DrKaja Antlej

Dr Kaja Antlej is Senior Lecturer in Industrial Design at the School of Engineering, Deakin University, and Co-founder and Co-Lead of the Deakin Human-Centric Technologies Lab.

She is a Slovenian-born, Australia-based researcher living in Melbourne whose work spans human-centred design, immersive extended reality, digital innovation, human space exploration, museums and heritage. Her research has a particular emphasis on the ways culture can be expressed, interpreted, and maintained in isolated settings on Earth and beyond. Her work brings together design, cultural and natural heritage, human-computer interaction, and AI to develop and evaluate meaningful immersive experiences for older adults, intensive care patients, international students away from home, and humans in space.

Kaja collaborates internationally on projects that co-design culturally grounded and nature-based VR for people in isolation. She leads Deakin’s Australia-Japan Foundation-supported work on cross-cultural knowledge exchange for the wellbeing of older adults. This work also informs broader implementation models connecting aged care, space health, and other contexts of isolation.

Kaja is an alumna of the International Space University (ISU; SHSSP21), Chair of the Melbourne Section at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), a member of the Committee for the Cultural Utilisation of Space (ITACCUS) at the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) and a member of the Designers in Space Community (DiSC).

In 2026, she won the Rising Star of the Year – Academia award at the Australian Space Awards.

Kaja Antlej is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) in Japan.