2018 Spring Symposium Participants

Alexis Kim is a graduate student in the Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) program at UIUC. She is working on developing and working with pre existing computer games for language learning. http://alexiskimteaches.com/

Alexander Mejia is an Emmy award winning Creative Director at Human Interact with over 9 years in the AAA gaming industry. Human Interact’s debut VR game, STARSHIP COMMANDER, puts you in charge your own personal, tent-pole, Hollywood film making you the main character of your own science fiction story. Powered by next generation natural language processing technology featured at Microsoft Build 2017, You control the story by speaking naturally with characters.

Amanda Kim is an undergraduate senior in Linguistics. Her first introduction to Interactive Fiction was in 2016 and built nicely upon a lifelong interest in words and storytelling. While her experience with gaming is limited, she is always searching for new ways to connect her two great loves: language and free time.

Arnel “Arneezy” Canedo has been gaming since he was 4 years old with the first game played being Tetris on the Game Boy. In 1993 at the age of 6 his cousin brought over a game that would change his life. That game was Street Fighter 2 on the Super Nintendo. Since then Arnel has never stopped his love for fighting games. Wanting to study and research its complexities no matter which fighting game it was. His passion became a reality when he competed in his first local tournament in 2015 and his first major which was Combo Breaker 2016. He is still competing in Street Fighter and Tekken when he can and he is also a co-founder of the Central Illinois Fighting Game Community helping growing the scene and having others share in his passion in the Champaign area.

Ava Wolf currently works at the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning and is interested in reimagining the classroom through the design and development of learning environments that promote active engagement and improved learning outcomes.

Caleb Wilson is a writer of interactive fiction and of conventional fiction who works in a public library. He’s written free IF such as Lime Ergot, commercial IF such as Cannonfire Concerto, and his first book, Polymer, was just published by Eraserhead Press.

Chris Lukeman is the owner of CU Adventures in Time and Space. For over two years, Chris has been designing and running immersive live-action escape room games for 1000s of players a year here in Champaign-Urbana.

Chris DeSouza is the Operations Coordinator and Event Manager of the Central Illinois Fighting Game Community. Chris has been playing fighting games since the days of Street Fighter 2: New challengers. More recently with the resurgence of the scene thanks in part to the release of Street Fighter 4 in 2008 and now with its successor Street Fighter 5, he has been involved in trying to establish a fighting game community in the Champaign Urbana area for the larger central illinois scene.

Dan Cermak is leaning on 30 years of experience in the Video Game Industry to teach Top Down Video Game Design at UIUC. For 15 years he was at Volition, a video game company in Champaign, where he held the GM role for the last 6 years. Dan is an avid board and video game player/collector.

Dan Steward grew up all over the U.S. He spent his undergraduate years as a Tarheel, went on to study law in New York and to practice in San Francisco and Tokyo. Then the road called, and he traveled the U.S. again with his dog and a VW van, eventually settling down to study and teach sociology in the midwest and other fly-over states. http://faculty.las.illinois.edu/djs/

David Dubin is a Teaching Associate Professor at the University of Illinois School of Information Sciences. His research interests include the ontology of games and other creative works, and he teaches a class on developing game-related programs for libraries.

David Koruna is a current Undergraduate Junior studying Statistics at the University of Illinois. He is the President of Competitive Gaming within Illini Esports. He currently works on creating rosters for different esports in the organization which then go on to compete for scholarship prizing.

Douglas Brauer is the Executive Director for the Orpheum Children’s Science Museum. He has over 30 years of global expertise in facilitating solutions to maximize organizational leadership, sustainability, profitability, and return-on-investment. His degrees include a BS in Industrial Technology from Illinois State University, a MS in Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois, and a Ph.D. in Education & Human Resource Studies from Colorado State University.

Duncan Baird is an undergraduate student in Computer Science currently working as an Assistant Manager for the Champaign Urbana Community Fab Lab. He spends his time making costumes from games and animations and periodically teaching kids how to make video games.

Eric Arnold spent 15 years at Volition working on just about every sub-discipline programming has to offer. He is most proud of the destruction system from Red Faction: Guerrilla and Armageddon. In college he helped found a student group focused on making games, as well as getting the game design program off the ground at Michigan State.

