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< Back Dr Yul HR Kang Queen Mary University of London Supervisor Yul Kang, MD, PhD is a computational cognitive neuroscientist studying how natural & artificial neural networks handle unavoidable uncertainty in sequential decision-making, such as wayfinding during navigation. He uses Bayesian approaches and probabilistic neural representation models, with applications to games, fundamental science, and healthcare. He received his MD in Seoul National University (South Korea), PhD in Columbia University (USA), and did postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge (UK), where he was elected and served as a Junior Research Fellow. His work was published in top-tier journals such as Current Biology and eLife, and was presented as a talk in leading computational neuroscience conferences such as Cosyne and Bernstein Conference. His work was featured in news outlets such as The Independent. His research addresses how the brain handles unavoidable uncertainty (e.g., from ambiguous visual scene) during sequential decision-making (e.g., wayfinding). It helps understand players’ behaviour and predict their uncertainty given a map (and hence difficulty). Since neurological patients often show specific impairments in such tasks, it may help earlier and more specific diagnosis of diseases. Yul is interested in predicting players’ behaviour, procedural generation of levels by predicting subjective uncertainty and fun, and using games for diagnosis of psychiatric and neurological diseases. yul.kang@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.yulkang.net/ Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/yul-kang-9b11522b/ LinkedIn BlueSky https://github.com/yulkang Github Themes Creative Computing Game AI Immersive Technology Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Agnieszka Lyons Queen Mary University of London Supervisor Agnieszka Lyons is a linguist and discourse analyst specialising in digitally mediated communication and multimodal communication, particularly across geographic distance. She explores the ways in which users of digital media construct their digitally mediated personae, particularly from the perspective of performance of the embodied selves, entering intersubjective spaces through verbal and non-verbal discourse and creating the feeling of physical and social presence across geographical distance. This can include multimedia sharing, avatar design, textual representation of nonverbal content, and others. She is particularly interested in supervising students with a communication, HCI, social and behavioural sciences background on the following topics: Player experience Player in-game interaction Construction of alternative personae Performance of player identities a.lyons@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://agnieszkalyons.wordpress.com/ Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/agnieszka-lyons-3831592/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Miles Hansard Queen Mary University of London Supervisor Miles Hansard is a computer vision researcher, working on geometric and statistical methods for 3D scene understanding and rendering. He is also interested in active 3D sensing technologies, including depth cameras, lidar, and millimetre-wave radar. His recent projects include GPU methods for real-time atmospheric effects, commodity radar localization of UAVs, and grasp planning for robotic manipulation. He has also worked on human perceptual processes, including eye-movements, geometric judgements, and binocular stereopsis. Miles Hansard is a Senior Lecturer in computer graphics, and a member of the Vision Group and Centre for Advanced Robotics, at QMUL. He is available to supervise projects in the following areas: Simulation of complex physical effects (e.g. the motion of cloth, fire, and fluids), using machine learning. Physically plausible character animation in complex environments (e.g. slippery terrain), using machine learning. miles.hansard@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~milesh/ Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Design & Development Game AI Game Data Immersive Technology - Previous Next

< Back Rory Davidson University of York iGGi PG Researcher Available for placement Learning and Strategy Acquisition in Digital Games Given the success and impact of games and the gaming industry, it is unsurprising that it has become the centre of a significant body of academic research and other literature. However, while the cognitive effects of gameplay have been extensively studied, this has typically been done from a “black-box” perspective – that is, looking at the effects of gameplay as a whole upon some other task or metric, such as ability to strategize or proclivity to violence – leaving the inner mechanisms of cognition during gameplay much less understood. In particular, while the idea of learning from games is an area of continued interest in educational psychology, very little literature exists on the subject of how learning in games actually occurs on a cognitive level. This study aims to fill this knowledge gap by examining the ways in which player learning and strategy acquisition occur within games. This examination will have two main hierarchical goals. In the first phase, the study will use experimental methods inspired by analysis of learning methods used in games as well as literature review of more general theories of learning and cognition, such as the dual-process account or the CLARION model, in order to form a model better specialized for the field of digital gaming. In the second phase, it will analyse how such a theory may be put to practical use to inform the design of games and game-like experiences. These two phases can be summed up in the following main research questions: Phase 1: How can strategy acquisition in digital games most effectively be explained as a cognitive process? Phase 2: How can this understanding be put into practice in the development of games with specific desirable characteristics? By linking a more complete understanding of cognition and learning during games with measurable or observable gameplay characteristics, this study will further research on gameplay experience, such as that on immersion. The first phase of research additionally has relevance to the field of AI, in which human responses to difficult and complex problems such as digital games may be mimicked or otherwise used to inform the design of new techniques, as well as to gamification, which attempts to elicit such responses in non-game contexts. rd553@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisor: Prof. Paul Cairns Featured Publication(s): Automatic Game Tuning for Strategic Diversity Themes Applied Games Design & Development Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Martin Balla Queen Mary University of London iGGi Alum Available for post-PhD position Before starting his PhD Martin studied Computer Science at the University of Essex. His main interest is artificial intelligence and its application to all sort of problems ranging from computer vision to game AI. He likes spending his spare time with various activities which mainly involves reading, playing video games and skateboarding. Martin's PhD thesis focuses on Reinforcement Learning agents that can adapt to changes in the reward function and/or changes in the environment. His work investigates how agents can transfer their knowledge to changes in the environment, such as new rewards, levels or visuals. Outside of his main research direction, Martin is involved with the Tabletop games framework (TAG), which is a collection of various tabletop games implemented with a common API with a focus on various game-playing agents (including RL). TAG brings various challenges to RL agents compared to search-based agents, such as complex action spaces, unique observation spaces (various embeddings), multi-agent dynamics with competitive and collaborative aspects, and lots of hidden information and stochasticity. m.balla@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinballa LinkedIn BlueSky https://martinballa.github.io Github Supervisors: Dr Diego Pérez-Liébana Prof. Simon Lucas Featured Publication(s): PyTAG: Tabletop Games for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning PyTAG: Challenges and Opportunities for Reinforcement Learning in Tabletop Games Illuminating Game Space Using MAP-Elites for Assisting Video Game Design PyTAG: Challenges and Opportunities for Reinforcement Learning in Tabletop Games TAG: Pandemic Competition Task Relabelling for Multi-task Transfer using Successor Features TAG: A tabletop games framework Design and implementation of TAG: a tabletop games framework Evaluating generalisation in general video game playing Evaluating Generalization in General Video Game Playing Analysis of statistical forward planning methods in Pommerman Themes Game AI - Previous Next

