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Locations (All) iGGi is a collaboration between Uni of York + Queen Mary Uni of London: the largest training programme worldwide for doing a PhD in digital games. Locations iGGi Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) iGGi QMUL is located at the heart of East London on Queen Mary, University of London's Whitechapel campus. Read More University of York (UoY) iGGi York is located just outside the City of York's centre, on University of York's East Campus. Read More Goldsmiths, University of London (Goldsmiths) iGGi Goldsmiths is located in New Cross, South East London, five miles from central London. Read More University of Essex (UoE) iGGi Essex is located two miles from the historic city of Colchester and set in over 200 acres of beautiful parkland. Read More

< Back iGGi QMUL is located at the heart of East London on Queen Mary, University of London's Whitechapel campus. iGGi QMUL is part of QMUL’s School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science . While QMUL-based iGGi PGRs can belong to more than one research group, they all by default belong to the Game AI Group (GAIG) . The iGGi/GAIG office space is situated within the Digital Environment Research Institute (DERI) at Empire House, Whitechapel campus. How to reach the iGGi Offices at Empire House, Whitechapel The address for the iGGi office space is 2nd Floor Empire House DERI 67-75 New Road London, Whitechapel E1 1HH Whitechapel campus map Accesibility: Empire House access guide Arriving by Tube The Whitechapel campus is easily accessible via public transport, with the Whitechapel Underground station on London Underground's Elizabeth Line (purple on the Tube map), Hammersmith and City Line (pink on the Tube map), and District Line (green on the Tube map), just a seven minute walk away. When you exit the station, turn right and walk along Whitechapel Road until the next larger junction. Turn left into New Road. Empire House will be located to your right. Please use the Transport for London Journey Planner to help you plan your journey: https://tfl.gov.uk/plan-a-journey/ or their interactive maps showing Underground, Docklands Light Railway (DLR) and bus information Arriving by Bus The Whitechapel campus is based on Whitechapel Road, on the 25 and 205 bus routes, and Empire House is just off Whitechapel Road, on New Road. Cycling/Walking If you are travelling by bike or walking, please use the postcode above and the campus map to help you navigate to the venue. Bike storage facilities can be found in the Empire House Basement. Arriving by car For both our Mile End and Whitechapel campuses, car parking for visitors is not offered due to our central location. Local parking restrictions also apply on weekdays and weekends.We therefore strongly recommend you use one of the alternative transport methods listed above. If you do need to drive to campus, QMUL open day published a list of offsite parking options within easy reach of Whitechapel, including park and ride options. If you are a blue badge holder and require parking on site, please email opendays@qmul.ac.uk . Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) iGGi QMUL Gallery Map depicting QMUL Mile End campus & the iGGi Con 2023 venue location iGGi Con 2023 venue: The Graduate Centre (Mile End campus, QMUL), viewed from Bancroft Road iGGi Con 2023 venue: Ground floor entrance of the Graduate Centre - Mile End campus, QMUL Mile End campus with the Graduate Centre on the left Birds eye view of Mile End campus, QMUL Map depicting QMUL Whitechapel campus with Empire House where all of the iGGi Office space is located Empire House Basement, QMUL (Whitechapel) iGGi office space, Empire House, QMUL (Whitechapel campus) The Blizard Building opposite Empire House, Whitechapel campus (QMUL) Previous Next

