Ioannis Deligiannis

Ioannis Deliyannis, BSc, PhD Professor of Analog and Digital Technologies of Interactive Multimedia Department of Audio & Visual Arts, Ionian University, Corfu Founder, Institute for Games Research (IGR) · Founding member, InArts Research Laboratory

Also indexed as Deligiannis, Deliyiannis.

Profile

Ioannis Deliyannis works on a problem that has only grown harder since he started: how to design a system that lets a person enter a body of information rather than receive it, when the information is too large, too multi-dimensional and too irregular to be laid out in any fixed sequence.

His doctoral work at the University of Wales, Swansea, took on that problem in one of its least forgiving forms — interactive multimedia environments for scientific and industrial datasets, where the user needed to move freely between simulation, experimental footage and numerical results across dozens of interacting variables, on media ranging from CD-ROM to broadcast tape to the early web. The solution was structural: graph-based, multi-level multimedia systems with adaptive menus and visual metadata constructs, so that the system reorganised itself around whatever question the user was currently asking. The datasets happened to be rheological. The design problem was general, and it is the one he has been working on ever since.

Since joining Ionian University in 2004 he has carried that approach into museums, classrooms, archaeological sites, television, tourism, special education, prisons, and now into metaverse environments and generative AI. The content changes; the underlying difficulty does not. In each case there are many more variables than a linear medium can hold — visitor position, prior knowledge, available devices, narrative state, sensory channel, language, accessibility need — and the work consists of building systems that hold them all at once and still feel simple to the person using them. His group has produced holographic projections, augmented-reality guides, experimental internet TV stations, multi-sensory games for children with learning difficulties, transmedia narratives that adapt as they are consumed, installations driven by recycled sensors, and a digital scent prototype for virtual environments.

He is Professor of Analog and Digital Technologies of Interactive Multimedia, founder of the Institute for Games Research, and a founding member of the InArts Research Laboratory. The interdisciplinarity is practical rather than declarative: computer science and the audiovisual arts, applied to cultural heritage, pedagogy, accessibility, tourism and the reality–virtuality continuum, and usually ending in an artefact someone can pick up and use.

Education

PhD, Computer Science — University of Wales, Swansea (1997–2002), grade Excellent. Thesis: Interactive Multimedia Systems for Science and Rheology. Developed multi-level, graph-based multimedia architectures for the interactive interrogation of complex experimental and simulated datasets, delivered concurrently across CD-ROM, web and broadcast media. Published as a monograph (VDM Verlag, 2011) and adopted by the Institute of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics and the Swansea CFD group.

BSc, Computer Science — University of Wales, Swansea (1994–1997).

Both recognised by DIKATSA as equivalent to Greek titles.

Academic appointments

Honours and awards

• Scott Blair Award, British Society of Rheology (1998)
• Bursary, Institute of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics (2002)
• Best Paper Award (2017) — pilot evaluation of an augmented-reality educational application at the Corfu Municipal Gallery
• University of Wales research scholarships, 1997–2000 and 2000–2002

Current research directions

Recent work concentrates on AI as a collaborative co-agent rather than a tool: prompt-driven and prompt-injection methods for steering generative systems toward precise aesthetic and narrative outcomes; AI literacy and co-agency in education, including virtual agents in kindergarten treated as a new anthropological field; curricula redesigned around play, flow and human–AI collaboration; and AI-driven personalisation in tourism using wearables and big data. In parallel, the group is developing evaluation frameworks for the educational metaverse, XR applications for public space and museums, sentiment and demand analytics for destination management, and sustainability indicators that integrate Earth observation with statistical data.

Research leadership

Principal Investigator on seven funded research projects at Ionian University, totalling approximately €785,000:

• BYZART — Byzantine Art and Architecture thematic channel for Europeana (European Commission, 2017–2019), producing the largest Byzantine art collection on the European platform and extending it into VR and holographic reuse
• BRENDA — Digital Gastronomy Routes (Ministry of Development, 2018–2023), a gamified AR system linking local products and recipes to cultural heritage
• Digital Tour Guide using Augmented Reality and Holograms (Region of the Ionian Islands, 2019–2022) — over 80 points of interest across the UNESCO World Heritage Old Town of Corfu, free to the public for a decade
• Byzantine Art and Archaeology in Europeana (General Secretariat for Research and Technology, 2019–2022)
• Educational Escape Activities with a STEAM Interdisciplinary Approach (2021)
• Research, Educational and Artistic Multimedia Systems (Region of the Ionian Islands, 2021–2023)
• Intelligent Destination Management / INDIANA (Region of the Ionian Islands, 2023–2025), an AI-driven localised metasearch engine built on big data

Participant in a further 27 research projects at Ionian University and 10 at Swansea (industrial partners including Unilever, Alcoa, Pillsbury and BBSRC). Initiator of seven memoranda of understanding, among them with the US educational-games company Triseum LLC, the Municipality of Corfu, the Corfu Municipal Gallery, the Ephorate of Antiquities of Corfu, and the Technical Chamber of Greece (Corfu branch). Currently a partner in MUSENSE, an Erasmus+ project extending online performance and music education.

