Debbie Richards is currently an Associate Professor in the Computing Department at Macquarie
University in Sydney, Australia. She has been interested in expertise and knowledge from a theoretical
and practical point of view since the early 80s. This was initially inspired by her work in the ICT industry
with experts and explored further in her Masters and PhD theses, following completion of a Bachelor
of Business. Virtual worlds provide much potential for educating and training people using safe environments with greater ecological validity than a laboratory or classroom setting. Agent-based systems
provide the intelligence needed to achieve this experience. Currently she is working, with Meredith,
on developing a Multi-User Virtual Environment for science inquiry in Australian secondary schools.
Our key challenge is creating intelligent animals and avatars to allow students to observe and interact
with advanced behaviours such as predator-prey and flocking. The world is being built using Unity3D,
chosen as a result of the study conducted by Arda.