People profiles

Dr. Shi Cao studies human factors and ergonomics using both experiment and computational simulation methods.

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.

Professor DiCiccio helped found the Institute for Computer Research (ICR).

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.

Professor Kaplan studies the application of computer graphics in art, illustration, ornamentation, and design. This research area is rooted in computer graphics, but involves forays into art (to study historical sources) classical and computational geometry (to develop mathematical and computational models of ornament), and computer-aided design and manufacturing.

Professor Fue-Sang Lien has over 20 years of research experience in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Turbulance Modelling.

Ian Milligan is a digital and Canadian historian. He’s currently exploring how historians can fruitfully use web archives and other large digital repositories. 

Jennifer Roberts-Smith is Director of the Q Collaborative, a research lab that leverages digital media (including games) to study and encourage audience engagement in cultural activities. She is Principal Investigator of The Stratford Festival Online: Games and Virtual Learning Environments for Education and Audience Engagement, funded by the Ontario Early Researcher Award program and the Stratford Festival. Her recent work in game studies has focused primarily on Shakespeare games. At the Games Institute, JRS is also a member of the Virtual Reality cluster of the Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation project. She teaches acting, digital media design, and dramaturgy, as well as directing departmental theatre productions in the Theatre and Performance program.

Gerald Voorhees is an Assistant Professor in the Department Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo. His research is on games and new media as sites for the construction and contestation of identity and culture, and he has edited books on masculinities in games, feminism in play, role-playing games, and first-person shooter games.

Jennifer Whitson is the Research Advisor for Execution Labs, an accelerator and investment platform for indie game studios, as well as an affiliated faculty member with the Technoculture, Art and Games Research Centre  (TAG) at Concordia University.

​Kaitlyn Holbein was a part-time Rhetoric and Communication Design MA student and full-time communications and marketing professional. She received her BA in English literature, with a minor in Sociology, from Carleton University. Kaitlyn enjoys exploring a wide range of topics in the fields of new media and game studies.

Evan Ribey was an undergraduate student in the School of Public Health at the University of Waterloo. Currently entering his final year of his undergraduate education, he has research interests in web-based applications of health care data and information visualization.

Lisa Tran was the Communications and Research co-op student for the Fall 2014 term. She has many titles to her role including Project Manager Assistant as well as Facilities Manager.

Melissa Stocco  joined The Games Institute as a research assistant. She was a 4th year undergraduate student in the Arts and Business program with a major in Sociology and minor in Digital Arts Communication. Melissa became interested in studying games after taking Jennifer Whitson's course Gamers and Games, and Lennart Nacke's course Introduction to Game Design.

Wan Hong Situ is the CTO of Invuze. He is responsible for developing the platform and leading the implementation of the applications. He was  a fourth year Honours Computer Science student at the University of Waterloo. Wan Hong Situ has extensive experienced in web and mobile development utilizing multiple frameworks.

Quinn Powell, BA (Wilfrid Laurier University) and MA (Wilfrid Laurier University), has research interests in gender studies, digital media theory and design, as well as post-colonial theory and literature.

Alberto is a Ph.D. student at the Open University Of Catalonia, Spain, under the supervision of Dr. Joan Arnedo and Dr. Carina González, and a visiting researcher at the HCI Games Group. He holds a M.Sc in education and teacher training from the University of La Rioja and he is a computer engineer from the University of La Laguna. His main interests include gamification design in the field of learning environments, as well as healthcare and wellness. His thesis is titled "A framework for agile design of gamification services".

Kaitlin graduated with a Master's degree in Rhetoric and Communication Design. She has strong interests in communication strategies, marketing, public relations, and event planning. Kaitlin is the former Communications and Project Coordinator for the GI.

MASc. candidate from Systems Design Engineering working as an experimental perceptual psychologist, a quantitative user researcher and a human factors engineer at the Human Optimization and Modelling Lab (HOM Lab).

Dr. Michael Hancock is a sessional instructor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. His dissertation was on the history of textual representation in videogames, a study which ranges from videogame instruction manuals to the 1989 Amiga game It Came From the Desert. 

