Pavanjot Gill

M.Eng Candidate, Software Engineering
September 2016 – Present 

Pavanjot is interested in taking video game interfaces (Heads-Up Display) designed for a single screen and reconfiguring them to support split-screen multiplayer games. The goal is to have the HUD take as little space as possible for each player but still retain all of the essential information the player needs.

Adrian Sciga

M.A.Sc Candidate, Software Engineering
September 2016 – Present 

Adrian completed his undergraduate studies in the Software Engineering and Game Design program at McMaster University. His research interests centre around procedural generation in games. Currently he is exploring procedural story generation for a family of games.

University of California – Davis

Faculty/ Post Doc

Gina Bloom

Gina Bloom is associate professor of English at the University of California, Davis, where she is the Project Director for Play the Knave, a motion-sensing digital game about Shakespeare performance. She is the author of Voice in Motion: Staging Gender, Shaping Sound in Early Modern England (Penn Press, 2007) and serves as a Trustee for the Shakespeare Association of America. Her work on games and theater has been published in Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Bulletin, Theatre Survey, and numerous edited collections, and her book Gaming Theater: Interactive Play Before Digital Media is forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press.

Stephanie Boluk

Stephanie Boluk is an assistant professor in the English Department and the Cinema and Digital Media Program at University of California, Davis. Her research and teaching incorporate game studies, media studies, utopian studies, and critical theory to explore videogames, electronic literature, alternative currencies, finance capitalism, and the convergence of leisure and labor in contemporary information economies.

Jordan Carroll

Jordan Carroll is a postdoctoral scholar and Associate Director of ModLab at the University of California, Davis. He received his Ph.D. in English with a Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory at the University of California, Davis. His current project examines the culture of video gamers, computer programmers, science fiction fans, and other so-called geeks through the lens of the temporal turn in queer theory. At ModLab, he has worked with the Critical Wearables research group on the cultural and social dimensions of fitness tracking and other wearable devices. His work has appeared in journals including American Literature and The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts.

Joe Dumit

Joe Dumit is the Director of the Institute for Social Sciences, Chair of Performance Studies, Professor and former director of Science and Technologies Studies and Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. He is also on the faculty of the Cultural Studies PhD program. He is in the process of launching an undergraduate program in Data Studies, helping undergraduates learn to think critically and computationally about data. His most recent book is on pharmaceutical marketing and clinical trials called Drugs for Life: How Pharmaceutical Companies Define Our Health (Duke University Press, 2012). He helped found the ModLab through the Davis Humanities Institute. He has been running workshops on rethinking your research through game design, and he is developing a game on fracking.

Kris Fallon

Kris Fallon is a film and digital media scholar whose research focuses on non-fiction visual culture across a range of platforms, from still photography to data visualization.

His essays on digital technology and documentary have recently appeared in Film Quarterly and Screen, and are forthcoming in several edited anthologies. Before coming to Davis, he played an active role in the early stages of both the Berkeley Center for New Media and the CITRIS Data & Democracy Initiative at UC Berkeley, where he received his Ph.D.

He is currently working on a book entitled Where Truth Lies: Digital Culture and Documentary Film After 9/11.

Oliver Kreylos

Oliver Kreylos is an associate researcher at the University of California, Davis. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Davis, and his M.A. in Computer Science from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

Patrick LeMieux

Patrick LeMieux is a game designer and media theorist. Recent projects include Speculation (http://speculat1on.net), an alternate reality game that explores the culture of Wall Street investment banks in the context of the 2008 global economic crisis, and Open House (http://no-place.org), a telematic installation which allows visitors to virtually squat in a Florida home undergoing foreclosure after the U.S. housing collapse. He has published extensively on game studies, critical code studies, and media technologies in journals such as Critical Inquiry and Digital Humanities Quarterly. His book Metagaming: Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Videogames was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2017.

Colin Milburn

Colin Milburn is Gary Snyder Chair of Science and the Humanities and Professor of English, Science and Technology Studies, and Cinema and Digital Media at the University of California, Davis. He directs the Science and Technology Studies Program as well as the ModLab digital humanities laboratory. His research focuses on the relations of science, literature, and media technologies. He is the author of Nanovision: Engineering the Future (2008), Mondo Nano: Fun and Games in the World of Digital Matter (2015), Respawn: Gamers, Hackers, and Technogenic Life (2018), and numerous other writings about science fiction, video games, and the history of science.

