Maki Wardle
Hi, I'm Maki. I create systems that empower people to use complex spatial information to reimagine the world around them.
Currently, I'm a Research Intern at Nokia Bell Labs' AI Research Lab creating LLM agents that build physically grounded city-scale 3D digital twins for 6G networks. In my PhD at University of York and MOLA, I'm designing AI-mediated collaborative play with archaeological data in London. Previously, I worked in real-time 3D R&D at the European Space Agency and Buro Happold.
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Exploring large-scale collaborative interaction and AI-mediated playful meaning-making with archaeological data at one of London’s busiest public transit hubs. AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award with Museum of London Archaeology.
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Creating LLM agents that build physically grounded city-scale 3D digital twins for use in 6G differentiable ray-tracing simulation and training of neural physical-layer models.
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Capturing lunar regolith simulants and creating shading models to realistically render the Moon’s surface in Unreal Engine, helping to close the sim-to-real gap in XR astronaut training and machine learning. Poster at SIGGRAPH Asia 2025.
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Developing techniques to instantly stream hundreds of kilometres of CAD, GIS, BIM and sensor data into a city-scale digital twin that dynamically evolves with the masterplan. Creating intuitive simulation and modelling tools that enable decision-makers to act on data as soon as it enters production and test “what if?” scenarios on the fly. Supported by an Epic Games MegaGrant. Winner of the Society for Digital Engineering Best Project 2023.
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Narrative VR experience combining archives, photogrammetry, film, oral histories and VR, using WW2 concrete structures as lenses that refract past and present experiences of young people in Fife, Scotland. Glasgow School of Art Chair’s Medal in Simulation and Visualisation 2022.
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Interactive reconstruction of a Pre-Columbian smelting workshop for indigenous heritage education in Ecuador. With the Casa del Alabado Museum and Keeping the Hammer’s Voice Alive, part of the British Museum’s Endangered Material Knowledge Project. Shown in Quito, 2024.
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Built a digital twin of Glasgow’s Tramway gallery so 80+ visitors could gather and experience an exhibition in VR. Optimised a LiDAR building scan for real-time immersive web streaming; UKRI funders joined a shared curator talk inside the twin. With ISOdesign, 2021.
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A way into XR for traditional animators — staged at Animist Festival, Tallinn. Participants inside the headset and collaborators outside co-made short films together, each seeing only half the picture (think Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes). With Dr Huon Wardle, 2022.
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Bringing Factum Arte’s pioneering work with high-resolution scanning and elevated printing to life through an extended reality experience shown at Masterpiece Art Fair London, 2019.
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Technical consultant for Moments in an Ordinary Night, an immersive film commissioned for Estonian National Museum’s Who Claims the Night? exhibition as part of Tartu, European Capital of Culture 2024. Advising throughout the project from 360° video production and spatial audio design, to equipment selection and installation.
