Search Results

< Back Prof. Marian Ursu Goldsmiths Supervisor Marian Ursu has a first degree in Computer Science, a PhD in Artificial Intelligence, and has worked over the past twenty years in the development of new forms of mediated expression and interaction, in the space of convergence of digital technology with creative practice. He worked at Goldsmiths, University of London, pioneering “creative computing”, a term denoting a fundamental link between digital technologies, the arts and media. At York, he led the development of the Interactive Media subject area in the department of Theatre Film Television and Interactive Media, inherently interdisciplinary, building on Computer Science, User Experience Design, Media Practice and Cultural Studies. He is a co-founder and the Director of the Digital Creativity (DC) Labs ( https://digitalcreativity.ac.uk ), a centre of excellence in impact-driven research in creativity for games, narrative media and the rich space of media convergence that lies in between, and Co-Director of XR Stories ( https://xrstories.co.uk ), a creative industries partnership working across film, TV, games, media arts, heritage, advertising and technology to champion a new future in storytelling, in which he leads on Research and Development. His personal research is situated in the area of narrative experiences in scree media – shared screens (film, TV), personal screens (games, social media), stories in VR, XR narrative experiences – drawing from and building on established narrative art-forms and media including film and TV, radio, theatre, and opera. One of his key research objective is to explore the creative process that emerges in dialogue between humans and machines (AI). On one hand, this is necessary for the authoring of more complex narrative experiences that truly exploit the affordances of interactive and immersive digital media technologies. On the other hand, this is a yet poorly untapped space of opportunities, potentially conducive to significant findings. He is particularly interested in supervising students interested in exploring creativity in dialogue with AI and/or the development of novel narrative experiences, in topics including: Conceptualising the space of interactive storytelling Developing authoring tools and techniques for interactive storytelling Creating new forms of narrative engagement Analysing the concept of creativity in interactive media which emerges in conversation with AI Research themes: Narrative Games; Narrative Experiences Storytelling with Convergent Media Object-Based Media Computational Creativity Live mediated experiences (performance, sports, esports) Entertainment media and mental health Games and Theatre marian.ursu@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianursu/?originalSubdomain=uk LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Creative Computing Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Sarah West University of York Supervisor Sarah West is an interdisciplinary researcher and practitioner working to bring diverse voices into research through participatory approaches, including citizen science. Sarah is currently Director of SEI York, a Centre of the Stockholm Environment Institute, a science-to-policy research institute, whose York Centre is at the University of York in the Department of Environment and Geography. She has used citizen science approaches to address topics as diverse as air pollution, biodiversity, parenting, and exploring community responses to Covid-19. Her projects mainly take place in the UK and Kenya. Sarah has spent over a decade designing, running and evaluating citizen science projects, and together with other SEI colleagues has written reports for Defra, UK Earth Observation Framework and journal articles exploring who participates in citizen science, their motivations for participation, and how volunteers can be recruited and retained. She is particularly interested in exploring how different messaging and communication affects participation in citizen science projects. sarah.west@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.york.ac.uk/sei/staff/sarah-west/ Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-west-59b82690/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Accessibility Design & Development Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Prof. Nick Bryan-Kinns Queen Mary University of London Supervisor Nick Bryan-Kinns is Professor of Interaction Design and Director of the Media and Arts Technology Centre at Queen Mary University of London. He is Distinguished Professor at Wuhan University of Technology, and Guest Professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Fellow of the British Computer Society, Senior Member of the Association for Computing Machinery, and leads the Sonic Interaction Design Lab in the Centre for Digital Music. He has published international journal papers on cross-cultural design, participatory design, mutual engagement, interactive art, and tangible interfaces. His research has been exhibited internationally and reported widely from the New Scientist to the BBC. He chaired the Steering Committee for the ACM Creativity and Cognition Conference series, and is a recipient of ACM and BCS Recognition of Service Awards. He is interested in supervising students with HCI, Interaction Design, or AI backgrounds on research into the intersection of Sonic Interaction Design, play, and AI. Especially project which involve designing and evaluating computer mediated experiences for human participation and collaboration. Research themes: Game Audio and Music Games with a Purpose Computational Creativity Player Experience Gamification n.bryan-kinns@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~nickbk/ Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Applied Games Creative Computing Game Audio Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Cristina Guerrero-Romero Queen Mary University of London iGGi Alum Cris is a versatile Software Engineer with four years of experience in web development across different areas of the tech stack. She studied Software and Computer Engineering at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) and is currently completing her PhD at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL); during which she has done two internships at Google. Her research ‘Beyond Playing to Win: Broadening the Study and Use of Gameplaying Agents when Provided with Distinct Behaviours’ is focused on expanding the research on game-playing agents beyond the objective of winning at them. She looks at 1) broadening the scope by diversifying agents goals and heuristics; 2) broadening the vision by proposing a team of agents to assist game development; 3) broadening the usage by eliciting diverse automated gameplay, and 4) broadening the horizon by analysing the strengths of the agents from a Player Experience perspective instead of their performance. Cris is passionate about solving problems and learning. Outside of her work, she enjoys playing video games and TTRPGs. Random facts are that Portal and TLOU are two of her favourite game series and her chosen superpower would be teleportation. Please note: Updating of profile text in progress Email Mastodon http://kisenshi.github.io/ Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/cguerreromero/ LinkedIn BlueSky https://github.com/kisenshi Github Featured Publication(s): Beyond Playing to Win: Elicit General Gameplaying Agents with Distinct Behaviours to Assist Game Development and Testing Beyond Playing to Win: Creating a Team of Agents with Distinct Behaviours for Automated Gameplay MAP-Elites to Generate a Team of Agents that Elicits Diverse Automated Gameplay Generating Diverse and Competitive Play-Styles for Strategy Games Studying General Agents in Video Games from the Perspective of Player Experience Ensemble Decision Systems for General Video Game Playing Using a Team of General AI Algorithms to Assist Game Design and Testing Beyond playing to win: Diversifying heuristics for GVGAI Themes Design & Development Game AI - Previous Next

