He previously worked at the Connected Intelligence Centre (CIC) and data visualisation lecturer at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia, working with Prof. Simon Buckingham Shum. He obtained his doctorate degree in 2014 from the Computer Human Adapted Interaction Research Group (CHAI) at the University of Sydney, Australia. He previously worked on Prof. Peter Goodyear’s Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellowship program – ‘Learning, technology and design: architectures for productive networked learning’ at Centre for Research on Computer Supported Learning and Cognition (CoCo) in the University of Sydney.Dr. Roberto Martinez Maldonado, Educational Data Scientist, B. Eng., M I.T.B., PhD
He is currently researching, designing and deploying novel tools to support teaching and learning analytics across different physical and digital spaces. His developments are aimed at finding the match between the best blended learning pedagogies and the advantages that emerging technologies may offer to provide continued support for learning on and off campus.
“Transdisciplinary endeavours in HCI and Data Science hold great potential to design more holistic user experiences, gain richer understanding of the complexity of human activities, create new interaction spaces and (why not?) help us understand ourselves better as an interconnected collective”.
Dr Martinez-Maldonado has a background in Computing Engineering. His areas of research include Human-Computer Interaction (HCI, CSCW), Learning Analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AIED, EDM) and Collaborative Learning (CSCL). In the past years, his research has focused on applying data mining techniques to help understand how people learn and collaborate, empowering people with emerging technologies such as interactive surfaces, combining available technologies for capturing traces of collaboration and helping teachers to orchestrate their classroom through the use of interactive tabletops.
His research work has pioneered on a number of new areas including the application of data mining techniques to study face-to-face collaboration, the implementation of a system to add user-identification to a regular large display using a depth sensor, and the first multi-tabletop classroom used to run authentic collaborative activities associated with the curricula.
Dr Martinez-Maldonado ongoing research takes a holistic perspective that spans across multiple disciplines. In particular, he is interested in the role of data and technology to empower people in areas such as learning, health literacy and cooperation.