Michael Neff

Michael Neff is an associate professor in Computer Science and Cinema & Digital Media at the University of California, Davis where he directs the Motion Lab, an interdisciplinary research effort in character animation and embodied input. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and is also a Certified Laban Movement Analyst. His interests include character animation tools, especially modeling expressive movement, physics-based animation, gesture and applying performing arts knowledge to animation. He received an NSF CAREER Award, the Alain Fournier Award for his dissertation, best paper award from Intelligent Virtual Agents and Motion in Games and the Isadora Duncan Award for Visual Design.  He also currently serves as Chair for the Department of Cinema and Digital Media.

Graduate Students

Treena Balds

Treena Balds conducted her doctoral studies in English at UC Davis. Her interests include early C20 literature, science, philosophy, and particularly the formalisms via which these disciplines achieve an interdisciplinary connection with each other. She has recently completed her dissertation on the mathematical subject in works by Samuel Beckett.

Evan Buswell

Evan Buswell PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at UC Davis, where he works at the UC Davis ModLab as the lead programmer on several games and code art projects. Before entering graduate school he wrote code for the software industry. Evan’s current project investigates the relationship between the development of the capitalist credit system and the formation of code and algebraic notation. In 2015, Evan was a UCHRI Fellow in Residence for the “Culture|Finance|Capital” working group at UC Irvine.

Ofir Cahalan

Ofir Cahalan is a first year PhD student in English at the University of California, Davis. He specializes in early modern English literature, specifically Shakespeare studies, as well as the digital humanities. His favorite play is The Merchant of Venice. He is currently working on the Play the Knave project.

Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal

Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal did his undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Indore, studied English at University of Chicago, and is now pursuing his PhD in English at UC Davis. His research interests revolve around contemporary art and literature, science and technology studies, media theory, and videogame studies.

Ksenia Fedorova

Ksenia Fedorova is a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at the University of California, Davis. She received a B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy at Ural State University and a M.A. in Art History at University of Colorado, Boulder, as well as a PhD (kandidat nauk) in Philosophy/Aesthetics at Saint-Petersburg State University. Her research interests include wearable technology.

Sawyer Kemp

Sawyer Kemp is a doctoral candidate studying 17th and 18th Century drama and contemporary performance.  Their dissertation investigates the many valences of “accessibility” in contemporary Shakespeare performance. They currently collaborate with the UC Davis ModLab on the motion-capture performance project Play the Knave, a Shakespeare video game with installations at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, and the African American Shakespeare Company in San Francisco.

Alina Kontareva

Alina is a Fulbright Visiting Doctoral Student at UC Davis. She holds a Master’s Degree in Linguistics and Anthropology, and she is a Doctoral Candidate with the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia. Alina specializes in the social studies of science, technology and innovation. She is currently leading a research project centered on Instagram and visualization of big data. Alina plans to further her research in computational methodology in order to utilize machines to better record and analyze qualitative content in the fields of humanities and social sciences.

Evan Lauteria

Evan W. Lauteria is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of California-Davis. An organizational and cultural sociologist, Lauteria’s work has focused on the industrial production of video game culture, particularly around LGBTQ representation. He is the co-editor of Rated M for Mature: Sex and Sexuality in Video Games (Bloomsbury Press 2015), and his work appears in Reconstruction and Analog Game Studies. In the UC-Davis ModLab, Lauteria works on data analytics for the Shakespeare karaoke game Play the Knave, design management for the corporation simulator Frack the Game, and content analysis for the LGBTQ Video Game Archive (lgbtqgamearchive.com). His dissertation explores the history of the Japanese video games industry during the “console wars” in the 1980s and 90s, drawing on archival sources from North America, Western Europe, and Japan.

Nick Toothman

Nick Toothman is a computer science PhD candidate and member of the character animation research group and the ModLab at UC Davis. His research focuses on interactive shape control for character meshes, particularly in the areas of virtual reality, skinning, input modalities, performance, and artist tools. He developed the avatar body tracking for the ModLab’s project Play the Knave. In recent years, his interests have steered him towards virtual reality as a platform for computing, socializing, and entertainment. His ongoing goal is to help build the foundation that allows everyone to enjoy the infinite possibilities of VR.

