Brian Magerko
Brian is an Assistant Professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture and head of the Adaptive Digital Media (ADAM) Lab at Georgia Tech. His research explores artificial intelligence approaches to story management, synthetic characters, and logical representations of story for interactive narratives. His current work is focused on four separate domains: 1) the use of interactive narrative for training and education, 2) intelligent director agents and coordination with synthetic characters, 3) story representation and authoring tools, and 4) the study of real-world interactive drama and improvisation techniques. His interests include: intelligent agents, user modeling, intelligent tutoring systems, cognitive architectures, interactive drama, serious games, virtual worlds.
Ethan Watrall
Ethan is an Assistant Professor at Matrix: The Center for Humane Arts, Letters & Social Sciences Online, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Michigan State University. In addition, Ethan is a Principal Investigator in the Games for Entertainment & Learning Lab, and co-founder of both the undergraduate Specialization and Game Design Development and the MA in Serious Game Design at Michigan State University. Ethan teaches in a wide variety of areas including cultural heritage informatics, user centered & user experience design, game design, serious game design, game studies, and ancient Egyptian social history & archaeology. Ethan’s primary research interests lie in the domain of cultural heritage informatics. He is especially interested in exploring both the impact that digital games have on the public’s perception of the human past as well as the development of serious games for cultural heritage outreach and education. Beyond cultural heritage informatics, Ethan is interested in the ethnography of immersive storyworlds - especially those that manifest in non-digital games and digital games. Ethan’s digital alterego can be found at http://www.captainprimate.com
Joe Fitzgerald
Joe Fitzgerald is a MA student in the department of Telecommunications, Information Studies & Media at Michigan State University. He received his BA in Telecommuication, Information Studies, and Media from Michigan State University with a specialization in video game design and development. He is currently enrolled in the Serious Games Masters Program at MSU. Joe is currently conducting research and developing serious games for cultural heritage learning and outreach at Matrix: The Center for Humane Arts, Letters & Social Sciences Online at MSU.
Ben Medler
Ben Medler is a PhD student at Georgia Institute of Technology studying Digital Media. His research interests revolve around games and include building entertainment/serious games, adaptive gameplay, conflict within games, interactive drama, authoring tools, and combining games with web data.