Mitchell Loewen was a 4th year Knowledge Integration and Psychology Joint Honours student with a Collaborative Design Specialization at the University of Waterloo. Under the supervision of Dr. Lennart Nacke and Dr. Chris Burris, Mitchell was working on his undergraduate Psychology thesis investigating the relationship between the self and avatar creation norms in video games. Mitchell is also very passionate about game design, and is currently working with some fellow undergraduate students to publish a game they designed during Dr. Nacke’s Introduction to Game Design course.

Kelly was in the process of finishing her undergraduate degree in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo, with a minor in Theatre & Performance.

Through an activity theory approach, Sultan's focus was to understand urban search & rescue teams' activity and training to design game mechanics and interfaces in simulation games. The aim of this simulation game was to improve urban search & rescue teams' sensemaking and planning skills. Sultan was involved in multiple research areas of HCI including: mixed reality games, serious games, augmented and virtual reality games, gesture based interaction games, and idle games.

Kristina R. Llewellyn is the Principal Investigator of Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation (www.dohr.ca): The Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children History Education Initiative, a project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Jason Hawreliak received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Waterloo. His research examines rhetorics of heroism and immortality in videogames. Other research interests include multimodal rhetoric and the psychological function of digital media.

Elise Vist, BA and MA (English, Carleton University), is a Ph.D. candidate studying fans, immersion, and queerness. Her research focuses on hockey fans and Real Person Fanfiction, but she has also written about immersion and queerness in games, including dys4ia, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Lord of the Rings: Online, and the worldwide scavenger hunt GISHWHES. She is also passionate about creative and playful game design, running workshops using University of Alberta's Cobble Cards. As a co-founder of the Games Institute Janes (GI Janes), Elise encouraged women and non-binary people to find joy in gaming. 

Kent Aardse was a PhD Candidate in English Department at the University of Waterloo and a research assistant for The Games Institute. His research focuses on humans as fundamentally technological beings, paying particular attention to the intersection between digital technology and literature.

Betsy Brey (BA and MA, University of Minnesota Duluth) is a PhD candidate in the Department of English Language and Literature. Her research focuses on the intersections of narratological structure and gameplay. In particular, she's interested in how players understand and interpret narrative forms in role-playing games and metagames.

Gerd is doing his Master's in Computational Visualistics at the Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg (Germany). There he focuses on real-time applications, visualization, AR/VR and game development. He's also an honary member of Acagamics, a students game developer club and a research assistant at STIMULATE and IBMI where he develops medical technology applications.

Andrew Cen is a Systems Design Engineering student under SWaGUR, who graduated from Speech Communication with a minor in Digital Arts Communication. He joined the HCI Games Group because of his passion for game design and interest in Games User Research. Andrew is an emerging digital media designer. His primary focuses in digital design revolve around photography and videography. Andrew also has experience in the Adobe suites, including: Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom.

Mahir Hoque was an undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo, majoring in Fine Arts and minoring in Computer Science and Digital Art Communication. He is interested in art, design, technology and the fusion of these disciplines. 

During my undergraduate studies at Carleton I double majored in English Literature and Linguistics, and played a lot of video games. During my Masters in English Literature at Carleton I specialized in science fiction and dystopia, and played a lot of video games. At some point I realized that I ought to combine these interests.

Andre Yam is an eSports specialist who is concerned with all aspects of competitive "play" and the spectatorship that follows. He has an M.A. in English Literary Studies from the University of Waterloo with a combined honours B.A. in English and History from Wilfrid Laurier University. He currently works with the Games Institute along with the Ontario eSports Gaming Events group in promoting and theorizing the future of eSports.

Emma Vossen received her Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Waterloo in 2018 and is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at York University helping run the SSHRC funded Refiguring Innovation and Games (ReFiG) network. She is the co-author and co-editor of the anthology Feminism in Play (Palgrave 2018) and her dissertation examines the accessibility of games, gamer identity, and games culture. Her dissertation focuses specifically on women's comfort and safety while playing games, making games, and participating in discourse about games in both physical and virtual spaces. Emma is the former commentaries editor, podcast host, and editor-in-chief of middle state games studies publication First Person Scholar (FPS). You can read various bits of Emma's writing about academic publishing, online harassment, The Legend of Zelda, community organization, and The Walking Dead on FPS. She is also the co-founder of the Games Institute Janes (GI Janes) and during her PhD she organized monthly gaming events for women and non-binary people at the Games Institute.

