SPU Academic Presented a Seminar on AR Technology at the American University of Iraq Sulaimani

Dr. Rozhen Kamal Mohammed-Amin from the Technical College of Engineering at SPU was recently invited by Dr. Tobin Hartnell, the director of the Center for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (CACHE) at the American University of Iraq Sulaimani (AUIS), to give the first talk in their Technology/History seminar series.

In her talk entitled “When History Meets Technology: Augmented Reality for Digital Preservation and Presentation of Architectural Heritage”, Dr. Rozhen first theoretically discussed the importance of preserving, presenting, and interpreting tangible cultural heritages like historic sites and buildings. She then talked about potentials and opportunities of using Augmented Reality (AR) technology for preserving and presenting cultural and architectural Heritages. As part of her talk, she presented some related international AR projects, including some of her own.

AR is an emerging state-of-art of technology that has found its applications in many fields, including medical, cultural heritage, architecture, and urban planning fields. Although the field is almost unheard of in Kurdistan Region, it is widely being developed and investigated by many researchers and scientists in the developed countries and their universities. Dr. Rozhen believes that Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality technologies are not only affecting preserving and presenting cultural heritage as well as designing building and cities, but also how people interact with their surrounding built environments.

Dr. Rozhen Kamal Mohammed-Amin is a lecturer at the City Planning Department/Sulaimani Polytechnic University. She holds BSc in Architectural Engineering from the University of Sulaimani and MSc. and PhD degrees from the University of Calgary in Canada. One of her academic goals in Kurdistan is practicing and introducing interdisciplinary into teaching and researching in order to deepen and enrich her students’ learning experience and boosting scientific creativity in the region.