Faculty
The games faculty at Northeastern are profoundly cross-disciplinary and are drawn from across the colleges of the university. Their rich experience comes equally from their academic backgrounds and their many years of practical development and use of games and interactive media.
Bolor Amgalan
Assistant Teaching Professor
Interaction design in education, leveraging VR and blockchain technology to design culturally sensitive interventions impacting work and human-machine collaboration.
creativity tools – material research – virtual embodiment – wearable computing
Personal Website
Christopher Barney
Associate Teaching Professor
Developing tools and resources to support diversity in games and deeper more thoughtful game design.
design patterns – game design pedagogy – diversity
Personal Website – Pattern Library
Nik Bear Brown
Associate Teaching Professor
Teaches computer science, game programming and machine learning.
human computation games – artificial intelligence – citizen science – crowdsourcing
Leanne Chukoskie
Associate Professor
Developing sensor-enabled experiences for assessment, intervention, and education, especially for individuals with developmental differences.
gaze interaction – VR – neurodiversity
Seth Cooper
Associate Professor
People and computers working together in video games to solve real-world problems; data-driven game design
human computation games – citizen science – crowdsourcing
Personal Website
Derek Curry
Associate Professor
Derek Curry is an Assistant Professor in the College of Arts, Media and Design at Northeastern University.
Bob De Schutter
Associate Professor
Game designer, researcher, educator, and advocate for meaningful play in later life.
Jointly appointed between CAMD and the Khoury College of Computer Science.
indie/art games – serious games – player motivation – aging
Personal Website – Studio Website
Jennifer Gradecki
Assistant Professor
Using methods from institutional critique, tactical media, and information activism to facilitate a practice-based understanding of socio-technical systems that typically evade public scrutiny.
financial instruments — technologies of mass surveillance
Personal Website
Casper Harteveld
Professor
Using games to study and improve decision making, and through these efforts both to advance our knowledge and to engage a broad cross-section of people globally about societal issues.
serious games — decision making — game user research — learning — systems thinking
Personal Website
Wallace Lages
Assistant Professor
Dr. Lages is an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Art + Design and the Khoury College of Computer Sciences.
hci – health – vr
Cliff Lee
Professor
Researches culturally sustaining learning ecologies of BIPOC youth and communities creating publicly-disseminated interactive stories, at the intersections of ethnic studies, data science, AI, ecological justice, and arts expression.
interactive media – critical pedagogy – transformational games – computational thinking
Amy S. Lu
Associate Professor
Exploring the psychological and behavioral effects of interactive media technologies for health promotion.
games for health – narratives – child obesity – health technology – behavioral science
Personal Website – Lab Website
Chris Martens
Associate Professor
Dr. Chris Martens is a computer scientist and computational media scholar in the field of digital games and narrative with a joint appointment in College of Arts, Media and Design and Khoury College of Computer Sciences
AI – Storytelling – XR
Nathalie Mathe
Professor of the Practice
Nathalie Mathe is an award-winning Virtual Reality creator. She is the founder of NativeVR. Her work has been presented at conferences and festivals around the world.
xr – virtual embodiment – embodied cognition – neurodiversity
Personal Website – Lab Website
Eileen McGivney
Assistant Professor
Studies learning and behavior in VR environments, including how the design of immersive experiences affects people’s emotions, motivation to learn, and sense of agency with mixed research methods in the classroom and the lab.
vr– learning – serious games
Caro Murphy
Visiting Associate Teaching Professor
Immersive experience design for large-scale themed, live, and mixed-media environments; business of games; transformational experience design; embodied play
immersive – larp – playable theatre– business – transformation – education
Personal Website
Celia Pearce
Professor
Celia Pearce is an award-winning game designer, author, researcher, teacher, curator, and artist, specializing in multiplayer gaming and virtual worlds, independent art, and alternative game genres.
ar games – artgames – immersive theatre – gender and diversity in games
Mike Shah
Assistant Teaching Professor
Building tools to better visualize and understand the performance of real time systems and multimedia applications.
program analysis – software visualization – computer graphics – game engines
Personal Website
Brandon Sichling
Assistant Teaching Professor
Game designer and filmmaker whose work focuses on social justice and gender politics.
gender performance –collective action – the futility of militarism
Personal Website
Aaron Seitz
Professor
Developing experiences to understand and train cognition to benefit people with diverse needs across the lifespan. Integrates Psychology, Neuroscience, Art & Design, Music, and Rehabilitation Sciences.
sharable infrastructures – xr – eye tracking – eeg – fmri
Alexandra To
Assistant Professor
Jointly appointed to Art+Design in CAMD and the Khoury College of Computer Science. HCI researcher, game designer, and racial justice activist doing empowerment. centered qualitative/design research.
hci – transformational games – critical race theory – racial justice – cscw
Giovanni Troiano
Research Associate Professor
Human-computer interaction (HCI) researcher investigating and evaluating new conceptual and empirical HCI paradigms.
critical design – ethics – gamification – computer science education
Parul Wadhwa
Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor
AR/VR/XR experiences for social impact & storytelling. HCI storytelling work informed by critical theory to understand emerging technologies participate in oppression and marginalization.
serious games – spatial ux – critical cultural studies
Personal Website
Calgar Yidirim
Assistant Teaching Professor
HCI and immersive VR environments, applying human factors principles to the design, development, and evaluation of interfaces to support interactions with technology and virtual environments.
hci – immersive interfaces – vr
Fox Zarow
Assistant Teaching Professor
Designing analog games centering queer experience, magic, & otherness; LGBTQ+ community making in cyber spaces; feminist theories & histories in games media + culture; experience design; design for dignity in labor; compassionate education.
roleplaying – collaborative storytelling – feminist media criticism – labor rights