Kirk W. Goodlet received his PhD in History at the University of Waterloo and was a research associate at the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies. He has worked and conducted research in archives across Canada, the Netherlands, and Belgium. In addition, Kirk is also the co-founder and writer for clioscurrent.com, a website dedicated to exploring current affairs with historical perspective.

Brandon Ralph (BSc and MA in Psychology) was a PhD candidate in the Cognitive Neuroscience division of the Psychology Department at the University of Waterloo. His primary areas of expertise are visual processing and attention.

Ian was an undergraduate student in his final year of Computer Engineering. As both a gamer and a filmmaker, Ian enjoys figuring out how each discipline can draw from the other to produce better media.

Mufaddal was a 2B Computer Science student at the University of Waterloo, who joined the GI team to work as a Research Assistant co-op student.

Ed Lank is an associate professor in the Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. His research is in the area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

Ruby was working at the GI as the Project Coordinator for her Fall 2015 co-op term. Now entering into her third year of Honours Arts and Business at the University of Waterloo, she is pursuing a major in Psychology with minors in Human Resources Management and Digital Arts Communication.

Melody was the co-op student for The Games Institute for Winter 2016. She's an Arts and Business student, majoring in Psychology and minoring in Human Resources Management. She has worked closely with the Project Manager to organize special events at The Games Institute to showcase both the gaming culture within the university. She also worked on improving the GI website, and digitizing or redesigning some of the outdated systems.

Alexandra Orlando (BA and MA, English and Film, Wilfrid Laurier University), is a first year Ph.D. student at the University of Waterloo in the English Languages and Literature department. She is specializing in narratology and game studies. Her research interests include the intersection between film theory and game cinematics, e-sports and East Asian game studies.

George Ross, BA (Hons.) (Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Carleton University) and MA (Applied Language Studies, Carleton University) specializes in simulations, organizational rhetoric, and narrative modeling.

Kirsten Robinson is a systems design engineer and designer. She worked on Governor General Award winning architect Phillip Beesley’s Hylozoic Soil team to create responsive architectures that were shown across Canada and at the Venice Biennial.

Emily West started her work with the GI as a Research and Communications Assistant co-op student for the Winter 2015 term. Upon completion of her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology she has returned to The Games Institute full time as Operations Coordinator.

Lindsay Meaning (BA English, Wilfrid Laurier University; MA Experimental Digital Media, University of Waterloo) is a second year PhD student in the English department at UWaterloo. Her research centers on settler colonialism and imperial ideologies in single player role-playing games. Other research interests include video game adaptations of literary texts, as well as adaptation and fan studies more broadly. She has also been awarded the Beltz Essay Prize, PhD Grade Average Award and presented at CGSA 2018.

Saifuddin Hitawala is a Masters student at the Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. His research interests include artificial intelligence, machine learning, database systems, network security and data structures and algorithms. 

Jenn Rickert is an interdisciplinary-trained academic, currently in the English PhD program, who specializes in the study of people, technology, and culture. Currently, her research focuses on gender, power structures, and social dynamics surrounding competitive gaming communities, particularly within World of Warcraft.

Marta is in her third year of studying Science and Business with a specialization in Biotechnology. She aspires to combine her knowledge of both fields in the future.  Marta has been with the Games Institute since the Fall 2017 term, and greatly enjoyed her co-op role as the Operations Assistant in Spring 2018.  

Marta loves cross stitching and sings in an a cappella group at the University. Marta’s favourite types of video games are story-based role-playing games and life simulation games. During her employment, she reveled in playing new games and testing out new technology.

Ben’s background is in visual neuroscience and his research interests relate to the development and plasticity of human visual brain areas.

Felan Parker is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow with the Technoculture, Art and Games Research Centre at Concordia University. His current research examines indie gaming cultures, and he is collaborating with the Games Institute on the Indie Interfaces project.

Alexander Hodge is an audio engineer, creative technologist, and freelance software developer. He is interested in music technology in general, and especially in the way sound can influence Human-Computer Interaction.

​Deltcho Valtchanov is a postdoctoral research fellow with a background in virtual reality, human visual perception, and cognitive and behavioural neuroscience. His past research has focused on how low level visual information influences emotional responses to, and aesthetics of, visual scenes.

Amber O’Brien is pursuing a Masters in Literary Studies. Her main area of interest is examining how narratives in science fiction and fantasy texts work to challenge and alter gender ideologies in Western societies.

