Charles Hughes is a Pegasus Professor of Computer Science at UCF. He is co-lead of the Learning Sciences Cluster, co-director of the Synthetic Reality Laboratory, and co-director of the Center for Research in Education Simulation Technology. He has secondary appointments in the UCF Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the School of Modeling, Simulation & Training, the College of Community Innovation & Education, and the Department of Games & Interactive Media at UCF. Charlie received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Northeastern University in 1966, his master's and doctoral degrees in computer science in 1968 and 1970, respectively, from Penn State University. He completed a National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship in 1972. He held faculty positions in computer science at Penn State and the University of Tennessee before coming UCF in 1980.

Charlie was inducted into the National Center for Simulation Hall of Fame in 2020. His virtual environment research spans three and a half decades, with the last 15 years focused on virtual learning environments (co-holder of 11 patents in this area) with an emphasis on preparing teachers for inclusive classrooms and helping students with autism reach their full potential. He has authored or co-authored seven books, 69 journal articles, 38 book chapters and 122 refereed conference papers. He has advised 29 students to the completion of their doctoral degrees in computer science and modeling & simulation, with women being eight of the last 14. He is a Life Senior Member of both the IEEE and the ACM and is an ACM SIGGRAPH Pioneer. He has been PI or co-PI on more than $30 million in external grants since 2000, of which grants totaling over $7.8 million are currently active.

• Ferrer, R., Ali, K., & Hughes, C. (2024). Using AI-Based Virtual Companions to Assist Adolescents with Autism in Recognizing and Addressing Cyberbullying. Sensors, 24(12), 3875 (17 pages). https://doi.org/10.3390/s24123875.


• Dieker, L. A., Hughes, C. E., & Hynes, M. (2023). The Past, the Present, and the Future of the Evolution of Mixed Reality in Teacher Education. Education Sciences, 13(11), 1070 (17 pages). https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13111070.


• Ali, K., Shah, S., & Hughes, C. E. (2023). In the Wild Affect Analysis of Children with ASD Using Heart Rate. Sensors, 23(14):6572. https://doi.org/10.3390/s23146572.


• Taliaferro, L. A., Westers, N. J., Matsumiya , B., Ingraham, K., Muehlenkamp , J. J., & Hughes, C. E. (2023). Improving Capacity to Identify, Assess, and Manage Adolescents Engaging in NonSuicidal Self-Injury Using Patient Avatars. Medical Teacher. 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142159X.2023.2216861.


• Shah, S., Ali, K., Dieker, L., & Hughes, C. (2023). WAVE: A Web-Based Platform for Delivering Knowledge-Driven Virtual Experiences. IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications. 43(3), 54-60, 1 May-June 2023, DOI: 10.1109/MCG.2023.3260599.


• Wang, D., Wang, P., Liu, K., Zhou, Y., Hughes, C. E., & Fu, Y. (2023). Reinforced Imitative Graph Learning for Mobile User Profiling. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. 1-13. DOI: 10.1109/TKDE.2023.3270238.


• Hughes, C. E., Dieker, L., A., Glavey, E., Hines, R., Wilkins, I., Ingraham, K., Bukaty, C., Ali, K., Shah, S., Murphy, J., & Taylor, M. (2022). RAISE: Robotics & AI to Improve STEM and Social Skills for Elementary School Students. Frontiers in Virtual Reality: Virtual Reality and Human Behaviors, DOI: 10.3389/frvir.2022.968315. 10.3389/frvir.2022.968312.


• Hayes, A., Hughes, C. E., & Bailenson, J. (2022). Identifying and Coding Behavioral Indicators of Social Presence with a Social Presence Behavioral Coding System. Frontiers in Virtual Reality: Virtual Reality and Human Behaviors, 3, https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2022.773448.