, Rehabilitation, and Assessment, Brahnam, S. and Lakhmi, J. (eds.), 169-192, Springer-Verlag, Germany. ISBN 978-3-642-17823-8, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-17824-5.

• Hanser, E., Mc Kevitt, P., Lunney, T., Condell, J., and Minhua Ma (2010) SceneMaker: Multimodal Visualisation of Natural Language Film Scripts. In Rossitza Setchi, Ivan Jordanov, Robert J. Howlett, and Lakhmi C. Jain (Eds.): Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems (KES 2010), Part IV, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, LNAI 6279, 430-439, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, ISBN 978-3-642-15383-9.

• Ma, Minhua, M. McNeill, D. Charles, S. McDonough, J. Crosbie, L. Oliver, and C. McGoldrick (2007) Adaptive Virtual Reality Games for Rehabilitation of Motor Disorders. Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. C. Stephanidis (Ed.): Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction, Part II, HCII 2007, LNCS 4555, 681–690, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, ISBN 978-3-540-73280-8.

• Ma, Minhua and P. McKevitt (2004) Visual semantics and ontology of eventive verbs. In Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) series--Natural Language Processing, LNCS 3248. Keh-Yih Su, et al. (Eds.), 187-196, Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag, ISBN 9783540302117.

• Ma, Minhua (Translated book chapter) (1999) The Hsiungnu Language. In the Chinese version of The Consonant System of Old Chinese (E.G. Pwlleyblank), W. Pan et al. (Eds.), 163-201, Beijing, China: Chinese Press, ISBN 7-101-02225-1.

• Ma, Minhua (1998) Computational linguistics. In New Methods in Dialectology, W. Pan (Ed.), Shanghai, China: Shanghai Education Press.

• Ma, Minhua (Translated book chapter) (1997) Shift Chains in the System. In Chinese version of Principles of Linguistic Change (W. Labov 1994), W. Pan (Ed.), Shanghai, China: Shanghai Translation Publishing House.

III. Journal Articles

• Brittain, M. and Minhua Ma (2011) Simulation of autonomous crowd behavior on Xbox 360, International Journal of Intelligent Decision Technologies, 5(3): 253-271, IOS Press: Netherlands. ISSN 1872-4981, DOI: 10.3233/IDT-2011-0110. http://iospress.metapress.com/content/fw68135605q30123/?p=5fa6a3b73c074e7c865c9853309b9ff8&pi=3

• Ma, Minhua and Oikonomou, A. (2010) Network Architectures and Data Management for Massively Multiplayer Online Games. In the International Journal of Grid and High Performance Computing, 2(4): 40-50, IGI Global: Hershey, USA, ISSN 1938-0259.

• Dube, T. and Minhua Ma (2010) A Flexible E-Assessment System Inspired by Design Methodology Management to Accommodate Diverse Learning Styles. International Journal for Digital Society, 1(1): 73-82, Infonomics Society, ISSN 2040 2570.

• Ma, Minhua, H. Zheng, and H. Lallie (2010) Virtual Reality and 3D Animation in Forensic Visualisation. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 55(5): 1227-1231, September 2010, Wiley: Malden, USA, ISSN 1556-4029.

• Minhua Ma and Bassi, B. (2010) Narrative Time in Video Games. International Journal on Intelligent Games and Simulation, 6(1), ISSN 1477-2043. http://scitua.scit.wlv.ac.uk/ OJS_IJIGS/index.php/IJIGS/article/view/17

• Oikonomou, A. and Minhua Ma (2009) Assessing Presentations in Game Development Education. In the International Journal of Learning, 17(1): 329-338, CG Publishing: University of Illinois, Champaign, USA, ISSN 1447-9494.

• Ma, Minhua, J. Zhang, and N. Antonopoulos (2009) Middleware for Next-generation Network Games. International Journal of Intelligent Information Technology Application, 2(4): 158-163, August 2009, Engineering Technology Press, Hong Kong. ISSN 1999-2459.