Elizabeth Massa Hoiem is an Assistant Professor at the iSchool. Her expertise is in the early history of experiential learning in Britain and the United States, specifically in how games, toys, automata, and model machines were used alongside literature to teach children during the Industrial Revolution, as well as the class politics of teaching with mechanical toys when so many children performed manual labor for wages. She has a current book project on this topic, funded for next year with an NEH fellowship. https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/589303#image-2

Helen Wauck is a PhD candidate studying Human-Computer Interaction in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois. Her research investigates how to design video games that are effective at training students’ spatial reasoning skills – skills that are one of the strongest predictors of future success in STEM majors and STEM careers. During the first few years of her PhD, she oversaw the development of Homeworld Bound, a spatial skill training game for elementary school students. Currently, she is working to develop new spatial skill training games targeting the interests of low spatial skill students in particular. Website: http://wauck2.web.engr.illinois.edu

James Planey is a PhD student with the DELTA program in Curriculum and Instruction. He has a Masters of Science Teaching from the University of Illinois and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Illinois Wesleyan University. Before returning to research James taught AP and introductory Biology at Urbana High School and also served as its technology coordinator for five years. He also as experience in informal education, having worked as an outreach nature educator in Northern Illinois. James is passionate about exploring the use of immersive and engaging virtual environments for science education, as well as the dynamics of their implementation in instruction.

Jamie Nelson is a Senior eLearning Specialist with the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning at the University of Illinois. He oversees operations of the TechHub (151A Armory), a hands-on emerging technology showcase featuring two virtual reality (VR) headsets, among other tech, where one can learn more about the state of art in VR implementation. Jamie has been involved in gaming, mostly digital, since the late-seventies and early eighties starting with such classics as Pong (Tandy) and Zork (Commodore 64). In more recent years he has “stayed in the game” playing the BioShock, Uncharted, and Fallout series. http://jamienelson.me

Jason L Blair is a veteran writer and game designer who has worked in both the tabletop and video game fields. His day job is Narrative Director at Deep Silver Volition where he is working on an unannounced title. Most recently, he was Lead Writer on their open-world action game Agents of Mayhem. He also worked on Saints Row IV and the critically-acclaimed pen-and-paper roleplaying series Little Fears.

Jeff Ginger is a Program Coordinator with the Illinois Informatics Institute and Adjunct Instructor at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also the director of the CU Community Fab Lab where he promotes all three missions of the University of Illinois: public engagement, teaching and research. http://www.jeffginger.com

Jerome McDonough is an associate professor in the School of Information Sciences. His research focuses on preservation of cultural heritage materials and metadata systems. He was the principal investigator for the Preserving Virtual Worlds projects, an exploration of how to preserve computer games and interactive fiction.

Jim Boone is the Studio Development Director for Volition. He has been developing games over 25 years, and has worked with an eclectic combination of developers/publishers including Volition, Riot Games, Activision, EA, Atari, THQ and Interplay. Jim’s college major was Fire Technology (Firefighting), which he now uses on a daily basis in game development.

Jin Woo (Aleks) Kim is the League of Legends coordinator of Illini Esports. He is a first year student studying Political Science with interests in a dual Economics-Statistics track. In the late 2000s and early 2010s he owned and operated a variety of different East Asian servers for various games, such as Counter-Strike: Online, Sudden Attack, and Call of Duty 4. His operations concentrated on smaller, yet significant areas in terms of mainstream gaming such as Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia) and East Asia (South Korea, Japan). He also has experience within eSports on titles such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends, osu!, and Starcraft: Brood War.

Jorge Rojas-Alvarez is graduate student in the Ph. D. program at the Institute of Communications Research in UIUC. He has taken part in the design of public history exercises in national libraries in Colombia within topics of media memory of rural literacy programs based in a radio broadcast. In these exercises of public history, the libraries emerge as spaces of dialogue between historical documental archives and memories of users. His main pursuit is to find ways and places for co-construction of collective memory where the inquiry of the past empower communities to imagine diverse futures.

