The Extended Reality Laboratory (XR-Lab) of the Department of Cultural Technology and Communication at the University of the Aegean is a center of excellence in XR Reality research. The lab designs and evaluates interactive systems, with work spanning 3D graphics, human–computer interaction, digital storytelling, and AI in immersive environments, applied to education, culture, tourism, and the creative industries. The lab is equipped with high-end equipment and software licenses to support its research and development activities. Through partnerships with universities, research centers, and businesses in Greece and abroad, XR-Lab connects teaching, research, and innovation to advance the digital transformation of education, culture, and the economy.
Dr. Vlasios Kasapakis holds a PhD in the field of Pervasive Games from the Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean, where he serves as a tenured Associate Professor with a specialization in Extended Reality. His research spans the full breadth of Extended Reality across the domains of culture, mediated communication, and games, and extends into mobile and pervasive computing and the design and development of mobile and web applications for culture, tourism, and gaming. His doctoral thesis examined the design, development, and evaluation of a research prototype for pervasive role-playing games, laying groundwork for studying how immersive and location-aware technologies reshape player experience. He is an expert in the design and development of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality applications, and over the course of his career he has continuously served as a researcher in numerous nationally and European-funded research and development projects, many of them intertwining novel technologies with cultural heritage. He has authored over 100 articles in international journals, book chapters, and conference proceedings, sits on the editorial board of Frontiers in Virtual Reality, and has supervised one completed doctoral dissertation, 23 master's theses, and 7 undergraduate theses. His diverse educational and technical background allows him to approach cultural representation with profound insight, balancing societal and heritage understandings with the demands, challenges, and practicalities of the immersive technologies he employs.
Dr. Elena Dzardanova holds a PhD from the Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering, and she is continuously employed as a researcher in funded academic research programs all intermixing novel technologies and culture. Her thesis examined psycho-social implications and proposes a new research methodology for better developing and understanding virtual reality and immersive technologies. She is an expert in the design, management and conduction of social experiments with human participants and in her career so far she has interviewed, either for audio-visual productions or her own experiments, over 600 individuals. Her diverse personal and educational background has allowed her to approach all types of media with profound insight, balancing cultural and societal understandings with the demands and challenges of the implicated technologies employed and practicalities of development.
Orestis Ntantamis is a researcher and PhD candidate at the Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean, where his doctoral work explores the use of virtual and augmented reality for the representation and promotion of cultural heritage. He holds a Master's degree in Cultural Technology and Communication, graduating with distinction (9.31/10) with a thesis on the comparative study of Virtual Reality and Augmented Virtuality in firefighting training, and a background in Oceanography and Marine Biosciences from the same university. He has worked as a VR application developer and researcher on two projects, including the "Digital Transformation of the North Aegean in Culture and Tourism" initiative, where he designed and developed immersive virtual reality applications for cultural and tourism content, and his MSc research project, where he designed, developed, and evaluated immersive VR and Augmented Virtuality training scenarios for emergency-response education. He is experienced in the design and development of virtual reality environments using Unity and C#, complemented by 3D content creation and design skills in Cinema4D, Photoshop, and Illustrator.
Androniki Agelada is a researcher and PhD candidate at the Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean, where her doctoral work explores the use of virtual characters for the promotion and representation of cultural heritage. She holds a Master's degree in Cultural Informatics and Communication and a background in Telecommunications Science and Technology from the University of the Peloponnese. Since 2021 she has worked on the e-Aegean CulTour digital transformation initiative, designing and developing immersive virtual and mixed reality applications for training and learning, including collaborative VR museums such as the National Gallery of Mytilene and the Teriade Museum, virtual representations of traditional Ouzo and Mastic production for museum visitors, a virtual visit to the castle of Mytilene, and an augmented reality application promoting a historic mansion. She is an expert in the design and development of virtual reality learning environments, co-creating immersive experiences for studying the impact of nonverbal communication on learning, and serves as a laboratory assistant teaching Virtual Reality, Multimedia Technologies, and 3D Graphics. Her work has been published in IEEE conference proceedings and in journals on virtual reality and education. Her varied professional and educational path—spanning telecommunications engineering, operations management, and immersive technology research—allows her to approach cultural representation with both technical depth and a strong sense of how people learn and engage, balancing heritage understanding with the practical demands of immersive application development.