• Ma, Minhua and P. McKevitt (2006) Virtual Human Animation in Natural Language Visualisation. In Artificial Intelligence Review (25): 37-53, Creaney, N. (Ed.), Springer: Dordrecht, The Netherlands, ISSN 0269-2821.

• Ma, Minhua and P. McKevitt (2004) Interval relations in visual semantics of verbs. In Artificial Intelligence Review (21): 293-316, Springer: Dordrecht, The Netherlands, ISSN 0269-2821.

• Ma, Minhua (1999) The relationship among fundamental frequency, F1, F2, and energy of vowels. In Journal of Shanghai Normal University (28): 205-209, ISSN: 1004-8634.

• Minhua Ma (2011) Editorial: Introduction to serious games development and applications. Entertainment Computing 2 (2011) 59-60, Elsevier. DOI: 10.1016/j. entcom.2011.03.001.

IV. Conference Contributions

IV(a). Full Papers in Peer-reviewed Conference Proceedings

• Beveridge, E., Ma, Minhua, Rea, P., Bale, K., and Anderson, P. (2013) 3D Visualisation for Education, Diagnosis and Treatment of Iliotibial Band Syndrome. In the Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Medical Applications (ICCMA 2013), Sousse, Tunisia, 20-22 January 2013

• Daniel Crawford, Paul Rea, Kim Bale, Minhua Ma, Paul Anderson (2012) Utilising two dimensional patient data to form 3D virtual and physical models for medical education and pre-operative planning. The British Association of Clinical Anatomists Winter Scientific Meeting 2012, Anglia Ruskin University, Rivermead Campus, Chelmsford, UK. 20 December 2012.

• Erin Beveridge, Minhua Ma, Kim Bale, Paul Anderson, Paul Rea (2012) 3D Reconstruction of the Iliotibial Band and Interactive Application for Education, Diagnosis and Treatment of Iliotibial Band Syndrome. The British Association of Clinical Anatomists Winter Scientific Meeting 2012, Anglia Ruskin University, Rivermead Campus, Chelmsford, UK. 20 December 2012.

• Ma, Minhua (2012) 3D Technologies for Human Anatomy Education: Incorporating Computer Visualisation into the Anatomy Curriculum. Proceedings of the 125th Anniversary Meeting of the Anatomical Society⎯eAnatomy: Interactive electronic teaching in anatomical sciences, The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. 10-12 July 2012.

• Dube, T., Minhua Ma and Zhao, Z. (2011) Tasks, Processes, and Tools: A Design Methodology Management Approach to Design and Development of E-Assessment. Proceedings of the 9th IEEE Conference on Emerging eLearning Technologies and Applications (ICETA 2011), Stara Lesna, The High Tatras, Slovakia, 27-28 October 2011.

• Thorpe, A., Minhua Ma, and Oikonomou, A. (2011) Alternative Input Methods for Video Games. Proceedings of the 16th IEEE Conference on Computer Games: AI, Animation, Mobile, Interactive Multimedia, Educational and Serious Games (CGames 2011), Mehdi, Q. et al. (Eds.), Galt House Hotel, Louisville, Kentucky, USA. 27-30 July 2011.

• Dube, T. and Minhua Ma (2011) Design of a Flexible e-Assessment System to Accommodate Diverse Learning Styles: a Mathematics Case Study. In the Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (EDULEARN11), Chova, L.G. et al. (Eds.), 52-60, Barcelona, Spain, 4-6 July 2011. International Association of Technology, Education and Development (IATED) (ISBN: 978-84-615-0441-1)

• Ma, Minhua and Bassi, B. (2010) Tenses, Aspects, and Pace in Game Narratives. Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computer Games: AI, Animation, Mobile, Interactive Multimedia, Educational and Serious Games (CGames 2010), Mehdi, Q. et al. (Eds.), 55-62, Galt House Hotel, Louisville, Kentucky, USA. 28-31 July 2010. (ISBN: 978-0-9549016-8-4)

• Dube, T. and Minhua Ma (2010) Marking short free text responses in e-assessment. In the e-Teaching and Learning Workshop Proceedings, in collaboration with the Higher Education Academy subject network for Information and Computer Sciences (HEA-ICS), Graham, D. (Ed.), 16-20, University of Greenwich, London, 1 June 2010. (ISBN: 978-0-9559676-9-6)

• McGrath, H. and Minhua Ma (2010) The Influence of Art Concepts on Visual Communication in Games. In the Proceedings of the 3rd Annual International Conference on Computer Games, Multimedia and Allied Technology (CGAT 2010), Prakash, E. (Ed.), 238-245, Singapore Management University, Singapore, 6-7 April 2010. APTF: Singapore.