< Back Océane Lissillour University of York iGGi PG Researcher Available for placement I started my journey as an undergrad in psychology specialising in ergonomics. It was then that I realised that I could study video games for a living. This led me to relocate myself to the south of France to, mostly enjoy the sun, but also undertake my dream MSc in Technological Innovation and Cognitive Psychology. As part of my master’s internship I had the pleasure to work in collaboration with researchers from the CLLE, a laboratory branch of the national research centre. This helped me develop my knowledge and awareness of video games and motivational processes and convinced me that if I could survive the bureaucracy of the French Government I could probably do a PhD. Afterwards, I moved on to work in Aeronautics for a brief time but landed back to academia in 2024 to join the wonderful iGGI community as a postgraduate researcher. A description of Océane's research: My research focuses on the act of taking a regular activity and ‘gamifying’ it by applying mechanics commonly found inside video games (such as points). This technique has been widely applied within research but its psychological aspects have seldom been studied. The aim of this thesis is to assess the efficacy and applicability of this technique, particularly the score element mechanic. It focuses on understanding the functionalisation of numerical values in games as this has not been studied previously in the literature. This research hopes to contribute to the better understanding of the impact of the design of points on motivation and behaviour. It has been proposed in precedent literature that the use of gamification will provide a partial solution to the critical decline in learners’ motivation and engagement the schooling system faces today. oceane.lissillour@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website http://www.linkedin.com/in/oceane-lissillour LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisors: Dr Abi Evans Prof. Sebastian Deterding Themes Design & Development Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Tara Collingwoode-Williams Goldsmiths iGGi Alum Tara is an IGGI PhD student from Goldsmiths University taking her Mphil/PhD in Intelligent Games/Game intelligence with a focus on Avatar Embodiment and Interaction within Virtual Reality. Before this she graduated with a Bsc in Creative Computing. Over the years, her interdisciplinary profile has enabled her to work as a Technical Support and Researcher with many organisations in relation to her research, such as UCL, Great Ormond Street Hospital, George Mason Serious Games Institute in the United States where she also co-lectured a XR Games Module and, more recently as an Associate Lecturer in Goldsmiths University teaching Unity based XR experience development. Currently, she is contracting for USTech as an Assistant UX researcher at Facebook whilst completing her PhD program. With this rise in demand for Head Mounted Displays (HMDs), so is the need to create Embodied Shared Virtual Environments (ESVE) where users may experience authentic social interactions. Tara’s research presents an exploratory examination of Embodiment - meaning the subjective feeling of owning a virtual representation in VR, and specifically Consistency in Embodiment - relating to how we prioritize and syncronise objective attributes of embodiment (i.e avatar representation) in order to create ESVEs which supports more intuitive social interaction. The goal is to understand how different technical setups could have a psychological impact on participants' experiences in ESVE. This research hopes to inform development of successful social interaction in a variety of applications in VR, ranging from training to gaming. Tara presently holds a position as Lekturer in VR at Goldsmiths, Universtiy of London. tc.williams@gold.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/tara-collingwoode-williams-81141776/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Featured Publication(s): Delivering Bad News: VR Embodiment of Self Evaluation in Medical Communication Training The impact of self-representation and consistency in collaborative virtual environments G487 (P) Is clinician gaze and body language associated with their ability to identify safeguarding cues? Evaluating virtual reality experiences through participant choices A discussion of the use of virtual reality for training healthcare practitioners to recognize child protection issues A study of professional awareness using immersive virtual reality: the responses of general practitioners to child safeguarding concerns The effect of lip and arm synchronization on embodiment: a pilot study Themes Applied Games Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Sokol Murturi Goldsmiths iGGi Alum AI for game design: learning from designers For my PhD I am investigating how AI can help developers by learning to generate content in a similar fashion to the developers themselves. I envision a framework based on reinforcement learning, where an AI can learn a design policy for some content domain (e.g., FPS maps or platformer levels) by observing human designers. The AI would learn to take particular design actions in certain kinds of content states. Recent research into reinforcement learning has shown it is a powerful framework for developing complex agent behaviours and I believe there is a lot of potential to apply this work to game design. How would a human and artificial designer interact? Assume that an AI has learned to design a specific kind of content, such as a house, by observing human designers at work. A human designer could then partially develop some new content, and ask the AI to suggest some variations on it (see figure below), with both AI and human iterating on the design in a mixed-initiative interaction. The AI could learn from feedback from both the human designer and playtesting. As human feedback may not produce enough data for effective learning, the AI could perhaps extend this with data from simulated playtests. Game design decisions are often made with an expectation of how the player will react, and I could also look at how player models could be incorporated into the AI designer. In a reinforcement learning approach, the state could represent content+player, and the AI could learn to take design actions aimed a specific types of player. Developers could use this framework to develop content targeted at an individual player's style. Moreover, if the AI has learned something about how the human designer creates content, it can then be used live during the game to modify game elements in response to player interaction. Developers could set up modular levels, giving the AI the ability to adapt certain areas with content generated specifically to match the player. smurt001@gold.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Game AI - Previous Next