< Back Dr Siamak Shahandashti University of York Supervisor Dr Siamak Shahandashti is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Cyber Security Siamak has extensive experience in designing cryptographic solutions to enhance security and privacy for applications such as electronic voting, auctions, and biometric authentication systems. He has also worked on the security and privacy of password managers, IoT devices, mobile phone sensors, contactless payment, and paper fingerprinting. Siamak is interested in designing systems for improving security and privacy that are easy to use and accessible. He is working on designing usable password strength meters and human verifiable cryptographic codes. Siamak is a core member of the York Interdisciplinary Centre for Cyber Security and an expert fellow of the UK Network on Security, Privacy, Identity, and Trust in the Digital Economy (SPRITE+) He is a co-inventor on multiple patents including the first verifiable e-voting system trialled in the UK (patents US15582447, GB1607597) and paper fingerprinting (patent US15972922) with applications in banknote security. He led the design of the broadcast encryption deployed in millions of Thales’s Pay TV products worldwide. Siamak was part of teams who found vulnerabilities and fixed several systems, including the ISO/IEC11770-4 standard for password-based key exchange used in billions of devices, major mobile browser (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari) sensor access policies, and Bitcoin's Payment Protocol used by 100k+ merchants. He is particularly interested in supervising students on the following topics: Using gamification to improve security and privacy in applications such as authentication and human verification Investigating and improving security and privacy in game environments Research themes: Gamification Games with a Purpose Game Security Game Privacy Game Analytics siamak.shahandashti@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/~siamak Other links Website https://au.linkedin.com/in/siamakfs LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Applied Games - Previous Next