• Day, D., Z. Zhao, and Minhua Ma (2010) Detecting Return-to-libc Buffer Overflow Attacks Using Network Intrusion Detection Systems. In the Proceedings of the IEEE Fourth International Conference on Digital Society (ICDS 2010), 178-187, St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles, 10-16 February 2010.

• Ma, Minhua, A. Oikonomou, and H. Zheng (2009) Second Life as a Learning and Teaching Environment for Digital Games Education. In the Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Workshop on Presence (PRESENCE 2009), Lombard, M. et al. (Eds.), Los Angeles, California, USA, 11-13 November 2009.

• Dube, T. and Minhua Ma (2009) Flexible E-Assessment for Accommodating Diverse Learning Styles. In the Proceedings of London International Conference on Education (LICE-2009), Shoniregun, C. and Akmayeva, G. (Eds.), 360-363, London, UK, 9-12 November 2009. (ISBN: 978-0-9564263-0-7)

• Dube, T., Zhao, Z., and Minhua Ma (2009) E-assessment and Design Methodology Management. In the Proceedings of E-Assessment Live Conference 2009, Loughborough University, UK, 8 July 2009.

• Ma, Minhua and K. Bechkoum (2008) Serious Games for Movement Therapy after Stroke. In IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (IEEE SMC 2008), D. S. Yeung, A. N. Poo, and M. H. Ang Jr (Eds.), 1872-1877, Singapore, 12-15 October. (ISBN: 978-1-4244-2384-2)

• Ma, Minhua (2008) 3D Visualisation of Crime Scenes: Computer Animation in Forensics. In the 3rd Annual Teaching & Assessment Conference: Flexibity, current and future practice, University of Derby, Buxton, 10 July 2008.

• Ma, Minhua, M. McNeill, D. Charles, S. McDonough, and J. Crosbie (2006) Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation. In the Proceedings of the IEEE 9th International Conference on Computer Games: AI, Animation, Mobile, Educational & Serious Games (CGames 06), Q. Mehdi, F. Mtenzi, B. Duggan, and H McAtamney (Eds.), 143-150, Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin, Ireland, 22-24 November. (ISBN: 0-9549016-2-2)

• Ma, Minhua, M. McNeill, D. Charles, S. McDonough, and J. Crosbie (2006) Physics-based Virtual Reality for Post-stroke Rehabilitation. In the Proceedings of the Eurographics Ireland 2006 Workshop, C. Noonan (Ed), Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dun Laoghaire, Ireland, 31 October 2006.

• Ma, Minhua, M. McNeill, S. McDonough, J. Crosbie, and L. Oliver (2006) Physics Fidelity of Virtual Reality in Motor Rehabilitation. In Virtual: a Real Success: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Virtual Reality (VRIC—Laval Virtual 2006), S. Richir and E. Klinger (Eds.), 35-41, Laval, France, 26-30 April 2006.

• Ma, Minhua and P. McKevitt (2005) Presenting Temporal Relations of Virtual Human Actions by Multiple Animation Channels. In the Proceedings of the 16th Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence & Cognitive Science (AICS-05), N. Creaney (Ed.), 169-178, Flowerfield Arts Centre, Portstewart, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, 7-9 September.

• Ma, Minhua and P. McKevitt (2005) Lexical Semantics and Auditory Display in Virtual Storytelling. In the Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Auditory Display 2005 (ICAD 05), E. Brazil (Ed.), 358-363, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland, 6-9 July.

