Jürgen Sieck (Scientific Supervisor)
Jürgen Sieck is head of the INKA research group including the HERA project with its AURORA XR School for Artists. He is also a professor of computer science in the Applied Computer Science degree program at HTW Berlin. Previously, he was a visiting professor at Monash University Melbourne, Australia, at the University of Cape Town, South Africa and at Old Dominion University Norfolk in Virginia, USA. From 2013 to 2018 he was Principal Investigator of the Cluster of Excellence Image Knowledge Gestaltung and since 2019 he is Principal Investigator of the Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Since 2015, he has also been Professor of Computer Science at the Namibia University of Science and Technology in Windhoek. Jürgen Sieck was awarded honorary doctorates from the Odessa National Polytechnic University and the West Ukrainian National University Ternopil.
Maja Stark (Project Management)
Maja Stark is an art scholar M.A. with a focus on artistic expression in extended reality (XR) and on interdisciplinary collaborations between creative process and technical realization on XR art & culture. She also studied Media and Applied Computer Science part-time from 2017-2020. From 2018 to 2022, she coordinated the INKA project AURORA School for ARtists at HTW Berlin and since 2020 also the project XR_Unites. Since 2023, she is coordinator of the AURORA XR School for Artists funded within the project HERA until 2025. For the AURORA trainings, she is lecturer of extended reality’s art and cultural history. Within the study program of Computer Science in Culture and Health at HTW Berlin, she is lecturer of Cultural Studies of New Media since 2022.
Dagmar Schürrer (Project assistant)
Dagmar Schürrer is a media artist who works with the moving image. She assembles found footage, digitally generated objects and animations, text, drawing and sound into elaborate video-sound montages that often leave the screen through the technology of augmented reality. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the ICA London, the Moscow Biennale for Young Art, the Supernova Festival in Denver, and the Museum of Waste in Changsha, China. In AURORA she supports in the field of digital media production.
Leonid Barsht (Research Assistant)
Leonid Barsht is a developer and research assistant at the HTW Berlin’s research group INKA. From 2018 to 2021, he worked at the AURORA School for Artists. There he developed augmented reality applications in cooperation with creatives from various fields, such as the Red Dot Award-winning application New York, New York by designer Sarah Müller. He also teaches the development of augmented reality as a lecturer – from 2019 to 2021 as part of AURORA and since 2020 also in seminars for students of Applied Computer Science at HTW Berlin.
Ekaterina Losik (Student assistant)
Ekaterina Losik is a student of applied computer science at the HTW Berlin and supports in development and digital media production. Her areas of interest include both app and prototype development as well as the production of digital media.