Judith Pintar is the co-director, with Randall Sadler, of the IPRH Playful by Design Research Cluster. She directs the Electronic Literatures & Literacies Lab for Illinois Informatics, at UIUC and teaches Interactive Digital Narrative Design and Programming. She is on the national board of directors of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation where she chairs the Education Committee.

Kamila Glowacki has been part of the education team at KAM since 2014 and recently began the role of Education Coordinator in August 2017. Glowacki’s primary focus is to coordinate and teach KAM’s in-depth school programs. She is currently pursuing a MA in Art Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Katie Snyder came to the Museum of the Grand Prairie in 2016 as their Education Program Specialist after a 20 year career as a classroom teacher in both Chicago and CU, teaching students from kindergarten to undergrads. Katie holds a BS in Education from Illinois State, and both a Masters and a Certificate of Advanced Study from the College of Education, Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Keith Self-Ballard is a 20-year veteran of the video games industry. In that time, he has worked as an artist, animator, level designer, manager, and art director. His career spans a wide number of franchises including Myst, Everquest, and Saints Row. He is also a veteran speaker at the Game Developers Conference on topics of art leadership and direction.

Kiel Gilleade is a Visiting Research Programmer at NCSA. He is working R&D in a range of brain and body controlled interactive experiences including computer games. http://justkiel.com

Kim Sheahan is the Assistant Director of Education at the Spurlock Museum. Her special interest is how folktales connect visitors to artifacts, and she serves as the Museum’s resident storyteller. www.spurlock.illinois.edu

Lawrence Angrave is an award winning Computer Science Teaching Professor at UIUC that has been involved in curriculum design for online and on campus programs, including an early Android MOOC with 143,000 students. Lawrence recently co-created the online CS course “Introduction to Game Design” and is running the Virtual Reality lab and course at Siebel Center. Prior to joining UIUC, he helped Sony launch the PS2 and helped UK and US game companies design and create games with realistic physical environments.

Lisette Chapa is the Technology Curator for the Armory Innovation Spaces with the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning at the University of Illinois. At the TechHub she shares her passion of emerging technology by providing support and hands-on programming for visitors. She also is the technology and academic representative for Illini Esports. Lisette has been in love with gaming ever since she first played Turok: Dinosaur Hunter on her Nintendo 64. To this day she continues to play many first-person shooters, her favorite being Left 4 Dead. Lisette’s current passion for gaming has her fully immersive in virtual reality through the HTC VIVE.

Lorcan Murphy has done almost every type of design there is at Volition over the last twelve years, from level design to multiplayer, scripting details to high level planning on almost every game Volition has done since the Playstation 2.

Lu Lawrence is a master’s student in Digital Environments for Learning, Teaching, and Agency in the college of education. Her background in design inspired my interest in the visual design of educational technology. Her research currently explores the relationship between education and design within collaborative learning, ed tech, and adaptable learning experiences.

Mark Macklin is a FGC tournament player and a proud member of Seraphim Nation. He been playing competitively for 10 years. He has been practicing to be the best in any fighting game he ever has ever picked up, Dead Or Alive, Street Fighter, and Tekken to name a few. He has travel to numerous majors and minor tournaments and even host a few himself. Mark goes by the alias “hoodless” and continue to practice to be the best .

Max Patel is a first year student in the College of Engineering studying computer science. He is one of the highest-ranking Hearthstone players at the University of Illinois and a member of the Illini Esports Hearthstone team Corridor Sleepers representing the university in this season’s Tespa Collegiate Series tournament. In addition to Hearthstone, Max has thousands of hours in experience in games such as DotA 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Starcraft 2.

Mike Flavin is a Principal Rendering Programmer in the Core Technology Group (engine team) at Volition, and a UIUC CS alumnus. During his 14 years in the game industry, he has worked in multiple areas, including graphics, gameplay programming, tools and pipelines, and more, across the Saints Row, Red Faction, and Agents of Mayhem franchises. He plays piano very poorly, and knows all of the lyrics to “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”

Pam Leiter has almost 20 years of experience in the field of outdoor environmental education. She has worked for the Champaign County Forest Preserve District for over 13 years, and currently manages the Homer Lake Interpretive Center and CCFPD’s outdoor education staff. She has a MS in Human Dimensions of the Environment from UIUC.

