Future students

On July 5th, Drs. Lili Liu (School of Public Health Sciences), John Muñoz (Systems Design Engineering), and Michael Barnett-Cowan (Kinesiology and Health Sciences) were brought together to share their knowledge and expertise on how games and interactive technologies are being used in the healthcare industry. The panel was hosted and moderated by the Games Institute’s Research Communications Officer Dr. Emma Vossen.

The University of Waterloo has announced the following 15 funded postdoctoral positions, including five specific positions for Black and Indigenous scholars.

Applications are open now to scholars from any discipline and are due December 1st. Applicants may choose from one of the three programs listed below.

Wednesday, October 5, 2022 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Games Institute Open House

Come and discover the interactive and immersive technologies research conducted in the Games Institute's collaborative interdisciplinary environment!

Anyone interested in the research happening at the Games Institute (GI) is more than welcome to come and explore our space during the Open House. We especially encourage anyone considering or currently pursuing graduate school or a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Waterloo to come and learn about the work conducted at the GI over the past ten years.

The Velocity Concept Funding Grant Finals took place on July 14th, both virtually and in person at the Student Life Center. Out of 49 total applicants, 9 teams of students compete for four $5,000 funding awards for their innovative projects. While the competition finals are normally eight teams, this year the judges decided nine was necessary due to the high quality of the competitors.

On June 29th, Member of Parliament Bill Blair presented Dean of Health Dr. Lili Liu and her team with $2.1 million dollars of funding over three years to support their project to enhance search and rescue capabilities for when people with dementia go missing.

The project titled “Managing Risks of Going Missing among Persons Living with Dementia by Building Capacities of SAR Personnel, First Responders and Communitieswill create dementia-friendly resources across six provinces and in collaboration with two indigenous communities, the Peguis First Nation in Manitoba and the Kahnawá:ke Mohawk Territory in Quebec.

Dr. Shana Macdonald (Communication Arts) was interviewed on July 11th about the massive Canada-wide Rogers outage that saw many Canadians without access to the internet, phone service, or even ATMs.

On June 16th, Alex Flek (English Language and Literature) and Dr. Jason Grove (Chemical Engineering) spoke to GI members and guests about the development process of their game Canadian Cap and Trade Simulation (CCTS), a serious game meant to teach students about carbon cap and trade systems. They came together because of their research expertise—Alex in games and Jason in emissions.  

Members of  qCollaborative (qLab) participated in this year’s DH Unbound virtual conference which took place from May 17th – 19th. Drs. Jennifer Roberts-Smith (Brock University), Shana MacDonald (Communication Arts), Brianna Wiens (English Language and Literature), and Aynur Kadir (University of British Columbia) presented on the nature of the qLab and how the lab has enabled collaborative, interdisciplinary scholarship and become a space of friendship and care. qLab was designed as a space to better articulate how feminism can be incorporated into design practices, materializing the digital, and remediating lived experiences into social justice design.

On April 19th Dr. Bo Ruberg presented Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies” at the Games Institute to an audience of internal and external researchers. Dr. Ruberg is an associate professor at the University of California, Irvine, whose research explores gender and sexuality in digital media and digital cultures.