Emma Leigh Waldron

Emma Leigh Waldron is a PhD student in the Performance Studies Graduate Group at the University of California, Davis, and Co-Editor-in-Chief at the online journal Analog Game Studies. She holds an MA in Performance Research from the University of Bristol, and a BA in English from Rutgers University. Emma’s research focuses on affective communities that coalesce around intimate performances of touch. She is currently researching the mediated intimacy of ASMR videos on YouTube, and how sex is represented in larp (live-action role-playing games). She is especially interested in how definitions and manifestations of sexuality are negotiated, reified, and transformed through these practices. Her work lies at the intersection of performance studies and media studies, as it questions the role of embodiment in sexuality, intimacy, and touch. Her work is informed by feminist theory, queer theory, affect studies, and phenomenology. She can be reached at ewaldron@ucdavis.edu.

John Zibell

John Zibell makes media/physical artworks for theatre, cinema, gallery, and the street examining the collision of virtual with actual bodies. He worked and trained as an actor and director for many years in New York with Mike Nichols, Paul Sills and Andre Gregory.

John is a Master of Fine Arts directing candidate in the Department of Theatre and Dance at UC Davis, where he directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream, assistant-directed and performed in Guillermo Gomez-Peña’s Corpo-Ilicito: The Post Human Society 6.9 and Anna Fenemore’s The Matter of Taste. John also created video for Gallathea and Body of Knowledge, directed by Peter Lichtenfels and Karl Frost respectively.

Undergraduate Students

Sarah Asnaashari

Sarah Asnaashari is a recent graduate from the University of California, Davis, and has interned with ModLab’s Play the Knave for two years as a script writer, play tester, and researcher. Her academic studies have focused on Medieval to Early Modern writing as well as Children’s Literature, a subject for which she completed an Ungraduated Honors Thesis. She aspires to become a children’s novelist and intends put her years of Shakespeare study to good use in her writing endeavors.

Raeanne Baird

Raeanne Baird is a third year English major interested in pursuing a career in the entertainment field. She hopes to work in writing, editing, and marketing after graduation. This will be her second year working with the Play the Knave team as a script editor.

Alison Blecman

Alison Blecman is an undergraduate student at UC Davis pursuing degrees in English with an emphasis in literary criticism, and in History, with an emphasis in medieval Europe and the modern Middle-East. On campus, she is involved in the Gender and Sexuality Commission, and runs a weekly gathering every Friday for members of the commission. She interned for Play the Knave originally as a script writer and editor and has since moved on to manage social media.

Rebecca Fong

Rebecca Fong is a senior undergraduate student at UC Davis, pursuing a double major in English and Psychology, with a minor in Asian American Studies. She has worked for the past three years as a Peer Advisor for the English Department and President of the Beyond the Book Club, which is the official English Club at UC Davis. She currently works with English Professor Gina Bloom on Play the Knave as a play-tester and audio research intern. In her free time, she likes to play videogames (especially Nintendo), read manga, and learn about social justice.

Robert Fox

Robert Fox is an undergraduate major in English at the University of California, Davis. He works on Play the Knave as a Play-testing and Script-writing intern. He hopes to make a career in the video game industry.

Mira Pranav

Mira is an Economics and English double major at UC Davis, hoping to minor in Music. She has been on the Play the Knave team for six months. She leads the development for the game’s music and sound, and assists in script editing. Mira plans to attend law school after graduating in 2019.

Karla Quezada

Karla Quezada is a 4th year English and Linguistics double major at UC Davis. She is interested in theory – be it syntactical or literary – modernist works of literature, and the intersection of computer science with the humanities and social sciences. Karla currently interns with Play the Knave as a script editor and playtester.

Amanda Shores

Amanda Shores is a senior English major. She is the head intern for the Play the Knave pedagogy team, working with Professor Gina Bloom to integrate the game into classrooms. She is also a lead tutor for the Davis Bridge program, an after school program for underserved students in the Davis school district.

Holly Simpson

Holly Simpson is a 4th year English major whose interests include liminality in Irish literature, especially as it relates to gender and sexuality. She plans to complete an honors thesis on At Swim, Two Boys that examines the non-binary aspects of Irish society, focusing on the turbulent time period of the 1916 Easter Rising. After completing my Bachelor’s Degree, she hopes to go on to obtain a Master’s in Library and Information Science.