< Back Dr Martin Balla Queen Mary University of London iGGi Alum 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 Oliver Scholten University of York iGGi Alum Oliver Scholten is working on understanding the use of cryptocurrency technologies for gambling and gaming. His work provides researchers with the tools and context needed to understand player behaviours in these technologically advanced domains. He is the creator of gamba - a python library designed to enable quick replication of existing player behaviour tracking studies. He has also published several peer reviewed articles, and had written evidence published by the UK House of Lords which describes the mechanics behind decentralised gambling applications. As a PhD student, his thesis focuses on decoding and analysing cryptocurrency gambling and cryptocurrency gaming transactions. These transactions offer a more granular insight for researchers into both gambling and gaming than has been historically possible, this work therefore lays the foundations for explorations across different schools of research, and more specifically, advanced player transaction analytics. Please note: Updating of profile text in progress oliver@gamba.dev Email Mastodon https://www.ojscholten.com Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/ojscholten LinkedIn BlueSky https://github.com/ojscholten Github Featured Publication(s): On the Evaluation of Procedural Level Generation Systems On the Behavioural Profiling of Gamblers Using Cryptocurrency Transaction Data Inside the decentralised casino: A longitudinal study of actual cryptocurrency gambling transactions Decentralised Gambling Overview Decentralised Gambling: The York Combined Transaction Set Unconventional Exchange: Methods for Statistical Analysis of Virtual Goods Utilising VIPER for Parameter Space Exploration in Agent Based Wealth Distribution Models Ethereum Crypto-Games: Mechanics, Prevalence, and Gambling Similarities Themes Game Data - Previous Next

< Back Dr Mihail Morosan University of Essex iGGi Alum Computational Intelligence and Game Balance. (Industry placement at MindArk) Game design has been a staple of human ingenuity and innovation for as long as games have been around. From sports, such as football, to applying game mechanics to the real world, such as reward schemes in shops, games have impacted the world in surprising ways. This process can, and should, be aided by automated systems, as machines have proven to be capable of finding innovative ways to complement human intuition and inventiveness. When man and machine cooperate, better products are created and the world has only to benefit. My research seeks to find, test and assess methods to apply computational intelligence to human-led game balance. Early research has proven that AI can successfully aid game designers in analysing the viability of various game rules and I intend to document this and polish the techniques that will result from my work. To achieve this, I am making use of cutting edge algorithms, powerful AI techniques and novel methods. Most of the current work done involves the use of evolutionary algorithms, as well as statistical analysis and evaluation of intelligent agents in various video games. Programmer (with a focus on optimisation and quick deliverables, mostly due to competitive experience), gamer (games are fun, relaxing and a great social experience), technology consumer (comes with the programmer bit) and all around happy guy stumbling through the world. Once ended up in a management internship at a bank thinking the application was for a programming position. And another time told an interviewer that "buying and eating a burger to solve hunger" is a legitimate problem-solving skill. Somehow received an invitation to the next interview stage. me@morosanmihail.com Email Mastodon Other links Website https://uk.linkedin.com/in/morosanmihail LinkedIn BlueSky Github Featured Publication(s): Automating game-design and game-agent balancing through computational intelligence Lessons from testing an evolutionary automated game balancer in industry Genetic optimisation of BCI systems for identifying games related cognitive states Online-Trained Fitness Approximators for Real-World Game Balancing Evolving a designer-balanced neural network for Ms PacMan Speeding up genetic algorithm-based game balancing using fitness predictors Automated game balancing in Ms PacMan and StarCraft using evolutionary algorithms Themes Design & Development Game AI Player Research - 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 Cameron Johnston Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher Available for placement Cam holds an MPhys in Theoretical Physics from the University of Edinburgh, wherein he combined infectious disease models with fluid dynamics to examine the validity of wastewater-based epidemiology as a method of passively monitoring the prevalence of COVID-19 in an urban population. During his studies, Cam began to learn game development as a way of improving his programming skills, using C++ and the Unreal Engine to develop a number of small projects and compete in game jams. After completing his MPhys, Cam was eager to take his experience developing physics simulations even further, which lead him to joining the iGGi programme. About Cam's Research: 'Impossible physical models' refer to digital models of any physics that differs from what would be experienced in everyday life. This covers 'incorrect' physics (disagreeing with observation but mathematically valid), and unfamiliar physics (that which is physically correct but irrelevant on a human scale). By creating interactive, virtual environments around these models, it becomes possible to experience the impossible. This research aims to explore the potential of 'impossible physical models' in the context of video games from the perspectives of game design and education. The project explores what work has already been done into this topic, expands on this work, and finds new areas to explore. The goal of this research is to introduce new relationships between physics and video games, and to engender developers to explore physics as a tool for design. cameron.johnston@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon http://crjohnston.com Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/c-r-johnston/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisor: Dr Josh Reiss Themes Creative Computing Design & Development - 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 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 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 catherine.flick@staffs.ac.uk Email https://mastodon.me.uk/@CatherineFlick Mastodon https://www.liedra.net Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky https://github.com/liedra Github Themes Accessibility Applied Games Player Research - Previous Next