Georgios Rizopoulos is a 3D modeling and animation specialist whose work bridges architecture, cultural heritage, and immersive media. Trained as a Diploma Architect-Engineer at the National Technical University of Athens and holding a degree in Decorative Arts from TEI Athens, he brings a rare combination of architectural rigor and artistic craft to digital cultural representation. Since 2021 he has worked as a researcher at the University of the Aegean, producing three-dimensional graphics and cultural architectural reconstructions for funded projects in virtual and mixed reality, including the e-Aegean CulTour digital transformation initiative and the development of open-source VR interaction technologies. His expertise spans hard-surface and organic modeling, character rigging and animation through both keyframe and motion-capture workflows, texturing, lighting, rendering, and compositing across tools such as Autodesk Maya, AutoCAD, DaVinci Resolve, and 3D-Coat. Over two decades he has applied these skills across architectural visualization, restoration studies for listed buildings, television and web advertising, augmented reality, and the reconstruction of historical events such as the Battle of Kefalovryso. He also co-teaches 3D Graphics in the Master's program in Cultural Informatics and Communication. His dual grounding in architecture and digital art allows him to approach each project with both technical precision and a strong sense of form, balancing the demands of accurate representation with the practical challenges of real-time immersive development.
Stefanos Fotiadis is a researcher holding a PhD in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) from the Department of Environment, University of the Aegean (UAegean), along with two Master's degrees, MSc in Sustainable Development from the International Hellenic University (ΙHU) and MSc in Management from Hasselt University, and a Bachelor's from the International School of Economic Relations and Development at the Democritus University of Thrace. Since 2019, he has served as Concept Creator, Proposal Planning & Development and Project Coordinator at the Laboratory for Environmental Policy and Strategic Environmental Management (UAegean), designing and implementing EU and national (co-)funded projects. He is also currently a Research and Programme Analyst and Head of the Proposals, Planning and Writing Unit at SEIKILO Ancient World Music as well as a member of the teaching staff at the IHU. His earlier career includes roles as a Business Consultant at Helenos Consulting, Innovation Expert at the RIS3 One Stop Liaison Office for the Region of Central Macedonia, EU Programmes Consultant at Lever SA, Scientific Associate at CERTH/CPERI, and humanitarian field positions with the Red Cross, IRC, and IOM in Northern Greece
The full list of projects XR-Lab members have participated in can be found here!
WALKING MEMORY (Project 101288157 — HORIZON-CL2-2025-01)
Starting date: 1 October 2026
WALKING MEMORY is a Horizon Europe project that uses an inclusive, participatory, and technology-enabled approach to preserving Europe's diverse cultural memory. It combines AR Memory Walks, digital storytelling toolkits, and FAIR data pipelines into a single framework tested across different cultural and geographical contexts. The project addresses challenges such as fragmented data standards, limited accessibility, and the uneven participation of diaspora and displaced communities in heritage infrastructures. Its overall objective is to deliver ECCCH-validated workflows and tools that lower adoption barriers, support replication, and embed community voices into Europe's digital heritage. By engaging municipalities, researchers, SMEs, cultural institutions, policymakers, and diaspora associations in co-creation and training activities, the project aims to strengthen social cohesion, intergenerational dialogue, and innovation capacity, contributing to a resilient, inclusive, and sustainable European heritage ecosystem.
The project is coordinated by the University of the Aegean (Project Scientific Coordinator - Dr. Vlasios Kasapakis) with an 11-partner consortium across Greece, Cyprus, Italy, France, and Ireland. It runs for 30 months (1 October 2026 – 31 March 2029).
REVEALING — Realisation of Virtual Reality Learning Environments
REVEALING is an Erasmus+ funded project (KA2 – Cooperation among organisations and institutions in Higher Education) that creates VR learning environments to be incorporated into Higher Education Institution (HEI) curricula. These environments resemble virtual classrooms where both students and teachers use avatars, displaying lesson teaching material in a more immersive and interactive way. The project also develops two learning scenarios designed as videogame-like quests set in VR environments, featuring gamified educational exercises that students must solve to complete the quest.
Built on the open-source VRChat platform and Meta Quest 2 headsets, the project delivers three main products: a subject-neutral VRLE Model tailored to HEI needs, a Manual for VR-powered lessons, and a VRLE Resource Directory to support adoption of these environments in teaching practice.
The consortium includes six partners, coordinated by Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz (Germany), with partners from Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, and Poland. It ran as a thirty-month project from 1 February 2022 to 31 July 2024.
VR4ALL — Inclusive creation of VR environments
VR4ALL is a European Erasmus+ project that investigates the use of immersive VR in the early phases of the design thinking process, with a focus on inclusive design. It is grounded in the "Design-for-all" methodology — an approach to designing products and environments so they are accessible to all people, regardless of age, disability, or other factors.
