Faculty Members

Mark Hancock is the Associate Director of the Games Institute. He is also an associate professor in the Department of Management Sciences in the Faculty of Engineering, where he directs the Touchlab.

Anita is the Canada 150 Research Chair in Mathematical Biology and Medicine, and Professor of Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Pharmacy and Biology.

Ben Feng’s research interests include mathematical modelling of complex real-life systems, computer experiment design and analysis, and Monte Carlo simulations.

Brad Mehlenbacher is an  Professor of Rhetoric and Communication in the Department of English Language & Literature at the University of Waterloo.

Colin Ellard is a psychologist researching neuroscience. ​​His interests include how the organization and appearance of natural and built spaces affects movement, wayfinding, emotion, and physiology. He directs the Urban Realities Lab at the University of Waterloo.

Daniel Harley is an Assistant Professor at the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business. His research focuses on digital culture, interactive narratives, tangible and embodied interaction, and virtual reality. He is director of the Narrative Realities Lab on the Stratford Campus.

Derek Robinson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Modelling.

Fue-Sang Lien is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering. Professor Lien is also the Head of Waterloo CFD Engineering Consulting Inc.

Ian Milligan is Associate Vice-President, Research Oversight and Analysis at the University of Waterloo, where he is also an associate professor of history. Milligan’s primary research focus is on how historians can use web archives, as well as the impact of digital sources on historical practice more generally.

Jason is a faculty member in Chemical Engineering. As Associate Chair, Undergraduate Studies and leader of the assessment of graduate attributes for accredation, he has interest and expertise in pedagogical practice and research; particularly related to the assessment of learning outcomes and curriculum improvement. His technical expertise is in greenhouse gas emission quantification and sustainability. 

Jennifer Roberts-Smith's transdisciplinary, design-based work in performance and digital media focuses on history, education, and social justice. She is currently a co-director of the qCollaborative (the critical feminist design research lab housed in Games Institute) and co-leads the Remote Embodied Synchronous Teaching and Learning for Accessibility project (RESTLA). She is also creative director and virtual reality cluster lead for the Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation (DOHR) project. Her recent publications have focused on methods for design research that deepen interdisciplinary understanding and take a relational approach to design.

Dr. Jesse Hoey is an associate professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo.   He is also an adjunct scientist at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute in Toronto, Canada, where he is co-leader of the AI and Robotics Research Team.  Dr. Hoey received the B.Sc. degree (1992) in physics from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, the M.Sc. degree (1995) in physics and the Ph.D degree (2004) in computer science from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.  From 2004-2010, he was an assistant professor  in the School of Computing at the University of Dundee, Scotland.    In 2014-2015 he was a visiting professor at the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en automatique (INRIA) in Sophia-Antipolis, France.

Kaylena Ehgoetz Martens is an Assistant Professor for the Department of Kinesiology and Health Sciences, Faculty of Health, at the University of Waterloo. Her research focuses on using virtual reality to dissect how cognition and emotion contribute to movement in health and disease.

Kevin Harrigan teaches in the Global Business and Digital Arts program (GBDA) at our Stratford campus. He researches gambling and sometimes acts as a technical expert witness in legal cases regarding Electronic Gaming Machines (EGMs).

Lai-Tze Fan is an Assistant Professor of Sociology & Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo, cross-listed in the Department of English Language and Literature. She researches digital storytelling, systemic inequalities in technological design and labour, media theory and infrastructure, and approaches to research-creation . She makes digital and material art about e-waste, crafts, and fashion. Fan is an Editor and the Director of Communications of electronic book review and an Editor of the digital review. She is Co-Editor of the collection Post-Digital: Dialogues and Debates from electronic book review (Bloomsbury 2020), and is the Editor of special journal issues on “Canadian Digital Poetics” and “Critical Making, Critical Design" (both 2021).

Lennart Nacke is an Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo, Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business. He is the director of the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Games Group at the Games Institute of the University of Waterloo.

Luke Potwarka's research focuses on consumer behaviour related to sport events. It addresses the overarching question: under what conditions do sport events have positive impacts for individuals and organizations in host communities? Their research draws from diverse disciplinary perspectives (e.g., social psychology, geography) and methodological approaches. The knowledge generated from my work is aimed to improve event management practices in ways that maximize participation and economic-related impacts that can result from hosting elite-sport events.

Dr. Michael Barnett-Cowan is an Associate Professor for the Kinesiology Department, Faculty of Applied Health Sciences, at the University of Waterloo.

In the research community, there has been a new direction of research on dexterous myoelectric control mimicking the neuromuscular system by extracting nature control information from surface EMG with advanced algorithm, and Ning Jiang is one of the world leading experts in this exciting direction.

Randy Allen Harris is a rhetorician with the University of Waterloo’s Department of English Language and Literature. His interests include Computational Rhetoric, Cognitive Science, Linguistics, and Stylistics. His books include The Linguistic Wars, Rhetoric and Incommensurability, and Voice Interaction Design. He is the director of The Rhetoricon Database project, which includes GoFigure, a citizen-science game for harvesting rhetorical figures from any and all genres, registers, and discourses.

Shi Cao is pronounced like SHER TSAO. Dr. Cao’s major research area is human factors engineering. His research projects include human performance and workload modeling, human-machine system reliability, and the applications of virtual and augmented reality.

Susan is a medical geographer with specific interests in global environmental health. She is an Adjunct Professor with the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, a partner in much of the global water and sanitation research that she does. She is also a research lead for the AllerGe

Dr. Suzanne Kearns is an aviation academic with a focus on education and optimizing pilot performance. Her research explores how to optimize the next generation of aviation professionals (NGAP) by analyzing processes to attract people to the field of aviation, optimizing and innovating the traditional education pathway, and improving the retention of professionals within the field. She is a former airplane and helicopter pilot and is internationally recognized within the aviation industry.

Ville is an Assistant Professor at the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business. He works broadly in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. His main areas of expertise are ubiquitous and mobile computing, virtual reality, and games.