Building things that outlast projects

• Institute for Games Research (IGR) — founded following his April 2024 proposal, assembled with specialists from Ionian University and from institutions in Greece and abroad. IGR hosts the MA in Game Design and Development, the Metaverse Lab and the HAL Gamification Lab, and runs conferences, workshops and continuing-education programmes.
• HAL (Hub of Art Laboratories) — designed and installed the laboratory in the Ionian University central library and activated its HUB:Gamification node.
• InArts Research Laboratory — founding member; created its Gaming & Gamification node.
• AVARTS Live Game Hub — active support in its creation and operation.
• iMediaTV (2011–2013) — an experimental interactive television station run from a palace basement studio, which is a sentence few CVs get to include.
• Ionian Film Office Metaverse — a regional public service extended into gamified virtual space.

Publications and research recognition

2,276 citations, h-index 20, i10-index 39 (Google Scholar), with roughly 1,800 of those citations accruing since 2021. Output includes 3 monographs (a fourth, Universal Interactivity Theory, in preparation), 5 edited volumes, 23 book chapters, 30+ journal articles, 90+ peer-reviewed conference papers, 19 multimedia productions, and technical work behind 6 art installations.

Most-cited work spans the full range of his interests:

• Could virtual reality applications pose real risks to children and adolescents? A systematic review of ethical issues and concerns — Virtual Reality (2021), 335 citations
• Potential Barriers to the Implementation of Digital Game-Based Learning in the Classroom — Technology, Knowledge and Learning (2021), 306 citations
• Why should I play this game? The role of motivation in smart pedagogy — Springer (2019), 250 citations
• Game Design and Intelligent Interaction (ed.) — IntechOpen (2020), 159 citations
• Let players evaluate serious games: design and validation of the Serious Games Evaluation Scale — ICGA Journal (2019), 89 citations
• From Interactive to Experimental Multimedia — IntechOpen (2012), 79 citations
• Digital scent technology: toward the internet of senses and the metaverse — IEEE IT Professional (2022), 70 citations
• Beyond assistance: embracing AI as a collaborative co-agent in education — Education Sciences (2025), 64 citations in its first year

Edited volumes: Interactive Multimedia (2012), Experimental Multimedia Systems for Interactivity and Strategic Innovation (IGI Global, 2015), The Future of Television (2019), Game Design and Intelligent Interaction (2020), Gamification: Analysis, Design, Development and Ludification (2023) — all open access except the IGI volume.

The breadth is deliberate. A representative trio from a single recent year: digital scent technology for the metaverse, a systematic review of ethical risk in children's VR, and gamified composting as environmental education for prison inmates.

Teaching and supervision

119 semesters of teaching across the Departments of Audio & Visual Arts, Informatics and History at Ionian University, plus postgraduate programmes in Historical Research & New Technologies, Archives & Museology, and tour-guide training. Current courses include Interactive Sound and Image Systems, Multimedia and Gamification, Interface Design, and Audiovisual Production Management.

Doctoral supervision: two completed theses (both graded Excellent) and several in progress, on subjects including AI-assisted production of high-detail artwork, transmedia cultural production, gamification in environmental lifelong learning, adaptive transmedia narrative, AI-enabled interpretation of cultural data, and game technologies in musculoskeletal rehabilitation. Member of five three-member advisory committees and ten further doctoral committees. Supervisor of 34 undergraduate and postgraduate theses; examiner on 96 more.

Service, evaluation and professional memberships

Academic member of the Gaming and Creative Technologies & Applications cluster, Corallia / Athena Research Center (2023–). Evaluator for the General Secretariat for Research and Technology and for EYDE-ETAK, Ministry of Development. Scientific committee member, European Conference on Games Based Learning (2012–); previously Digital Interactive Media track chair at MCIS. Member of the British Society of Rheology, the Institute of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics, IADIS and the American Psychological Association. Certified adult trainer, EOPPEP national register (2014–), and member of the teaching register of the National Centre for Public Administration.

University service has included the Ionian University safety committee, the strategic planning committee, the Regional Equality Committee of the Ionian Islands, Erasmus coordination for the Department, and — chairing procurement tender committees for everything from student housing to photocopier paper — the less glamorous machinery that keeps a university running.

Beyond the laboratory

Licensed drone (UAS) operator. Qualified sailing and powerboat skipper with ISAF offshore survival training; for over 15 years he skippers an amateur crew of Ionian University staff and students aboard Burgundy (GRE-1364) and Sabetta (GRE-2195), competing nationally and in Italy. Plays accordion, piano and flute. English (IELTS, excellent); German (Grundstufe).

Contact: yiannis@ionio.gr · Department of Audio & Visual Arts, Ionian University, Corfu