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.

Gustavo Tondello's research interests include gamification and games for health, wellbeing, and learning, user experience in gamification, and gameful design methods. His work focuses on the design and personalization of gameful applications.

Saba is in her third year of Health Studies, with a minor in Gerontology.

She has worked as a research assistant on various projects started in The Games Institute. Her interests revolve around projects that relate to patient satisfaction, especially the elderly.

Pierson Browne's research focuses on the propagation of concepts and information through the social networks formed around and within communities of play. Pierson is a methodologically-focused mixed-methods researcher: he has contributed to the field of Social Network Analysis with his work on Exponential Random Graph Models for Directed Acyclic Graphs, he has generated insights into Swarm Ethnography and Rapid Ethnographic Assessment as part of his work with game development intermediaries, and he has produced research stemming from his work as an Embedded Ethnographer with Montreal indie game development studios.

Amberly H. West, (BA and MA University of Waterloo) researches games for health. Her secondary research areas include adaptations, rhetoric, and new media studies. Under the supervision of Dr. Neil Randall and Dr. Mark Hancock, she and Rebecca Langer (Computer Science) have been working on a multi-disciplinary research project for which the team researched, designed, and developed a prototype of a game that teaches children to identify and manage food allergies.

Jonathan Rodriguez is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science.

Leila is a PhD student in Systems Design Engineering. She studies large interactive surfaces, such as wall displays and digital tabletops, and how to support co-located collaboration around them. Leila received her MSc. degree in Software Engineering from the University of Alberta.

​Pascaline Lorentz has her PhD in Sociology and is a Postdoctoral Researcher working on online gaming at the Institute for Research on Children, Youth and Family at Masaryk University in Brno, the Czech Republic.
Granted with an ENDEAVOUR Research Fellowship in 2011 she undertook a study documenting the social environment of an intense practice of virtual world attachments in Australia. 

Philip Miletic is an English PhD Candidate, whose areas of interest include digital life writing and 20th-century American literature. He is the Book Reviews Editor for First Person Scholar and the Vice President of the Student Association of Graduates in English (SAGE).

Karina Arrambide is a Ph.D. student pursuing a degree in Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo, under the supervision of Dr. Lennart Nacke. She holds an MSc in Information Technology with Business and Management from the University of Sussex in the UK, and a BSc in Information Technology from the University of Monterrey in Mexico. Her main interests include understanding player's behaviors and emotions by applying diverse games user research methodologies, specifically biometrics such as electromyography and galvanic skin response.

Sebastian Malton is an undergraduate student in the Department of Mathematics studying Computer Science and a minor in Classical Studies and a research assistant for the Games Institute and the Rhetorical Figures working group.

Kenny Fung is currently doing his Masters in Computer Science. He is an MBA graduate at Wilfrid Laurier University and has a B.A. Honours Psychology from the University of Waterloo. He is currently interested in dynamic difficulty in games and is actively contributing to various projects at the HCI Games Group.

Dr. Isabel Pedersen, Director of the Decimal Lab at UOIT and Canada Research Chair in Digital Life, Media, and Culture, studies the societal impact of human-computer interaction.

Conchita is a student at the University of Waterloo entering the final year of her undergraduate degree. She is in Honours Arts and Business, Honours Peace and Conflict Studies, and her minor is International Studies. 

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 AllerGen national centr

Megha Bhatt was the Winter 2014 co-op student and worked as a research programmer and communications assistant for The Games Institute. During her term she helped with various projects using different software for web designing and gaming needs.

Toby Malone holds a B.A (Hons.) from the University of Western Australia and a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies. 

Will is a PhD candidate who studies modern videogame-based iterations of Victorian England.  He is interested in better understanding historical games' abilities to productively revise and recreate elements of the past.  His current research investigates the representation of women in neo-Victorian games and their basis in the fiction of the nineteenth century.

Ruth is a senior PhD student in the Interdisciplinary Doctorate with a concentration in Computer Science and Curriculum & Instruction at New Mexico State University. She is interested in developing educational games that have a constructivist approach and that enhance critical thinking.

Dr. Lennart Nacke is an Associate Professor, the Associate Director Graduate Studies for Stratford campus, and the Director of the HCI Games Group at the University of Waterloo’s Games Institute. Professor Nacke teaches User Experience, Human-Computer Interaction, and Game Design at the University of Waterloo.