Marissa Trujillo

Marissa Trujillo is a fourth-year English major/Professional Writing minor hoping to achieve a career in literary publishing. Her main areas of interest in the literary world are medieval and early modern works. When she took project director Gina Bloom’s Shakespeare course last year, she discovered Play the Knave and realized that there is still a demand for Shakespearians in the modern world. As a scriptwriting intern, member of the social media team, and audio analyst, she has developed a passion for preserving the great works of the past in the ever-changing world of new media.

Karen Xu

Karen Xu is an undergraduate English major at the University of California, Davis. She works on the Play the Knave project and she is graduating in 2017.

Intern

Raul Castellanos

Raul Castellanos is a pedagogy intern for Play the Knave. He is from San Diego and is currently a fourth-year undergraduate English major here at UC Davis. He is preparing to enter a credential program and plans to teach high school English. He writes short stories and has recently begun working on a novel.  His hobbies are writing, biking and traveling.

Alumni

Amanda Phillips

Amanda Phillips is Assistant Professor of English at Georgetown University, affiliated faculty in Film and Media Studies, and the co-facilitator of the American Studies Association Digital Humanities Caucus. She writes about race, gender, and social justice in videogames and the digital humanities. You can find her work in Queer Game Studies, Games and Culture, Digital Creativity, and Debates in the Digital Humanities.

Josef Nguyen

Josef Nguyen is an assistant professor of game studies in the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research engages science and technology studies and media studies, focusing on the politics of play, toys, and games. His current work investigates contemporary debates regarding creativity, children, and digital media. Previously, he completed a Ph.D. in English at the University of California, Davis, where he was active in research in game studies and design through the ModLab and IMMERSe.

University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT)

Faculty Members

Andrew Hogue

Dr. Andrew Hogue is the Program Director and Associate Professor of the Game Development and Entrepreneurship program at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT). Through his past involvement in the Immersive Visual environment project at York (IVY), he has gained interests in psychophysics, stereoscopic 3D, and levels-of-realism for immersion.  As part of IMMERSE, Dr. Hogue actively investigates immersive technologies such as virtual-reality (VR), augmented-reality (AR) and mixed-reality (MR) environments and their effects on humans. He is currently studying the use of tangible interfaces for the design and development of interactive content and is studying user experience models and the interaction of technology on the user experience for designing better VR experiences.

Alvaro Joffre Uribe Quevedo

Dr. Alvaro Joffre Uribe Quevedo is an Assistant Professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. He received his bachelor’s degree in Mechatronics Engineering from Universidad M. Nueva Granada – Colombia, followed by a Master and Doctoral degree in Mechanical Engineering from the State University of Campinas – Brazil. In September 2016 he concluded his Post-Doctoral appointment at the Games Institute at the University of Waterloo conducting research on the effects of games in medical training. Prior to joining UOIT, he worked as an Assistant Professor at Universidad M. Nueva Granada where he conducted research on exergames, medical simulation and immersive virtual reality in medical procedures. His research interests are in virtual reality towards the development of applications that take advantage of immersion and interaction while designing and employing emerging technologies and game elements in training and learning scenarios.

Bill Kapralos

Bill Kapralos is an Associate Professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. His current research interests include: immersive technologies, serious gaming, multi-modal virtual environments/simulation/reality, the perception of auditory events, and 3D (spatial) sound generation. He has been invited to speak on the topic of immersive technologies, virtual simulation, and serious gaming for medical education at numerous international events. At the invitation of the Federal Republic of Germany, he took part in the week-long “Electronic Start-Up: Industry 4.0 in Germany, Country of Innovation”, Visitors Programme in August 2016. He is a past recipient of an IBM Centers for Advanced Studies Faculty Award, a past co-recipient of a Google Faculty Award, and a past recipient of a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellowship to conduct research in Japan. He recently completed a two-month stay at Shizuoka University in Hamamatsu, Japan, as a Visiting Research Fellow and Guest Professor as part of this Fellowship.

Student Members

Brent Cowan

Brent Cowan is currently a PhD Candidate in Computer Science at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) under the supervision of Dr. Bill Kapralos. He holds a Master’s degree in computer science and a Bachelor of Information Technology degree specializing in game development. Brent became involved in research as an undergrad developing real-time acoustical modeling algorithms which resulted in several peer reviewed publications. Since then, he has made contributions to a variety of fields including serious games, simulation, computer graphics, and artificial intelligence (AI). His current research will allow virtual environments of all types including 2D and non-polygonal environments, to have believable spatial audio. In addition, this new system will provide a sense of hearing for AI controlled non-player characters (NPCs).

