Maria Aufheimer is a PhD researcher in Human-Computer Interaction and Accessibility (HCI) at the Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics (IAR) within the Department of Informatics at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).
After completing her B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Media Informatics at Ulm University, Germany, she initially held a position as PhD researcher at the eMedia Lab at KU Leuven, Belgium, where she was later awarded the highly competitive “PhD Fellowship fundamental research” scholarship by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO). Maria has since transferred her studies to KIT, focusing her research on the possibilities games offer in supporting rehabilitation, physical, and occupational therapy for children. She works with rehabilitation professionals as well as patients, and draws from various disciplines in an effort to build a strong theoretical foundation for the development of rehabilitative gaming systems that center patient self-determination.
Thus far, her work has been recognized with an Honourable Mention award at CHI 2023, the leading international venue for HCI research.
Please refer to Maria’s Google Scholar profile for a full overview of her publications.