Anicia Peters

Anicia Peters is a Namibian computer scientist specializing in human–computer interaction (HCI). She is the executive dean of the Faculty of Computing and Informatics (FCI) and an associate professor in computer science at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST).

Early life and education

Peters was born in Rehoboth, Namibia, and attended Origo Primary School. Her family moved to the Khomasdal suburb of Windhoek when she was about 8; there, she attended M.H. Greeff Primary School and later Concordia College.

Peters earned two undergraduate degrees cum laude from the Namibia University of Science and Technology, formerly known as Polytechnic of Namibia; one was the National Diploma in Business Computing and the other was a B.Tech in Business Computing. For her B.Tech degree, she earned the Rector's Medal for outstanding achievement and the Prof. Yrjö Neuvo [fi] Award for the best graduate in information technology at the institution.

Peters then studied at Iowa State University, obtaining a MSc and a PhD in human–computer interaction. She received two scholarship awards in 2013 from Boeing for contribution to HCI research conference publications. For her PhD, she received a Research Excellence Award from Iowa State University. She completed her PhD under a Fulbright International Science and Technology Award and a Schlumberger Faculty for the Future Women in Science fellowship. Her current research work is on social computing, gender in digital technologies, gamification, and e-participation such as e-government and e-health.

In 2012, she became a Google Anita Borg scholar in the United States. She also interned at Intuit in the Silicon Valley as user experience (UX) researcher prior to accepting a postdoctoral fellowship at Oregon State University. Here, she worked under Margaret Burnett, who co-founded the area of end-user software engineering and developed two visual programming languages.

Academic career

In 2015, Anicia Peters became the first Namibian dean at NUST.

In Namibia, she started several initiatives such as the Namibia Women in Computing conference and three chapters of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). One such local chapter is the ACM-W. She further chaired the International Culture and Computer Science Conference in Windhoek in October 2016. She also initiated and co-chaired the inaugural Africa Human Computer Interaction Conference (AfriCHI) in Nairobi, Kenya, in November 2016 and served as special advisor to AfriCHI2018. In 2016, Peters was made Star Of The Week by the New Era newspaper highlighting her work in academia and research.

In February 2017, she was featured as one of 20 prominent personalities in Who's Who Namibia 2017. She is also one of 10 African Women Rolemodels in Technology featured by Afchix.

Peters is currently the vice chair of the board of directors of the Namibia Qualifications Authority and a member of the Namibia Council for Higher Education (NCHE). She is also serving as a board member of the Internet Society Namibia chapter.

Peters is married with four children.