Jane Yau

Biography

Dr. Jane Yau is a Senior Researcher at the EduTech team at DIPF Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education, Frankfurt, Germany. She holds a PhD in Computer Science (Mobile Learning) from the University of Warwick, England and held postdoc positions at the Centre for Learning and Knowledge Technologies (Linnaeus University, Sweden) and Chair of Learning, Design and Technology (University of Mannheim, Germany). 

She has published over 80 peer-reviewed journal articles & conference papers in Educational, Games and AI Technologies including Mobile Learning and Learning Analytics. She is an Advisory Committee member of the Smithsonian Science Education Center, USA. She was co-lead of the GYA Science Education for Youth and UN SDGs Working Groups (2022-24). She was an expert member of the International Science Council Science Education Consultative Working Group, and Education for Global Citizens project at the Center for Intercultural Dialogue, Washington DC, USA. In 2024, she was a Visiting Researcher at the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, Hamburg, Germany. 

Her passion in these above-mentioned areas started in 2011 when she was delighted and very excited to find out that UNESCO created a section and annual conference "Mobile Learning Week", which is the UN's flagship event on ICT in Education. She dedicates her time, as a member of the Global Young Academy (2022-27), to a) assist in the global challenges of increasing equal access to quality education for all learners, b) creating a fairer world to maintain a social and economic sustainable future for all, c) tackling the current educational crisis and d) bridging the educational, digital and curriculum gaps worldwide. <UN SDG4>.

In 2021-24, she was the Research Coordinator of a German project “Highly-Informative Competence-driven Feedback for Digital Learning”, which was funded by the Hessen Ministry for Digital Strategies and Development in Germany to enhance digitalisation in education as well as knowledge transfer to society.

In 2023-26, she was Project Lead & Manager of the 3-year, €3million Horizon Europe project "Games Realising Effective and Affective Transformation". The project aimed to use games to engage citizens to influence policy-makers’ decisions relating to the climate emergency. The consortium consisting of scientific and commercial partner organisations investigated how computer games can be used to improve climate protection. The aim was to raise awareness among citizens of the relevant challenges and to provide policy-makers with information on how to align climate protection even more closely with the needs of society. 

10+ real world co-designed case studies with policy stakeholders and the collection of data from citizens to address their concerns which were then passed to policy makers. This increased citizen engagement, science education in the public sphere, fostered public participation, built trust, empowered communities and closed the communication gap between citizens and policy-makers. This project included the execution of a survey integrated into popular games in collaboration with UNDP, which reached 1+ million people and received ca. 180,000 responses relating to their attitudes and preferences on different climate policies & available as easy-to-use dashboard on UNDP's website (available soon!). (See here for more results) The project was a Finalist of the Falling Walls Science Engagement Breakthrough category 2024.

Awards