< Back Lauren Winter University of York iGGi PG Researcher Lauren was introduced to gaming from an early age when they received a PlayStation One as a gift. From there, video games became a huge part of their life, exploring new worlds through the eyes of a vast array of characters. Following their undergraduate degree in Psychology with Sociology, they completed their MSc in Psychology Research Methods at the University of Nottingham. A fascination with looking for trends in data and creating complex spreadsheets in Excel led them to a job analysing student information in a school, where they also ran four Esports teams competing across three games. Their research interests primarily focus on player research in team-based PVP games and looking at players’ awareness of each other in these environments. A description of Lauren's research: Lauren’s research investigates the differences in human-human and human-AI interaction in team-based digital games. Simultaneous combinations of competitive and cooperative play are found in many high grossing games, such as Call of Duty and League of Legends. These games provide environments for players to play with strangers, friends, and AI, and elicit social presence, a term used to describe the awareness of others in a digital environment. Lauren’s research will focus on two types of social presence: cooperative presence and competitive presence. Despite the popularity of these games, little is known about the juncture between the two and the effects they have on player experience. Due to the increasing inclusion of AI in daily life, including the gaming space, investigating these effects will have implications for future research in team-based digital games, as well as in the creation of AI that works with and against users. Through the development of a bespoke game, created in Unity, Lauren will investigate how people work together and against other players and AI, identifying aspects of the AI that can be manipulated into better player experiences and more enjoyable games. lauren.winter@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-winter-/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisor: Prof. Paul Cairns Featured Publication(s): "Leave our kids alone!": Exploring Concerns Reported by Parents in 1-star Reviews Better Dead than a Damsel: Gender Representation and Player Churn Themes Design & Development Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Abi Evans University of York Supervisor Abi Evans is a Lecturer in Interactive Media in the Department of Theatre, Film, Television, and Interactive Media at the University of York. Her research is at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Learning Sciences, exploring how technology can provide real-time adaptive scaffolding for the skills and processes associated with effective learning in a variety of settings. Abi is particularly interested in supervising students who want to create and evaluate games and immersive experiences for learning or develop approaches for measuring learning in games. Her current project focuses on developing experiences for people who are learning to code, specifically tackling barriers to learning such as imposter syndrome and misconceptions about coding concepts. Abi would also welcome students interested in games for learning in other disciplines and in informal settings as well as traditional academic disciplines. abi.evans@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.abigailevans.org/ Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/abi-evans-7294379 LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Design & Development Immersive Technology Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Debbie Maxwell University of York iGGi Research Collaboration Coordinator Supervisor Debbie is a lecturer in User Experience Design and Interactive Media at the Department of Theatre, Film and Television. Her background spans computing, HCI and Design and she currently teaches user experience (UX) design and design methods and critical design on the BSc Interactive Media programme. Her research focuses on the roles of traditional storytelling and engagement in digital contexts. I’m interested in the ways that people interact with and reshape technology through stories, as both method and artefacts, and across media. She is particularly focuses on applying design and stories across health and wellbeing and environmental design drawing on speculative design processes and approaches. Debbie uses interdisciplinary approaches that draw on a range of fields including Human Computer Interaction (HCI), ethnography, interaction design, social anthropology, and service design. Her research always involves working with communities using participatory methods. She is particularly interested in supervising students with a design or HCI background on the following topics: design of applied games for environmental education or knowledge exchange design and application of serious games to mental health and wellbeing contexts design and application of serious games to outdoor spaces, particularly cultural heritage settings Research themes: Games with a Purpose User experience design Design methods and ethnography Speculative design debbie.maxwell@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Applied Games Design & Development Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Anthony Constantinou Queen Mary University of London Supervisor Anthony Constantinou’s research is on Bayesian Artificial Intelligence for causal discovery and intelligent decision making under uncertainty. He applies his research to a wide range of areas, including gaming, sports, medicine and finance. He is the founder of the Bayesian Artificial Intelligence research lab at Queen Mary University of London. He is interested in supervising students who are interested in working with machine learning algorithms that discover causal relationships from data (applied to game data), or building intelligent decision-making models using Bayesian networks (applied to game data). Please note that these projects focus on working with game data. Students interested in these projects should have skills that are relevant to: Machine learning for causal discovery Bayesian networks Statistics and probability theory a.constantinou@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.constantinou.info Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-c-constantinou-728b6b49/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Game AI - Previous Next

< Back Pilar Zhang Qiu Queen Mary University of London iGGi Alum Pilar is a researcher with a background in Design Engineering. She has a keen interest in user experience and interaction, wearables and the use of cyber-physical systems in the medical field. Her PhD centres around the creation of play assessments for neuromotor conditions in children with cerebral palsy. This gravitates around the idea that better and more objective clinical data can be obtained through gamification of common assessments. Please note: Updating of profile text in progress Email Mastodon https://www.pilarzhangqiu.com/ Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/pilar-zhang-qiu/ LinkedIn BlueSky https://github.com/pili-zhangqiu Github Themes Applied Games - Previous Next

< Back Dr Maximilian Croissant University of York iGGi Alum Available for post-PhD position I’m a psychology researcher, writer and game designer, exploring our emotional connection with games and creating games with purpose. Coming from a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in psychology and neuroscience, I’m now at the intersection of emotion research, design, and human-computer interaction and try to build design-oriented solutions for adapting game content to affective data. My project will include theoretical groundwork, investigating the emotional relationship between player and games and from there build an affective fear-focused VR horror game with specific and practical solutions in terms of emotion measurement, modelling, and adaptation. The ultimate goal is to help fill knowledge gaps that currently hold us back on making commercially viable affective games and provide tools to design games for a deep emotional impact. I’m also the Co-Founder of Vanilla Noir, a small studio working on applied games that aim to promote well-being and satisfying user experiences. For me, games are a great tool to explore psychological phenomena through interactions and the design and development of games based on applied psychology has great potential to help make the world a bit of a better place. mc2230@york.ac.uk Email http://www.maximilian-croissant.de/en Mastodon https://www.vanilla-noir.com Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximilian-croissant LinkedIn BlueSky https://gitlab.com/MaximilianCroissant Github Supervisor(s) Dr Cade McCall Featured Publication(s): Advancing Methodological Approaches in Affect-Adaptive Video Game Design: Empirical Validation of Emotion-Driven Gameplay Modification Using Virtual Reality to Investigate the Influence of Sleep Deprivation on In-the-Moment Arousal During Exposure to Prolonged Threats Affective Systems: Progressing Emotional Human-Computer Interactivity with Adaptive and Intelligent Game Systems An appraisal-based chain-of-emotion architecture for affective language model game agents Emotion Design for Video Games: A Framework for Affective Interactivity Theories, methodologies, and effects of affect-adaptive games: A systematic review A data-driven approach for examining the demand for relaxation games on Steam during the COVID-19 pandemic Endocannabinoid concentrations in hair and mental health of unaccompanied refugee minors Progress in Adaptive Web Surveys: Comparing Three Standard Strategies and Selecting the Best Themes Design & Development Player Research - Previous Next