David Melhart

David Melhart is an AI researcher specializing in affective computing and games research. Before joining the SDU Metaverse Lab as an Assistant Professor, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta. He has also worked as a Senior Platform Engineer and AI Researcher at modl.ai, a company dedicated to developing AI tools for human-like game testing. David has played an active role in numerous game AI conferences and has been a key organizer of the International Summer School Series on AI and Games (https://school.gameaibook.org/) since its inception. His expertise spans human-in-the-loop data collection methods, machine learning, and platform engineering.

His research focuses on modelling the moment-to-moment player experience and building effective tools for affective computing. Beyond AI and machine learning, David is passionate about designing and playing tabletop role-playing games. Far from being just a hobby, he has organized two research retreats to support roleplaying game studies and is actively exploring new ways to integrate this area into his research.