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< 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 https://twitter.com/mtrc Twitter Github Themes Creative Computing Design & Development Game AI - Previous Next

< Back Prasad Sandbhor University of York iGGi PG Researcher Available for placement Prasad is a serious game designer and researcher. He has designed digital, tabletop and hybrid games in diverse areas such as education, healthcare, entrepreneurship, social safety, accessibility and sustainability. He is a part of the ‘Play in Nature’ initiative that crafts playful experiences to connect people with nature around them. He also teaches game design and user experience design. As a multidisciplinary design consultant, Prasad has been involved in conceptualising and creating B2C and B2B digital products for Indian as well as international organisations. His professional experience of 8 years in setting and leading design teams has made him proficient in strategic management of design. Prasad has been able to maintain his secret identity as a freelance author too. He writes short stories and essays in his native language, Marathi. A description of Prasad's research: Prasad’s PhD research explores designing games that facilitate the sensemaking of climate actions among university students. It defines ‘sensemaking’ as a structured process aiding the understanding of alternative pro-environmental actions within complex constraints, involving activities like reflection, brainstorming, and critiquing. The primary objective of his work is to identify game elements that impact players’ ability to make sense of climate actions to articulate design and facilitation guidelines for researchers, designers, and educators from climate change education and communication domains. It also aims to explore the transferability of sensemaking from the game into the real world. As a part of his research, Prasad is designing 3 climate change games using user-centred methods and exploratively evaluating them to see how they help players experience and develop sensemaking. He started with ‘Climate Club’, a tabletop role-playing game dealing with climate action-related decision-making challenges within everyday constraints. Its evaluation showed that the use of curated group setup, relatable contexts, problem-solving mechanic, and explicit mention of climate issues enhances sensemaking while group dynamics and asymmetric role-plays may cause hindrance. Combining these with other literature findings, Prasad designed ‘Climate Club 2.0’, a mini-live action role-playing game (LARP) about planning a climate-friendly holiday which is currently under evaluation. prasad.sandbhor@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.playinnature.in/ Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/prasad-sandbhor/ LinkedIn Twitter Github Supervisor: Dr Jon Hook Featured Publication(s): Radical Alternate Futurescoping: Solarpunk versus Grimdark Climate Club: A Group-based Game to Support Sensemaking of Climate Actions Radical Alternate Futurescoping: Solarpunk versus Grimdark Themes Applied Games Design & Development - Previous Next

< Back Philip Smith Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher I was born and raised in Bermuda, a small island in the Atlantic Ocean with an approximate population of 65,000 people. I finished my undergraduate degree in Computer Science with a Specialist in Game Design at the University of Toronto. For my Master's degree, I studied Computer Games Technology at City, University of London. My goal is to help expand the use of video games from purely recreational activities to viable avenues for aiding in real world problems. A description of Philip's research: My research will be focusing on maximizing player engagement in gamified citizen science as a continuation of my Master's thesis. 'Citizen science' is the practice of employing volunteers from the general public for the collection and/or processing of data with respect to a scientific project. Gamified citizen science projects have relied upon prolonged engagement from volunteers, but the number of long-term participants have been unsatisfactory in current projects. This project attempts to address the lack of sufficient volunteer engagement in gamified citizen science projects. The aim is to build a framework meant to guide game designers in creating an engaging citizen science video game based on the values set by Self-Determination Theory (SDT). These values adhere to the theory’s concept of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators of engagement. Intrinsic motivation relies on the factors of player autonomy, competence, and relatedness during gameplay. Extrinsic motivation relies on external incentives to core gameplay such as in-game rewards. As part of my research, I am evaluating multiple game design frameworks focused on Applied Games and identifying the merits and flaws each have when applied to a citizen science context. The information I gather will formulate a prototype of the Framework that will be iterated upon through design workshops, development, and playtesting. p.c.smithii@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn Twitter https://pjsmith97.github.io/ Github Themes Applied Games Design & Development - Previous Next