Geoffrey Gaudi

My name is Geoffrey Gaudi and I am a graduate student at the University of Ontario. We are partnered with McMaster University. My thesis is on Neuroplasticity, Serious Games and Autism. Autistic children often have trouble with social communication and may not develop language. I am interested in games that aim to change or rewire children’s brains. We are really at the beginning of a complex field. I am also interested in the pleasure center of the brain and its connection to video games. I am interested in research that explores a connection of the player to the game; the creation of a fun or exciting experience. My generation grew up on the original NES console (happy times) and one of my favorite games was Metroid. I would like to use Emotiv or NeuroSky in my future research as I will be able to peer into my own brain.

Michael Gharbharan

Graduate of the Game Development and Entrepreneurship at UOIT. Currently working on a MSc which investigates the use of tangible interfaces and spatial augmented reality as means to develop digital prototypes of animated sequences. The goals of the work are to develop and evaluate a system which aims to reduce iteration time and make the creation of virtual environments and animations more accessible.

Zain Khan

Zain Khan received his MSc in Computer Science under the supervision of Dr. Bill Kapralos at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in 2015. During his Master’s, Zain developed a web-based low-fidelity serious-gaming framework called Fydlyty, that allows health-based professionals and students to learn cultural competence skills. His other work involves the development of an internet-based educational networking tool called OPEN, that enable trainees to develop relationships, foster connections, and share simulation-based experiences in an interactive manner. Zain also has extensive experience working with web and digital technologies. Currently, he enjoys being part of the digital media team at Hill+Knowlton Strategies where he is responsible for implementing web initiatives for Hill+Knowlton Strategies and their clients including websites, web applications; and native mobile and tablet applications.

Mohammed Melaisi

Mohammed Melaisi is a Master’s of Computer Science graduate student in the Faculty of Science at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Oshawa, Canada. His research interests include multi-modal interactions, haptic interface, human  computer interaction, serious games and human perception. He is working currently on analyzing the effect of sound on haptic devices fidelity.

Robert Savaglio

Robert Savaglio is a 3rd year undergraduate student in the Game Development and Entrepreneurship program at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. He is interested in video game programming, video game design, and computer graphics. He has attended the Level-Up Student Game Showcase twice, for his games High Schooled and Dodge Bomb, and has received awards at the UOIT Games-Con for Best Game Aesthetics(2016), Best Gameplay(2017), Player’s Choice 2nd Year Game(2017), and Best of Show(2017). He also presented his game Dodge Bomb at the AMD student showcase in April 2017. He is interested in serious games for medical education, and is currently researching the suitability of the Microsoft HoloLens and augmented reality for medical practice and education.

University of Waterloo

Faculty Members

Beth Coleman

Associate Professor, English Language and Literature

Beth Coleman is co-director of the Critical Media Lab at the University of Waterloo, and participates in the Rhetoric & Professional Writing major as well as the Master of Arts in Experimental Digital Media. She specializes in digital media, race theory, game culture, and literary studies. She researches and creates media design on virtual worlds, x-reality, geofilms, machinima animation, and race as technology.

Karen Collins

Associate Professor, Drama and Speech Communication

Karen Collins’ research is diverse and interdisciplinary, but has always had a central focus: the interaction of humans and machines, specifically as related to sound. Her research is driven by the following questions: What does it mean to interact with sound? In what ways do people interact with sound? And, how does interactive sound change our association to, our involvement with, and our experience of media? Although her primary focus has been interactive sound in video games, she has also applied her theories and methods to mobile phones, computer interfaces, slot machines, and product design. Her research spans across the fields of music, audio engineering, acoustics, computer science (information retrieval, human-computer interaction), interaction design, sound design, film studies, cultural theory, game design/development, and areas of philosophy and psychology.

Chrysanne Di Marco

Associate Professor, Artificial Intelligence Group (David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science) Cross Appointment, English Language and Literature

Chrysanne Di Marco has been a member of the Artificial Intelligence Group since 1990. She is also project leader of the HealthDoc project, which works to develop natural language generation systems for producing multimedia health information tailored to medical conditions and patient characteristics. Her current research includes: a project to formalize an ontology of rhetorical figures for use in computational natural language applications, an automated text-messaging system to promote breast feeding in new mothers, and an automated personalized Virtual Sleep Coach.