Patricia Franke is an Electrical Engineer most recently associated with the freshman introductory lab where the students apply what they learn in lecture to building a guided project. The semester culminates in an project chosen by the student. Throughout my career I have been involved in developing content for a wide range of subjects within the discipline trying to add a touch of whimsy to help the learning process when possible. https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/ece110/sp2018/

Patrick Cain is the Public Program Coordinator at the Museum of the Grand Prairie in Mahomet, Illinois. Prior to joining the museum, Patrick was a high school social studies teacher in Riverton, Illinois. http://www.museumofthegrandprairie.org/

Phillip Alexander is a Senior Programmer at Volition where he has spent the last 10+ years in various programming positions on the Saints Row and Agents of Mayhem franchises. Before joining Volition, Phillip was a Research Programmer at UIUC’s now defunct Center for Simulation of Advanced Rockets.

Randall Sadler is co-Director of the IPRH Playful by Design Research Cluster. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics, and Director of the ESL Program. The primary focus of my current research is the role of Virtual Worlds (VWs) in the language learning/teaching process.

Rebecca Whalen is a student of world literature, languages and linguistics at the University of Illinois and is a novice author of interactive fiction. She is currently working on her first Interactive Fiction release.

Richie Garcia is the Community President of Illini Esports. He is a second year studying Aerospace Engineering program. During the mid to late 2000s, he co-owned and operated what was at the time the largest Counter-Strike 1.6 community and servers. In 2017 he started casting DotA 2 with joinDOTA League and other amateur leagues. illiniesports.com

Robb Lindgren is an Associate Professor of Curriculum & Instruction in the College of Education and director of the Technology Innovations in Educational Research and Design Initiative. His interests are in how digital and physical games can be designed to cultivate learning, particularly in STEM domains, and in ways that lead to learning transfer (applying learning from one context to a new context). He is currently developing augmented and mixed reality platforms for K12 students learning about critical science concepts. He teaches an educational game design course at UIUC, and he is the principal investigator on multiple NSF-projects exploring simulation and game-based learning. http://emit.education.illinois.edu

Robert Baird is Assistant Professor of Media and Cinema Studies in the College of Media and Associate Director in the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning, where he leads the Instructional Spaces & Technologies unit and the Pedagogy Strategy unit. He has taught a section on video gaming within his New Media courses at Illinois since the release of the PlayStation 1 and the Nintendo 64.

Robert Gable is the Project Management Lead on an unannounced project at Volition. He has worked on 10+ games over the past decade in a variety of roles. His primary motivation is to continue proving to his parents that all of that time playing games as a kid was, in fact, not “a waste of time.”

Salvador Sarmiento is an undergraduate junior in Creative Writing at UIUC and has a passion in Game-Design as well. He is currently working on two text based adventure games using Inform 7 and one role playing game in Unity.

Sherry Yi is a graduate student in the Cognitive Science of Teaching and Learning division under educational psychology. She is currently investigating the role of sandbox video games on students’ STEM interest.

Victor Mouschovias is the chair ACM GameBuilders, a student organization dedicated to videogame development and helping students find jobs in the industry. He’s currently finishing his undergraduate degree in Computer Science here at UIUC, but we let him in anyway. https://www.linkedin.com/in/vmousch/

Will Van Hoose is the founder and leader of Central Illinois Fighting Game Community. He grew up playing various games competitively but has settled on fighting games as his main focus. He’s looking to expand and grow the community in the Central Illinois area.

Zachary Pease is a Junior studying Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Computer Science. He is the Hearthstone Coordinator for Illini Esports, recruiting players for collegiate tournaments, and has been representing the school in these tournaments as one of the University’s top Hearthstone players. In addition to Hearthstone, Zachary plays a variety of other games, including Overwatch and Titanfall 2. In Titanfall 2, he has participated in competitive pick-up games with some of the best players in the game, and in Overwatch he briefly participated in a collegiate series.