< Back Prof. Mark Sandler Queen Mary University of London Supervisor Queen Mary University of London, Centre for Digital Music, School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science. Mark Sandler has been doing research in audio and music – with a little computer vision as a side line – for over 40 years. He founded the world-leading Centre for Digital Music and has been its Director since 2003 (with a 4 year gap 2010-14). The Centre is now one of the largest such research groupings in the world, with around 80 PhDs, PDRAs and academics. In his early career he invented the Digital Power Amplifier, researched Drum Analysis and Synthesis for Simmons Electronics Ltd, moving into Fractal and Chaos analysis and synthesis, Ambisonic modelling and Fine Grain Audio Compression before becoming one of the pioneers of Music Information Retrieval around 2000. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, of the IEEE, the IET and the AES. He is also a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute. He has supervised over 40 PhD candidates successfully through their studies and is currently involved in four other CDTs at QM - in AI and Music (Co-Investigator, Impact, in Data Centric Engineering (Co-Director, Partnerships), in Data-centric Engineering (Director) and Media & Arts Technology (of which he was founding Director 2009-16). Research interests are: Digital Signal Processing, Digital Audio, Digital Music Technology, Music Informatics, Semantic Audio, Music Data Science, Semantic Music Metadata, Auditory User Interaction, Immersive Audio. He is particularly interested in supervising students with a background in Acoustics, Signal Processing, Audio, Machine/Deep Learning in: Virtual acoustics for games Games engines for virtual and augmented reality music experiences Research themes: Games Engines for non-gaming interactive experiences Game Audio and Music mark.sandler@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-sandler-a689b4/ Other links Website LinkedIn https://twitter.com/@markbsandler Twitter Github Themes Game Audio - Previous Next

< Back Dr Gavin Kearney University of York Supervisor Dr Gavin Kearney is a highly experienced researcher, lecturer and content creator specialising in spatial audio and surround sound. He joined the University of York as Lecturer in Sound Design in January 2011 and was appointed Associate Professor in Audio and Music Technology in 2016. He has written over 60 research articles and patents on different facets of immersive and interactive audio, including real-time audio signal processing, Ambisonics, virtual and augmented reality and recording and audio post-production technique development. He has undertaken innovative projects in collaboration with Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix, BBC, Dolby, Huawei, Abbey Road and Google amongst others. With the latter, he helped define the Google spatial audio pipeline through development of the SADIE binaural filters and decoders used worldwide. He is also an active sound engineer and producer of immersive audio experiences, working to develop new techniques and workflows for immersive music production in collaboration with Abbey Road Studios. He is Vice-Chair of the AES Audio for Games Technical Committee and was Co-Chair of the 2019 AES Immersive and Interactive Audio Conference at York. Gavin is particularly interested in supervising students with an audio background who wish to explore the following areas relating to audio for games Intelligent sound design Virtual Acoustics Spatial Audio Binaural sound Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality Immersive audio experiences for next gen mobile platforms Ambisonics and spherical acoustics Using audio to enhance player emotional state (as well as projects on health and well-being) Game Audio for therapy Accessibility through Game Audio gavin.kearney@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.audiolab.york.ac.uk Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/gavin-p-kearney LinkedIn https://twitter.com/GPKSound Twitter Github Themes Accessibility Applied Games Game AI Game Audio - Previous Next

< Back Dr Søren Riis Queen Mary University of London Supervisor Søren Riis has more than 15 years of experience in teaching computability, complexity and the art of creating fast efficient algorithms. He has a strong interest in reinforcement learning and generative adversarial networks (GANs) related to strategy games. Riis has been actively involved in computer chess, and is listed on the wiki of influential people in chess programming https://www.chessprogramming.org/ Søren Riis is a strong player of strategy games including Chess, Shogi, Go and Bridge at an internal level. He has worked as a consultant for an AI company and is involved in applying deep learning for the card game of bridge. For the last 5 years he has been working on technical projects related to machine learning and reinforcement learning. He has practical experience and interest in scientific computing on super computers, and in creating C and C++ libraries to run from within python. Søren Riis is particularly interested in supervising students with a strong technical and/or maths background. Aptitude for strategy games with an interest in one the following ares is an advantage. Games requiring inductive reasoning combined with exploration. Hidden identity games (Werewolf, Resistance/Avalon, Mafia etc) Using GANs to sample realistic scenarios during gameplay Deep Reinforcement Learning in multi-agent strategy games Building and analysing games for investigating evolution of communication. Research themes: Game AI Game Design Game Creativity Games and mathematics s.riis@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/profiles/riissoren.html Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/soren-riis-13602117/ LinkedIn https://twitter.com/sorenmollerriis Twitter Github Themes Creative Computing Game AI Game Data - Previous Next