The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Intelligent Games & Game Intelligence (IGGI) is the world's largest PhD research in games programme. The annual IGGI conference showcases students' work. Based at Uni of York & Queen Mary Uni of London, IGGI collaborates closely with 80+ industry partners. Welcome to iGGi !!! We are a group of people doing research in games... Read More Follow us on social media: (if you musk) click - Researchers Available for Placement - click - iGGi THEMES - Game AI Game Data Design & Development Immersive Technology Esports Accessibility Creative Computing Game Audio Player Research Applied Games Check out the latest iGGi NEWS 12 September 2025 iGGi Con 2025 Successfully Concluded! The world's favourite doctoral training programme has done it again! Its annual conference was held at York this week, and It's A Wrap! Read More iGGi GAMES iGGi COMMUNITY PG Researchers Staff Industry Partners Management Team Alumni

< Back Dr Athen Ma Queen Mary University of London Supervisor Athen Ma is an innovator in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of communities and networked ecosystems. She is particularly interested in finding out how the structure and dynamics of communities evolve over time and what kind of mechanics that help underpin cohesion in communities. Her research has been published in world-leading journals, with recent works revealing the organisation of collaborative science in the UK (in PNAS highlight), uncovering how ecological networks rewire under drought (front cover of Nature Climate Change ), and how agricultural ecosystems are resilient to changes in farming management (in Nature Ecology and Evolution ). Online multiplayer games naturally form a platform for social relationships to develop, and deciphering the social structure and dynamics of the communities formed will provide insights into many aspects in games, ranging from users engagement and retention to team formation. For example, matchmaking enables users to find other players who share similar profiles, interests as well as skills and personality; has been seen as an important tool for establishing and maintaining a thriving gaming community. Athen is keen to explore novel ways to use advances in social network analysis to investigate player communities in games across multiple network scales, so as to better understand their formation and evolution. Findings from this research will help identify/predict the type of social interactions that will promote the level of engagement among players and community cohesion, paving the way for designing in-game activities that will foster long-time engagement and retention. athen.ma@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://sites.google.com/site/athenma2015/ Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Game Data Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Mike Cook Supervisor Mike is a Senior Lecturer at King's College London where he leads research into automated game design, computational creativity, and the theory and practice of generative systems. mike@possibilityspace.org Email Mastodon https://www.possibilityspace.org/ Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Creative Computing Design & Development Game AI - Previous Next

