Goals

The Game Twins Workshop (DTW) is a research-based event exploring how games and their mechanics can contribute to the success of digital twins in educational and vocational training. This workshop aims to bring together researchers and professionals from the fields of games, physical simulation, and industrial virtualization, to look at ways how game design methods and user experience modelling can contribute to positive learning outcomes facilitated by digital twin models.

DTW follows successful academic retreats such as Dagstuhl and Shonan, where an intense period of collaboration is interspersed with social events and networking. In DTW the number of participants is limited in order to enable more focused discussions and applied research by prototyping gamified digital twin systems and approaches in-between theoretical discussions during the days of the retreat. The outcome is expected to be a number of reports and publications along these directions.

Organizers

Dimitrios Rovas is a Professor in Building Simulation and Optimisation at the Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources at the University College London (UCL). Dimitrios received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a research associate at the Laboratory for Numerical Analysis of the University of Paris VI, France (UPMC). He held Assistant Professor positions in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, and in the Production Engineering and Management Department at the Technical University of Crete, Greece. From 2013 to 2015, he was a member of the Systems Integration Group at the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics in Germany. His research interests include building physics, smart buildings, the design and simulation of building energy management systems, building simulation, building information modelling, and the development of middleware and data integration platforms for data access and the analytical processing of sensor information. He has developed and led the CIBSE-accredited MSc programme in Smart Buildings and Digital Engineering offered at UCL.

Georgios N. Yannakakis is a Professor at the Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta (UM) and a Co-Founder and Director of humanfeedback.ai. He is a leading expert in the game artificial intelligence research field with core theoretical contributions in machine learning, evolutionary computation, affective computing and player modelling, computational creativity and procedural content generation. He has published more than 350 papers and his work has been cited broadly. He has attracted funding from several EU and national research agencies and received multiple awards for published work in top-tier journals and conferences. His work has been featured in New Scientist, Science Magazine, The Guardian, Le Monde and other venues. He is regularly invited to give keynote talks at the most recognised conferences in his areas of research activity and has organised a few of the most respected conferences in the areas of game AI and game research. He is the Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Games and the co-author of the Artificial Intelligence and Games Textbook. Georgios is an IEEE Fellow.

Antonios Liapis is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta (UM), where he bridges the gap between game technology and game design in courses focusing on human-computer creativity, digital prototyping and game development. His research focuses on Artificial Intelligence as an autonomous creator or as a facilitator of human creativity. His work includes computationally intelligent tools for game design, as well as computational creators that blend semantics, visuals, sound, plot and level structure to create horror games, adventure games and more. He has also co-organized numerous game jams, and has participated in even more!

David Melhart is an Assistant Professor at the Metaverse Lab, University of Southern Denmark (SDU) and a Co-Founder and HCAI Lead of humanfeedback.ai. He is specialising in affective computing and games research. Before joining the SDU, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta and worked as a Senior Platform Engineer and AI Researcher at modl.ai, a company dedicated to developing AI tools for human-like game testing. He was a keynote speaker and panelist at the 26th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2023 - Ethics of Game AI Workshop, Communication Chair of FDG 2020, Workshop and Panels Chair of FDG2023, Web Chair of IEEE CoG 2026, and has been a recurring co-organizer and chief coordinator of the Summer School series on Artificial Intelligence and Games. He currently serves as an Editorial Assistant to the IEEE Transactions on Games and an Associate Editor to the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing.

Venue

The first event of the DTW is taking place in Chania, Greece on 27-31 July 2026. The event is organized by the University College London, the University of Malta, and the University of Southern Denmark. Chania, famous for its picturesque old town and Venetian fortifications, provides a relaxed backdrop for the workshop. As one of the largest cities on Crete, the town in well connected and houses a number of educational and research institutions relevant to the event, including the Technical University of Crete, and the Mediterranean Architecture Centre (KAM).

Agenda

The agenda of the retreat is focused on research collaboration and knowledge sharing. The retreat begins with an informal social event, followed by daily activities that include brainstorming sessions, idea generation, and action planning. Each day features a walk through the Venetian harbour of Chania to encourage reflection and informal discussions. The final day is dedicated to summarizing findings, planning future actions, and exploring funding opportunities. The retreat emphasizes consensus-building, interdisciplinary collaboration, and sustainability of research efforts.

External Resources

Game Twins Workshop © 2026. This website was created by David Melhart.