Deborah Richards is a Professor in the School of Computing at Macquarie University. Whilst working in the ICT industry she completed a BBus (Comp and MIS) in 1989 and MAppSc (Info Studies) in 1995. She completed a PhD in artificial intelligence on the reuse of knowledge at the University of New South Wales and joined academia in 1999. She is currently the Director of the Virtual Reality Laboratory and Director of Industry and External Relations for the School of Computing .

She has been an artificial intelligence researcher since 1993, initially focussed on knowledge acquisition and reuse and knowledge-based systems and in 2003 moving to agent-based systems with a current focus on intelligent virtual agents and intelligent virtual worlds. The ethical use of these technologies has been a primary concern for over a decade. With 20 years in industry prior to joining academia, she has a focus on the application of technology to improve current shortcomings and overcome barriers faced by stakeholders in education, training, health and well-being. She has over 400 refereed publications and over $5M in competitive external grant funding.