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Transforming Education Conference for Humanity (TECH): 15-17 November, 2018

TECH 2018, UNESCO MGIEP's international conference, organised with the State Government of Andhra Pradesh, aims to showcase the role of games and digital learning in enabling a shift from “transmissive pedagogies” to “transformative pedagogies” to create peaceful and sustainable societies. Call for Proposals is now open - submit your application now.

Back to the official TECH 2018 webpage

Scientific Advisory Board

The Scientific Advisory Board comprises of a group of specialists in the fields of education and technology from across the globe.

Anantha K. Duraiappah

Director, UNESCO MGIEP

Anantha Duraiappah took the position as inaugural Director of the UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP) based in New Delhi, India in 2014. A science-policy pacesetter, with over 33 years’ experience, he now plays a key role in positioning UNESCO MGIEP as a leading research institute on education for peace, sustainable development and global citizenship.

Nandini Chatterjee Singh

Senior National Program Officer

Nandini Chatterjee Singh is a cognitive neuroscientist and leads Rethinking Learning at UNESCO MGIEP (Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development) in New Delhi, India. She seeks to reimagine education for whole brain learning and ensure holistic development. She designs courses that combine social and emotional learning with cognition using interactive pedagogies such as digital games, and digital dialogue. Nandini also conducts cross-cultural research to assess the efficacy of these courses in cultivating emotional resilience.

Zigor Hernandorena

Senior Project Manager – Fun Learning Department, Ubisoft

Armed with a PhD in law, Zigor went straight into video games, helping to create the Third Party Development department at Ubisoft. Back at Ubisoft since 2016, he is Senior Project Manager of the newly created Fun Learning department and is in charge of developing games that will provide the player with actionable knowledge and/or expertise.

Paul Darvasi

Educator, Writer, Game Designer

Dr. Paul Darvasi is an educator and researcher who keynotes, lectures, writes and consults on the intersection of digital games, simulations, narrative, social justice, culture and learning. Paul is a founding member of the Play Lab at the University of Toronto, and he has worked with the Canadian Royal Military College, the US Department of Education, UNESCO, foundry10, Consumers International, iThrive, and Connected Camps and has participated in several international research projects. His work has been featured on PBS, NPR, CBC, the Huffington Post, Polygon, Killscreen, Gamasutra, Sterne, Endgadget, Edsurge, Edutopia, and MindShift.

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Yoko Mochizuki

Head of Rethinking Policy Programme, UNESCO MGIEP

Yoko Mochizuki heads the Reviews & Assessments for SDG 4.7 and the Policy team at UNESCO MGIEP. Prior to joining UNESCO MGIEP, she was a Programme Specialist at the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) section of UNESCO Paris and ESD Specialist at the United Nations University. She has a PhD in Comparative Education, with a disciplinary specialization in Sociology, from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University, New York, USA.

Harold Glasser

Professor, Environmental and Sustainability Studies & Developer of 'Catch'

Harold Glasser is Professor of Environmental and Sustainability Studies and was the founding Executive Director of Western Michigan University’s (WMU) nationally recognised Office for Sustainability (2010-2018). Glasser has published widely in the areas of social learning, learning for sustainability core competencies, and learning for transformative change. He co-leads an international Sustainability Key Competencies consortia and is the developer of a new, face-to-face renewable natural resource decision-making simulation game called Catch, which explores the role of open choice architectures on gameplay.

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Matthew Farber

Assistant Professor

Matthew Farber, Ed.D., is an Assistant Professor of Technology, Innovation, and Pedagogy at the University of Northern Colorado. He is the author of several books about game-based learning, as well as blogs for Edutopia on digital learning. Dr. Farber has been invited to the White House and has been interviewed about games and learning by NPR, Fox News Radio, EdSurge, The Denver Post, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. He studies the intersection of digital games and pedagogies with social-emotional learning and teacher education.

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Robin Sharma

Gaming Curriculum Developer

Robin did his Bachelors degree in Mathematics and Masters in Mathematics Education. He is passionate about teaching and developing tools and resources for teaching mathematics. Previously, he has worked as a teacher and as a curriculum designer. At MGIEP, Robin works as implementer of the Gaming Programme, which focuses on supporting research and developing curricular products for integration of digital games-based learning for EPSG and socio-emotional learning within and outside the classroom.

Manoj K. Singh | PhD

Senior Vice President-Global Development & Partnerships, RUBIKA Group

Dr. Manoj K. Singh is currently the Senior Vice President-Global Development & Partnerships for RUBIKA Group, a French grande école of design management located in Valenciennes (Northern France), Montreal (Canada) and Pune (India).

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Shawn Young

Co-founder & CEO, Classcraft

Shawn Young is a co-founder and CEO of Classcraft, a platform that gamifies education, from classroom management to curriculum.

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Cathleen Norris

Professor & Chairperson, Department of Learning Technologies, University of North Texas

Cathleen Norris is a Regents Professor & Chairperson, in the Department of Learning Technologies at the University of North Texas, Denton, TX.

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Elliot Soloway

Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Michigan

Elliot Soloway is an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. In 2001, the UMich undergraduates selected him to receive the “Golden Apple Award” as the Outstanding Teacher of the Year at the University of Michigan. In 2004 and in 2011, students in the College of Engineering HKN Honor Society selected Dr. Soloway to receive the “Distinguished Teacher of the Year Award.” Soloway’s educational vision is that mobile, low-cost, networked devices are the only way to truly achieve universal 1:1 in schools – all across the globe.

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Mitja Jermol

UNESCO Chair, Slovenia

Mitja Jermol has been doing research and development on AI, cybernetics, cognitive systems and e-learning. He is mainly focused on developing concepts and AI based methods and tools for business intelligence, e-learning, intelligent environments, smart devices and improved business processes for emerging organisational forms. Besides that, he is particularly interested in contemporary models and theories of knowledge, complex systems and knowledge technologies. Mitja Jermol is the holder of UNESCO Chair on Open Technologies for Open Educational Resources and Open Education and Head of the Centre for knowledge Transfer at Jozef Stefan Institute in Slovenia.

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Shailesh Kumar

Chief Data Scientist, Jio

Shailesh has over seventeen years of experience in applying and innovating machine learning, statistical pattern recognition, and data mining algorithms to hard prediction problems in a wide variety of domains. These include remote sensing, text mining, bio-informatics, computer vision and image understanding, transaction data mining, retail analytics, neurological data, risk analytics in financial domain,and web analytics.

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Dan Shefet

Lawyer at the Paris Court of Appeal (France)

Dan Shefet is a frequent speaker at international conferences and academic venues on IT Law, Data Privacy Content Regulation and Human Rights on the Internet.

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