Core Faculty
Representative of the burgeoning faculty interest in the various expressions of games and interactive simulations are the HASS faculty who form the Working Group that has formulated the Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences Program.
Marc Destefano
Clinical Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science.
In his research, Marc studies dynamic decision making, resource allocation, and the interaction of multiple layers of cognitive processing (specifically, how tactics and strategy inform each other). Recent publications include "Conditions of Engagement" with Kathleen Ruiz and Ralph Noble, presented at the International Digital Games Research Association, "Level Up", University of Utrecht, and The Netherlands; and "Advanced Synthetic Characters, Evil, and E" with Selmer Bringjord, Sangeet Khemlani, Konstantine Arkoudas, Chris McEvoy, and Matthew Daigle.
Marc's game-related interests include: game design and analysis, dynamic systems, interface design, the psychology of play, and artificial intelligence.
Shawn Lawson
Assistant Professor of Art
Shawn Lawson is a media artist and programmer examining the experience of human-machine interaction. Lawson's installations perform real-time animation and video compositing based on tracking human presence and motion. Unique encounters are generated for each participant. His works have been exhibited at venues in Los Angles, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Chicago, Tempe, Boston, Albany, Ann Arbor, and New York. His installations have been reviewed by The Chicago Reader, The Arizona Republic, The Boston Herald, and The Boston Globe. He is published in the ACM MultiMedia 2004 proceedings. In addition to his own work, Lawson's collaborative, Crudeoils, is represented by Flatfile Gallery, Chicago.
Lawson studied fine arts at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh and École Nationale Supèrieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He received his MFA in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, an Artist in Residence in the Virtual Reality Research group Stage3 at Carnegie Mellon University, and an intern at Walt Disney Imagineering with the DisneyQuest project. Shawn Lawson is an Assistant Professor of Art at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
http://www.rpi.edu/~lawsos2.
Michael Lynch
Clinical Assistant Professor of Language, Literature, and & Communication
game design/development, history of games & culture. Research interests concerned with use of artificial intelligence in games, especially in the emerging areas of social intelligence, conversational agents, and “emotioneering”.
Ralph Noble
Associate Professor of Psychology, Dept of Cognitive Science
motivational dimensions of game play and game design, the mapping question (i.e. how do events in game spaces correspond to formally similar events in ‘the real world’. How does behavior in games influence behavior outside the game space?
Kathleen Ruiz
Associate Professor of Electronic Arts
http://www.rpi.edu/~ruiz, media artist working in simulation, games, sculpture and photography which explore multiple perspectives and the formation of mental geographies. Work questions the oxymoron of virtual violence, catharsis, and desensitization in simulated space. Interested in games as cultural artifacts that reflect gender, race, and behavior. Founding member of the ErGoGenics Game Research Group, an interdisciplinary team of artists, game developers, psychologists, and physicians who are creating a wide array of interactive digital games for fitness, fun and education. http://www.arts.rpi.edu/~ruiz/ErGoGenicGames/
Kathleen also founded the CapAbility Games Research Project that is an interdisciplinary group of Rensselaer student engineers, artists, computer scientists, and AI researchers who are developing interactive multimedia game simulation modules for disabled people for learning basic life skills through fun, and engagement.
James Watt
Director of the Social and Behavioral Research Laboratory
and Professor of Communication
Computer-Mediated Communication and Human Computer Interaction researcher. Research interests include serious games and social simulations. Chair of the Game Studies SIG of the International Communication Association.