Justin Carpenter is a PhD Candidate in English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. His current research traces the use of the term 'generative' from literary to computational contexts, arguing that an understanding of this term opens up a variety of arguments around concepts such as authorship, agency, emergence. He argues that such a genealogy can help situate game studies scholarship in dialogue with modernist and postmodernist literary studies, as well as cinema and other media. His other research interests include poetry, philosophy of technology, and aesthetics.

Ali Rizvi (MS, Columbia University; B.Tech, NIT Jalandhar) is a PhD student studying Human-Computer Interaction. He is interested in studying the interaction between technology management, human factors and data analytics as it applies to non-traditional interfaces Prior to his PhD, Ali was a Senior Product Manager on Amazon's Alexa platform. When Ali is not at work, he is either climbing mountains or flying a tiny Cessna.

Marina is a Msc. student in the School of Public Health and Health Systems, under the supervision of Dr. James Wallace. She holds a B.A. (hons) in Health Sciences from Simon Fraser University. Her user research study is exploring how rheumatoid arthritis patients and their physicians can be better supported in shared decision making and how digital decision aid tools can help mediate the interaction.

Marvin Pafla is a Master's student in Systems Design Engineering. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in both Psychology and Computer Science at the University of Konstanz (Germany). Marvin's interest lie Games Research, Human-Computer Interaction, and Artificial Intelligence. He has experience in public display research. Marvin is supervised by Prof. Dr. Stacey Scott and Prof. Dr. Mark Hancock. Marvin attended the 2018 CHI Conference in Montreal and will be in attendance at the 2019 ISS Conference in Tokyo.

Brian is a 4th year English student preparing to start his grad studies at UW in Experimental Digital Media Studies (XDM). He is particularly interested in learning more about the rhetoric and language in developing field of Games User Research.

"I am researching the ways in which games use nostalgia to take advantage of gamers. More specifically, I am interested in how endless sequels and re-makes contribute very little - if anything - to the series or to the genre, but then cover it up by exploiting the gamer's feels. In other words, through clever manipulation of psychological vulnerabilities and deep associations within the memories of players, a large part of the videogame industry is now in cruise control, demeaning the art and giving love [of videogames] a bad name... making millions of dollars in the process."

- Omar Gutierrez

Amy Liang just finished her Bachelor of Arts degree with Psychology major and Human Resource Management minor. 

"I am a passionate researcher interested in Second Language Acquisition. I am currently helping a couple researches testing on topics related to accented language. On August 2018, I finished a presentation on how we could use the new VR technology to help students learn English easier."

- Amy Liang 

"I am a storytelling machine from a film and television background. The XDM Masters program is rapidly expanding my narrative toolkit and I am interested in the narrative possibilities of games. I am examining and merging the traditional forms of civic monument and documentary through augmented reality."

- Jonathan Baltrusaitis

He is also the recipient of the Grade Average Award - Graduate for Fall 2017.

Junhyeok Kim is a PhD student in the Cheriton School of Computer Science. He completed Bachelor's and Master's degrees at the University of Manitoba. He practices and designs interactive systems using latest technology to improve immersion of computing.

Taheera completed a BA Honours Arts, Rhetoric, Media, and Professional Communication Major, Music Minor at the University of Waterloo with Dean’s List acknowledgement. More recently, she completed her MA in Literary Studies, also at the University of Waterloo.

Toben Racicot is usually busy writing and lettering comic books. But he does pause to DM games of Dungeons and Dragons and roll dice to kill zombies in Zombicide Green Horde. He also loves Popeye's Cajun Chicken, sushi, and his wife.

Marisa Benjamin completed a BA Honours Arts and Business Co-op, Psychology Major, English Minor at the University of Waterloo with Dean’s List acknowledgement. She is currently pursuing a Master’s of Rhetoric and Communication Design at UWaterloo. Marisa is passionate about Indigenous rights activism and Canadian mental health policy. Other research interests include queer theory, gender studies, and popular culture studies.

Long Ting (Tina) Chan is a Master of Science candidate in Applied Health Sciences, with an interest in using technological innovations to improve mental health and wellbeing. She currently explores how gamification with narratives and avatars can influence engagement in online peer to peer support platforms for mental health usingunguided, crowdsourced cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).