Organizers

Kate Compton is a PhD student in Games and Playable Media at UCSC.  Her research includes procedural content generation for games, and the development of prototypes of new digital and physical interfaces to allow computers to augment human creativity.


Robin Crough is the Operations Manager for the Center for Games and Playable Media at UC Santa Cruz. 


Chaim Gingold is a computer scientist and interactive designer by training. By trade, he is a computer game designer & digital toymaker. He studied with Janet Murray at Georgia Tech, where he earned an MS in Digital Media. As a key member of Spore’s prototyping & design team, Gingold worked closely with Will Wright at Maxis/EA, designing the game’s award winning creative tool suite.


April Grow is a 2nd-year PhD candidate of UCSC's Expressive Intelligence Studio and Center for Games and Playable Media. Her research interests include applying procedural story to the social physics engine Comme il Faut, as well as making user-friendly tools so that other people can too! April enjoys making crafts, playing RPGs, and cooking with her husband.


Eric Kaltman is a PhD student in Computer Science at UCSC. He has an MA from UC Berkeley in Chinese Studies, where he worked on language games and games for developmental children's education. His current work involves video game software preservation and historical games research in conjunction with Stanford's Green Library.


Michael Mateas is Director of the Center for Games and Playable Media. He is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at University of California, Santa Cruz, where he helped launch the Computer Game Design degree, the first of its kind in the UC system. His work explores artificial intelligence-based art and entertainment, forging a new research discipline called Expressive AI. 


Jane Pinckard is Associate Director of the Center for Games and Playable Media at UC Santa Cruz. She is internationally known for her long-running blog GameGirlAdvance, which explores games and art in a broader cultural context.  She is the current Vice Chair of the International Game Developers Association.


Irena Polic is the Associate Director of the Institute for Humanities Research at UC Santa Cruz.


Mike Treanor is a PhD student in Video Game Design at UC Santa Cruz, where he is continuing his research in the Expressive Intelligence Studio. 


Noah Wardrip-Fruin is Associate Professor of Computer Science and Chair of the Digital Arts and New Media MFA program (DANM) at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He co-directs the Expressive Intelligence Studio, one of the world's largest technical research groups focused on games. Noah's research areas include new models of storytelling in games, how games express ideas through play, and how games can help broaden understanding of the power of computation. Video