Ilenius Ildephonce was recently awarded a doctoral degree in Computer Science from the Department of Computing (2022) from the Faculty of Science and Technology, The University of the West Indies, Mona (The UWI Mona). His thesis titled “Effective Educational Games towards a Mixed-Initiative Design Approach” was supervised by Drs. Claudine Allen and Ezra Mugisa.

 Ilenius hails from a small village in rural northwest Tanzania. His passion and a keen interest in science and Mathematics came early, while he was in primary school. He received his secondary education at one of the few technical schools in Tanzania where he focused on science and Engineering. He studied Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics but fell in love with Computational Sciences.

 In 2013, he was awarded a Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems from the University of Dodoma. During his undergraduate studies, he was particularly interested in Human-Machine Interaction and was fascinated by interactive systems and their potential to impact cognition and learning. He was then introduced to The UWI by his grand-uncle Professor Ishenkumba Kahwa and he immediately applied to join the Department of Computing at The University of the West Indies, Mona to pursue an MSc in Computer Science.

Ilenius was exposed to the Department's research opportunities within the Software Engineering Research Group (SWERG), specifically the alignment with his interests in examining the art and science of developing computer systems. He immediately recognized the potential to closely examine the theory and science of developing interactive systems. In light of this, he transferred to the MPhil programme where he could pursue research on the methodologies to design and evaluate educational games.

During his MPhil, he grew invested in how human designers can collaborate with intelligent agents to produce the specifications of educational games. This evolved into a PhD dissertation where he proposed a mixed-initiative design for effective Educational games. His work resulted in three conference publications, one of which is an IEEE conference and the other at the e-Learn world conference and another one at the Gaming and Learning Alliance Conference.

 Ilenius is employed as an assistant lecturer within the School of Science, Computing and Artificial Intelligence, of The UWI- Five Islands Campus in Antigua and Barbuda.

Ilenius enjoys creating interactive systems and has developed a few short games and simulations. Like many other indie developers, he hopes to publish his completed games for people to enjoy. In his spare time, he enjoys reading non-fictional books and is a lover of philosophy and logic. He is now looking to take cycling seriously.

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