Games 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

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 tool – material research – virtual embodiment – wearable computing

Personal Website
Christopher Barney

Christopher Barney

Associate 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

Nik Bear Brown

Associate Teaching Professor

Teaches computer science, game programming and machine learning. 

human computation games – artificial intelligence – citizen science – crowdsourcing

 

Leanne Chukoskie

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

Seth Cooper

Assistant 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

Derek Curry

Assistant Professor

Derek Curry is an Assistant Professor in the College of Arts, Media and Design at Northeastern University. …

 

Bob De Schutter

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 WebsiteStudio Website

 

Samantha Gorman

Samantha Gorman

Assistant Professor

An artist, educator, and founder of an innovative studio in emerging media and story. Writing and directing interactive digital performance, her games are critical commentary on their specific forms of entertainment.

VR – interactive theater – self-reflexive games

Personal WebsiteStudio Website

 

Jennifer Gradecki

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

Casper Harteveld

Associate 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

 

Danielle Levac

Danielle Levac

Assistant Professor

Understanding the mechanisms underlying motor learning in virtual environment and transfer of learning to real-life skills.

virtual reality – video games – rehabilitation – engagement – physical therapy – motor learning

Lab Website

Amy S. Lu

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 WebsiteLab Website
Celia Pearce

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

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
Pierre-Valery Njenji Tchetgen

Pierre-Valery Njenji Tchetgen

Assistant Professor

Researching the design of a hypermedia digital orality system blending drumming, and call-and-response with multimodal computer interaction to support the literacy acquisition of children through rhythm-based games. 

early literacy – gamification – drummology – controller – talking drum – isochronous control – microcontroller

Lab Website 

Brandon Sichling

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
Alexandra To

Alexandra To

Assistant Professor

Jointly appointed between Art+Design in CAMD and the Khoury College of Computer Science. Alexandra a HCI researcher, game designer, and racial justice activist who does qualitative and design research centered on empowerment.

hci – transformational games – critical race theory – racial justice – cscw

Personal Website 

Giovanni Troiano

Giovanni Troiano

Visiting Assistant Professor

Human-computer interaction (HCI) researcher investigating and evaluating new conceptual and empirical HCI paradigms. 

critical design – ethics – gamification – computer science education

 

Calgar Yidirim

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