< Back Dr Timea Farkas Goldsmiths iGGi Alum Timea is a researcher striving to understand how people engage with technologies—broadly defined—in their everyday lives, and how new technologies can enhance people's experiences of play, creative expression, and beyond. She has always been drawn to learning new things, with a background ranging from creative arts through games to science, which allows her to apply an interdisciplinary outlook towards research. She holds an MA in Sonic Arts from the University of Sheffield and has graduated with a First Class (Hons) degree in music composition and technology with a special award for outstanding achievement and collaboration. A description of Timea's research: This research project centres around understanding board game players' relationship with the immersive capabilities of hybrid board games - board games with a digital component - through finding novel interactions which strengthen the sensory elements of tabletop games. By focusing on physical board game pieces as alternative input devices to touch screens, the goal is to explore the design space of analogue-digital hybrids with a player-centric approach. farkasmarimba@gmail.com Email Mastodon Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/timeafarkas/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Featured Publication(s): Exploring the Design Space of Analogue-Digital Hybrid Boardgames Using a Player-Centric Approach How Boardgame Players Imagine Interacting With Technology The Effects of a Soundtrack on Board Game Player Experience A Grounded Analysis of Player-Described Board Game Immersion Themes Creative Computing Immersive Technology Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Christian Guckelsberger Queen Mary University of London iGGi Alum + Supervisor Intrinsic Motivation in Computational Creativity with Applications to Games. (Industry placement at Splash Damage and Microsoft Research) This research investigates how we can engineer artificial systems that are creative in their own right. Christian addresses this challenge with computational models of intrinsic motivation (IM). Intrinsically motivated agents perform an activity for its inherent satisfaction rather than for some instrumental outcome. A classic example is to act in order to satisfy one’s curiosity. In both theoretical and applied studies, he demonstrates that models of IM can give rise to general, robust and adaptive creative systems. Christian has shown how models of IM can be used to create highly general non-player characters. Such characters can potentially be used in a wide range of games without previous knowledge of the game mechanics, reducing costs and effort in game development while increasing robustness and behavioural variety Christian’s ongoing research stretches beyond video games, investigating the role of computational models of IM for intentional agency, open-ended development and creativity in minimal lifeforms and artificial systems. Christian studied Computer Science, History of Art and Business in Germany and the UK and is now based in London, working towards a PhD in Artificial Intelligence. His work challenges the question how computers could ever become genuinely creative with a highly interdisciplinary approach based on Computing, Cognitive Science and Philosophy. Over the last few years, he published papers on a wide range of topics, held a tutorial on intrinsic motivation in video games, organised workshops on computational serendipity and spent three months at NYU’s Game Innovation Lab for a research collaboration. Christian has substantial industry experience, looking back at three years in the R&D department of SAP SE and a recent internship at Microsoft Research Cambridge. He enjoys working in an international environment with open-minded, passionate people. Please note: Updating of profile text in progress Email Mastodon Other links Website https://linkedin.com/in/christianguckelsberger LinkedIn BlueSky Github Featured Publication(s): Not All the Same: Understanding and Informing Similarity Estimation in Tile-Based Video Games Predicting game difficulty and engagement using AI players Embodiment and computational creativity Intrinsic Motivation in Computational Creativity Applied to Videogames. PhD Thesis. 306 pages. The Relationship of Future State Maximization and von Foerster's Ethical Imperative Through the Lens of Empowerment On the Machine Condition and its Creative Expression. Understanding and Strengthening the Computational Creativity Community: A Report From The Computational Creativity Task Force. Action Selection in the Creative Systems Framework Measuring perceived challenge in digital games: Development & validation of the challenge originating from recent gameplay interaction scale (CORGIS) Generative design in Minecraft: Chronicle challenge Towards Mode Balancing of Generative Models via Diversity Weights Automating Generative Deep Learning for Artistic Purposes: Challenges and Opportunities Themes Game AI - Previous Next

< Back Prof. Matthew Purver Queen Mary University of London Supervisor Matthew Purver is Professor of Computational Linguistics, and leader of QMUL’s Computational Linguistics Laboratory. His research has covered many aspects of natural language processing (NLP), with a £4m grant portfolio including projects on fundamental techniques like cross-lingual processing and incremental language understanding, and applications to news media, social media analysis and mental health diagnosis. His work has been covered by the Guardian, Telegraph, Independent, LA Times, NBC and Scientific American, among others. He is also a senior researcher at the Jožef Stefan Institute, Slovenia, and in 2011 he co-founded the company Chatterbox Labs Ltd. He is interested in supervising students with a background in NLP, linguistics or machine learning and an interest in analysis or generation of natural language. Research themes: Language in Games Game AI Computational Creativity m.purver@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~mpurver/ Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Creative Computing Game AI - Previous Next

< Back Dr Shanxin Yuan Queen Mary University of London Supervisor Dr Shanxin Yuan is a Lecturer in Digital Environment at Queen Mary University of London. He has rich expertise in deep learning, low level computer vision, and 3D digital modelling of humans from photographs. His PhD thesis focused on 3D hand pose estimation, his work is well recognized in the academia and is also deployed into commercially launched mass market mobile phones. His current research on digital humans focuses reconstructing, modelling, and rendering digital twins. He is interested in super-realistic immersive gaming, body/hand pose and facial expression retargeting, and behaviour analysis with avatars. For the new project in 2023, we are interested in working on human facial expression estimation, high-res realistic face reconstruction and rendering, face re-enactment, and face augmentation. The aim of the project is to build an editable super-realistic 3D human face model that can express novel expressions, views, shapes, and appearance, from multiple sources of input, such as images, sounds, and key points. The related techniques include deep learning, computer vision, natural language processing, and neural rendering. shanxin.yuan@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://shanxinyuan.github.io/ Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanxin-yuan-4859b656/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Applied Games Creative Computing Game AI Immersive Technology Player Research - Previous Next