• Ma, Minhua and P. McKevitt (2005) Animating Virtual Humans in Intelligent Multimedia Storytelling. In the Proceedings of the 6th Annual PGNET Conference: The convergence of telecommunications, networking and broadcasting (PGNET 2005), M. Merabti and R. Pereira (Eds.), 159-164, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, England, June.

• Ma, Minhua and P. McKevitt (2004) Using lexical knowledge of verbs in language-to-vision applications. In the Proceedings of the 15th Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science Conference (AICS-04), L. McGinty and B. Crean (Eds.), 255-264, Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, Castlebar, Ireland, September.

• Ma, Minhua and P. McKevitt (2004) Visual semantics and ontology of eventive verbs. In the Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing (IJCNLP-04), Keh-Yih Su and Jun-Ichi Tsujii (Eds.), 278-285, Resort Golden Palm, Sanya, China, 22-24 March 2004, received the best paper award.

• Ma, Minhua and Paul Mc Kevitt (2003) Temporal relations in visual semantics of verbs, In the Proceedings of the Fourteenth Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science (AICS-03), Padraig Cunningham, Tim Fernando, Carl Vogel (Eds.), 128-133, Department of Computer Science, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, 17-19 September 2003.

• Ma, Minhua and P. McKevitt (2003) Building character animation for intelligent storytelling with the H-Anim standard. In Eurographics Ireland Chapter Workshop Proceedings 2003, M. McNeill (Ed.), 9-15, Coleraine, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, April.

• Ma, Minhua and P. McKevitt (2003) Semantic representation of events in 3D animation. In the Proceedings of The Fifth International Workshop on Computational Semantics (IWCS-5), H. Bunt, I. van der Sluis and R. Morante (Eds.), 253-281, Tilburg, The Netherlands, January 2003.

IV(b). Keynotes and Invited Presentations

• Serious Games and Constructionist Learning. Invited seminar at University of Ulster, Magee campus, UK. 8 Oct 2012. 

• 3D Technologies for Human Anatomy Education – incorporating Computer Visualisation into the Anatomy Curriculum. Invited talk at the 125th Anniversary Meeting of the Anatomical Society: eAnatomy—Interactive electronic teaching in Anatomical Sciences Education, The Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, UK. 10-12 July 2012. http://www.anatsocmeeting.co.uk/ibis/Summer-2012/home

• Virtual Reality and 3D Animation in Forensic Visualisation. Invited keynote speech at the Jury Symposium Special theme: Visual Evidence, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK. 11 June 2010. http://www.open.ac.uk/icccr/events/past/

• CONFUCIUS: An intelligent multimedia storytelling system. Invited presentation at the MAGEE Workshop on Intelligent Multimedia & Multimodal Systems, Aberfoyle House, University of Ulster, Magee Campus, UK. 29 June 2006. http://www.paul mckevitt.com/immworkshop/immwkshop06.txt

• CONFUCIUS sez: E-Lore Intelligent MultiMedia Digital Storytelling. Invited talk in the 16th Charles Macklin Art Festival, Culdaff, Inishowen, Co. Donegal, Ireland, October 2005

• CONFUCIUS: an Intelligent Multimedia Storytelling Interpretation and Presentation System. Presentation in Computing and Engineering Research Conference, University of Ulster, Jordanstown Campus, UK. January 2004

• Dynamic 3D Visualisation of Natural Language. Presentation in Workshop on Intelligent MultiMedia, University of Ulster, Magee Campus, UK. March 2003

• CONFUCIUS sez: E-Lore Intelligent MultiMedia Digital Storytelling. Invited talk in the Irish National Science Week at Carndonagh Community School, Inishowen, Co. Donegal, Ireland, November 2005

V. Other Outputs

• Ma, Minhua (2006) Automatic Conversion of Natural Language to 3D Animation. Ph.D. thesis, School of Computing & Intelligent Systems, University of Ulster, Derry, N. Ireland.

• Ma, Minhua (2001) Searching TV programs using teletext subtitles. M.Sc. thesis, School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K.

• Ma, Minhua (1998) The Phonetics Features and Prosodic Structure of the Stress Patterns in Mandarin. M.A. thesis, Linguistics Institute, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China.