Keynote Speaker • Day 2

Chris Dede is a Senior Research Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and was for 22 years its Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies. His fields of scholarship include emerging technologies, policy, and leadership. From 2001-04, he was Chair of the HGSE Department of Teaching and Learning. In 2007, he was honored by Harvard University as an outstanding teacher, and in 2011, he was named a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association. In 2023, he was named a Fellow of the Online Learning Consortium. And in 2024, he was named a Scholar of the Immersive Learning Research Network.

In 2020, Chris co-founded the Silver Lining for Learning initiative. He is currently an Advisor to the Alliance for the Future of Digital Learning, sponsored by the Mohammed bin Rashid Global Initiative (MBRGI). Also, Chris is a Co-Principal Investigator and Associate Director for Research of the NSF-funded National Artificial Intelligence Institute in Adult Learning and Online Education.

His most recent co-edited books include: Teacher Learning in the Digital Age: Online Professional Development in STEM Education; Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Realities in Education; Learning engineering for online education: Theoretical contexts and design-based examples; and The 60-Year Curriculum: New Models for Lifelong Learning in the Digital Economy.

Visit Chris Dede's Site

Keynote Speaker • Day 2

As the former Head of Immersive Learning at Meta and a pioneering leader on Interactive Learning Labs at Amazon, Monica Arés is a visionary and leading figure in the field of immersive learning. She is dedicated to developing innovative products, programs, and content to make learning more powerful and accessible.

Monica is a leading expert in immersive technology, using it to empower people to learn, connect, and create in ways they never could before. She is deeply committed to using XR technology to increase access to education and fundamentally transform the way we learn.

The Future of Learning: XR technology has opened up new pathways, transforming how people learn. Free from the constraints of the physical classroom, learners today can unleash curiosity, explore, and connect through virtual worlds, 3D simulations, and immersive experiences. Whether it's taking a virtual field trip back in time, participating in a simulated lab experiment, practicing a new skill, or learning to create XR experiences--immersive technology offers one of the most promising solutions for education the industry has ever seen.

Monica has been featured in Forbes, EdTech Magazine, and Meta's own Immersive Learning Initiative, and she continues to serve as a speaker and advisor shaping the future of learning at conferences and institutions worldwide.

Visit Monica Arés's Site

Kimberly Hieftje, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Yale Pediatrics and co-director/co-founder of XRPeds and the Yale Center for Immersive Technologies in Pediatrics, which focuses on the development and evaluation of videogame interventions using extended reality (virtual reality, augmented reality, etc) for health prevention and promotion, behavior change, and education in adolescents and young adults. She is currently involved in the development and testing of several health behavior change XR and game-based interventions and has published frequently on developing, evaluating, and implementing serious games. She has worked on games that have focused on topics including vaping/e-cigarette prevention, tobacco use prevention, risk reduction in adolescents, HIV/STI prevention, HIV/STI testing, empowering girls around healthy decision making, bystander intervention, LGBTQ bullying, school climate, and alcohol harm reduction.

Dr. Hieftje was a K12 Scholar in the Yale Implementation Science program (YSIS), where she focused on understanding the factors associated with successful implementation of videogame interventions in schools.

Dr. Hieftje is also the editor-in-chief at the Games for Health Journal.

Visit Kimberly's LinkedIn