< Back Dr Laurissa Tokarchuk Queen Mary University of London iGGi Research Collaboration Coordinator Supervisor Laurissa Tokarchuk is a senior lecturer and researcher working on playful ways of exploring and integrating virtual and real world space. Her primary focus is looking at engaging ways of creating and interacting with AR content in games and incorporating physical sensors for increasing playability in mobile games. Her interests also include merging AI with mobile and social sensing to detect events and behaviours in crowds and games, and the use of technology to promote learning/well-being. Her research has resulted in the widely used SensingKit framework, best poster awards, media appearances in the Guardian and BBC (Royal Institution Christmas Lectures). She is particularly interested in supervising students on the following topics: AR/VR games for learning and cognition design for promoting behaviour change understanding and designing for player behaviour and curiosity in games Research themes: Game AI Games with a Purpose Computational Creativity Player Experience laurissa.tokarchuk@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~laurissa/ Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurissa-tokarchuk-27aa3214/ LinkedIn https://twitter.com/laurissa Twitter Github Themes Applied Games Creative Computing Game AI Immersive Technology Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Luiza Gossian Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher Available for placement Luiza is a multidisciplinary researcher, game designer and developer interested in translating real world concepts into engaging game mechanics. She is passionate about creating games that can encourage an understanding of ourselves and the socially connected world we live in. Luiza is also an experienced painter, graphic designer and photographer and uses her visual skills and psychology background to prototype experimental game designs, design game documentation and craft atmospheric experiences. A description of Luiza's research: Luiza’s research centres on how video games might be designed as interventions for prejudice reduction between conflicting groups and draws on theories of intergroup and cultural psychology, as well as persuasive game design. She is currently exploring how different game designs might impact player’s perceptions of their own and others’ group memberships with an aim to increase understanding and reduce prejudice between those groups. So far she has developed a casual game that abstracts the ten stages of genocide to be used as an educational primer, an experiential game that depicts the realities of refugees evicting their homes, and is currently working on a multiplayer game based on the principles of the Intergroup Contact Hypothesis, which is the leading methodology for reducing prejudice levels between conflicting groups. l.gossian@outlook.com Email Mastodon http://www.gossianblurs.com/ Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/lu-goss/ LinkedIn https://twitter.com/LuGossian Twitter Github Supervisors: Prof. Sebastian Deterding Dr Anne Hsu Themes Applied Games Design & Development - Previous Next

