Teaching & research interests

• Learning analytics / Technology-enhanced learning
• Data science / Data mining / Machine learning
• User and learner modeling
• Artificial intelligence
• Ubiquitous computing

Dr. Marek Hatala is a Professor at the School Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University and a Director of the Laboratory for Ontological Research. He received his PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the Technical University in Kosice (Slovakia). His research is driven by the problems arising between the computing systems and their users. The areas of his prior interests include configuration engineering design, organizational learning, semantic interoperability, ontologies and semantic web, user modeling in ubiquitous and ambient intelligence environments, and software engineering and service oriented architectures.

Dr. Hatala's current research is framed within Learning Analytics, which falls into the realm of data science. Specifically, he and his students apply data mining, machine learning, and data analysis techniques to learners' data while studying. Next, his team uses discovered models to build and deploy learning analytics dashboards and evaluates their effects on learner's motivation.

• MSc, Computer Science, Technical University in Kosice (Slovakia)
  
• PhD, Artificial Intelligcence, Technical University in Kosice (Slovakia)