Dr Gavin Sim

Gavin has published widely in the areas of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Child Computer Interaction (CCI) with an array of peer reviewed articles to his name. He is associate editor for several international journals, has worked on UK and EU funded projects and has been an invited speaker nationally and internationally, including the ACM SIGCHI Conference in 2016. Through this, and related projects, Gavin has built up a network of academic and stakeholder collaborators. He is supervisor for a number of PhD students in HCI and CCI and if you might be interested in carrying out a Ph.D. under his supervision, please contact Gavin.

Gavin graduated from De Montfort University and worked in industry for several years before undertaking a MSc in Multimedia Computing with us. He was then appointed as a research assistant here working with the virtual university of Pakistan within the context of e-learning provision. During this time, he undertook a part-time PhD looking at the usability of computer assisted assessment software. In 2005, Gavin started as a part-time lecturer in computing with us and has since progressed to a Reader in 2017. During this time, he has fulfilled many academic roles, including course leader, research degrees tutor, vice chair of the science ethics committee and on the Faculty S&T Research, Knowledge Exchange and Ethics Committee. He currently holds an honorary faculty member position at IIT Guwahati in India.

Gavin is highly active in the HCI research community, organising academic conferences including the BCS British HCI Conference in 2014 and the ACM Interaction Design and Children conference in 2016 in conjunction with the BBC. Over the years he has organised workshops at conferences and delivered courses internationally. For example, a course on CCCI at IIT Guwahti and the Interact Conference in Mumbai.

He has also acted as an associate chair for international conferences including, IFIP Interact, ACM Designing Interactive Systems and NordiCHI. Since 2015, he has been chair of the BCS Interaction group overseeing the British HCI Conference, running PhD training events for students around the world and supporting the affiliated Journal Interacting with Computers. He has collaborated internationally with academics on Erasmus plus projects around PhD training and active learning. Current projects include a KTP looking at the design of elite football training aids for academies and working with St Catherine’s hospice on the design of future digital care. He has provided consultancy for the BBC on the accessibility of their online games and is working with LingoKids to evaluate their app with preschool children.

Gavin is currently supervising PhDs in the design of privacy interventions for children, serious games for deaf children in Nigeria, whilst previous PhDs have been in the areas of physical games for children, designing value centred evaluation methods and educational games. He would be happy to supervise PhD students in these or related areas.