< Back Dr Catherine Flick iGGi Responsible Innovation Lead Supervisor Catherine Flick is a Reader in Computing and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University and has a particular interest in the ethics of emerging technologies (including video games). Her video game research is largely interdisciplinary and focused on the social and ethical impacts of and ethics in design of video games. Previous video game research and talk topics includes on Pokemon Go and mental health, design of moral decision making systems in Bioware games, the representation of chickens in video games, the philosophy of zombie games, desirability of lootboxes, serious games for the hearing impaired, etc. She regularly attends and speaks at PAX East, and has spoken on games and similarly weird things at various conferences and events internationally. She is also the responsible innovation lead for the IGGI programme, so has a particular interest in development of codes of ethics or ethical design principles for games, having worked on the updated ACM Code of Ethics and run EU funded projects that developed responsible innovation guidelines in the fields of healthcare IT, smart homes/smart health, cyber security, nanotechnology & biomedicine. She is particularly interested in students who are excited about the intersection of video games and society from a critical philosophical perspective, or from a social sciences perspective. Research themes: Ethical Game Design Games with a Purpose Player Experience Gamification Social/Ethical Impact of Games Diversity & Inclusion in Games Philosophy & Games cflick@dmu.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.liedra.net Other links Website LinkedIn https://twitter.com/CatherineFlick Twitter https://github.com/liedra Github Themes Accessibility Applied Games Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Michael Aichmüller Queen Mary University of London iGGi Alum My background lies in physics and statistical mathematics with a later specialization in optimization in the fields of Reinforcement Learning (RL) and Causal Inference. My first encounters with RL occurred during my Masters when studying how to create strong policies in perfect information games using algorithms, such as MinMax, MCTS, DQN, and later AlphaZero variants. My favorite game application remains the board game ‘Stratego’. In the meantime I investigated the estimation of causal parents influencing a target variable from interventional datasets for my Master’s thesis. Specifically, how well Deep Learning estimations could replace exponentially scaling graph search methods with approximations requiring only polynomial runtime. A description of Michael's research: My research focuses on the state-of-the-art in game-playing solutions for imperfect information games (think games like Poker, Stratego, Liar’s Dice etc.). I am particularly interested in the application of No-Regret (and related) methods which seek to learn those actions that provided the most benefit (or least regret) compared to the benefit all possible actions provided on average. These methods learn such via iterative play to find a Nash-Equilibrium (NE), a game-theoretic concept comparable to an optimal policy known from Single-Agent RL, but for all partaking players at once. Particularly, variants of Counterfactual Regret Minimization (CFR) remain the state-of-the-art algorithms for computing NEs in 2-player zero-sum games due to their success in tabular form so far. Yet, prohibitive complexity and memory scaling bars them from large-scale applications. Hence, research of recent years seeks to couple CFR (and other No-Regret methods) with function approximation, such as Deep Learning, to scale up the size of applicable games with already notable successes (Deepstack, Libratus, Pluribus, DeepNash). My research seeks to contribute to this endeavour by first analyzing the specifics of established methods and finding ways to introduce Hierarchical RL concepts to No-Regret learning. Please note: Updating of profile text in progress m.f.aichmueller@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-aichmueller/ LinkedIn Twitter https://github.com/maichmueller Github Supervisor(s): Prof. Simon Lucas Dr Raluca Gaina Themes Applied Games Game AI - Previous Next

< Back Dien Nguyen Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher I graduated from the University of California, Irvine with a BSc in Computer Game Science and a Minor in Statistics. My undergraduate thesis focused on augmenting Monte Carlo tree search with a value network trained through a self-play framework similar to AlphaZero. During my undergraduate degree, I became interested in the intersection of games and artificial intelligence—applying methods of reinforcement learning, graphical models, and knowledge representation to game playing and game design. My long-term goal is to work on the problem of formalizing game elements, representing game systems in a way that allows for automatic reasoning and inference. I also enjoy playing games where I can customize and theorycraft my playstyle to satisfy certain gameplay fantasies while beating the game. My current research is within the field of Automated Game Design Learning, an emerging field in AI research with the purpose of learning game design models through playing. The current strategy is to play out the full game in thousands of iterations, which can be impractical for complex games with large state space and computationally expensive forward models. My research will focus on applying Go-Explore—a recent exploration paradigm that outperforms many state-of-the-arts—to improve the efficiency of automated playtesting of tabletop games by using an archive of interesting game states to reduce the time needed for self-play. The research will be primarily conducted within the TAG framework and aim to be game-agnostic. On successful completion, this research will improve game development cycles, resulting in higher-quality games, and potentially give unique insights into the game design process. d.l.nguyen@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn Twitter Github Supervisor: Dr Diego Pérez-Liébana Featured Publication(s): Unveiling modern board games: an ML-based approach to BoardGameGeek data analysis Themes Applied Games Creative Computing Design & Development Game AI - 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 Twitter Github Themes Design & Development Immersive Technology Player Research - Previous Next