Maria Virvou is a Professor of Software Engineering and Chair of the Department of Informatics at the University of Piraeus, Greece, Director and Founding Member of the Postgraduate Program in Computer Science, Director of the Research Laboratory “Software Technology”. She is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Springer book series “Learning and Analytics in Intelligent Systems” and “Artificial Intelligence-Enhanced Software and Systems Engineering”. She is a co-founder and co-chair of the IEEE Intelligent Information Systems and Applications (IISA) International Conference series which is organised annually. Additionally, she has served as the Head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Piraeus for three more terms. She is currently and has been a member of the Senate of the University of Piraeus multiple times.

She obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom (U.K.), funded by the Greek State Scholarships Foundation specialising in “Artificial Intelligence“. She obtained a Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Computer Science from University College London (UCL), University of London, United Kingdom (U.K.), and her undergraduate degree from the Department of Mathematics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.

In the field of scientific research, Professor M. Virvou has authored and co-authored over 400 publications in journals, books and international conferences,  including books and monographs, chaired or performed invited talks and edited conference proceedings and books (over 40), has been Editor-in-Chief of the open access journal SpringerPlus. Some recent notable activities include serving as the General Co-Chair of the 14th IEEE IISA Conference 2023 and Keynote Speaker at the 35th IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEE&T 2023) in Tokyo, Japan. She has also received recognition and awards for her contributions to the field of Computer Science. Her research interests are in Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Educational Software and Games, Personalised Interactive Software, User Modelling, Human-Centred AI, User Experience, Affective Software, where she has contributed extensively.

Furthermore, she holds high positions in global rankings of scientific performance, thus enhancing her scientific prestige in the academic community. In a recent search on Scopus, she ranks first worldwide in publications in the area of “User Modeling” out of an international total of 147,450 publications. Moreover, she ranks  first worldwide in the area of “Educational Software” according to both Scopus and Microsoft Academic Search Microsoft Academic Search while she is ranked in the top scientists in User Interface, Multimedia and Human Computer Interaction.

She is also ranked among the top 2% of Artificial Intelligence researchers with the greatest worldwide impact according to the international ranking of Stanford University.

View Curriculum Vitae