The project centres on empathy as the foundational phase of design thinking. It uses immersive VR to simulate disabilities with a high degree of "ecological validity," letting users embody an avatar and assume the first-person perspective of a person with a disability — for example, experiencing the world while seated in a wheelchair. These simulations are built as virtual environments using custom reusable software "assets" incorporated into VR applications, putting designers without disabilities into situations that mirror the lives of people with disabilities as realistically as possible.
VR4ALL delivers its work through three outputs: the VR environments themselves, training for product design teachers, and pilot testing aimed at product design students and professionals. The project is funded by the European Union under the Erasmus+ programme (KA220 – Higher Education), coordinated from Portugal.
The Aegean VR-MR Services action, part of the e-Aegean CulTour research infrastructure, aims to study use cases of Virtual and Mixed Reality (VR/MR) in the fields of culture and tourism. It focuses on creating educational material and programmes to train stakeholders in tourism and culture as well as designers and developers, and it seeks to understand both the advantages and the limitations of using these technologies.
The Aegean VR-MR Services action is implemented within the project "Interregional Digital Transformation of the Aegean Archipelago in Culture and Tourism" (MIS 5047046), which falls under the Regional Excellence support action of the Operational Programme "Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation" of NSRF 2014-2020, and is funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and national resources.
HERIT ADAPT is an EU-funded project under the Interreg Euro-MED programme. It fosters cooperation among key stakeholders by activating Interdisciplinary Territorial Working Groups to co-design the data-driven HERIT ADAPT Sustainable Tourism Model. The model is built on three interconnected pillars — assessment, collaboration, and adaptive action — through a co-creation approach, helping destinations respond to overtourism and climate change while protecting their cultural and natural assets.
The Sustainable Tourism Model takes into account needs and visions, existing frameworks and plans, and the global technology offer, enabling the use of existing tools and solutions and the valorisation of transnational knowledge gained from other projects. It is tested across 9 pilot Euro-MED regions of different typologies, including UNESCO sites and lesser-known monuments in coastal, hinterland, and mountainous areas.
The nine pilot sites are the Temple of Apollo Epicurius (Greece), Roman houses of Celio Hill (Italy), Chiossone Museum of Oriental Art (Italy), Rector's Palace in Dubrovnik (Croatia), Temple of Apollo Hylates (Cyprus), Žabljak Crnojevića Fortress (Montenegro), Alhambra and Generalife Complex (Spain), Villefranche de Conflent (France), and the Mausoleum-Ossuary (Bulgaria).
metaVR is an academic research project investigating nonverbal communication in shared Virtual and Mixed Reality environments. It is supported by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.) under the "First Call for H.F.R.I. Research Projects to support Faculty members and Researchers and the procurement of high-cost research equipment grant." The project is a collaboration between the University of the Aegean's Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering and its Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, located on the Greek islands of Syros and Lesbos respectively.
Its main research objective is to thoroughly investigate the potential impact of nonverbal cues during synchronous, interpersonal interaction among physically remote individuals immersed in a shared virtual environment. Using technologies that simulate or transfer nonverbal signals, the project runs a series of trials to evaluate their performance against real, face-to-face interaction, treating both the functionality of such systems and the social and affective impacts of nonverbal cues as largely uncharted areas of research.
The project began in 2019 and ran until 2022, implemented in two successive phases: the first involving laboratory testing of the relevant systems — their limitations, capabilities, functionality, and performance — and the second examining the social and psycho-emotional impact of nonverbal communication during immersive, synchronous VR-based interaction.
The full list of publications of XR-Lab members can be found here!
Dzardanova, E., Kasapakis, V., Gavalas, D., & Sylaiou, S. (2022). Virtual reality as a communication medium: a comparative study of forced compliance in virtual reality versus physical world. Virtual Reality, 26(2), 737-757 - (Visit Publication)
Ntantamis, O., Dzardanova, E., Agelada, A., & Kasapakis, V. (2026). Enhancing Fire Extinguisher Training: A Comparative Study of Virtual Reality and Augmented Virtuality Approaches. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 1-18 - (Visit Publication)
Dzardanova, E., Nikolakopoulou, V., Kasapakis, V., Vosinakis, S., Xenakis, I., & Gavalas, D. (2024). Exploring the impact of non‐verbal cues on user experience in immersive virtual reality. Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds, 35(1), e2224 - (Visit Publication)
Arena, L., Barberis, L., Malakuczi, V., Kasapakis, V., & Chatzigiannakis, I. (2025, June). Integrating Extended Reality in Cultural Heritage: From Visitor Experience to Sustainable Engagement. In International Conference on Extended Reality (pp. 36-59). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland - (Visit Publication)
