[game_edu] New MS & PhD in Computational Media at UC Santa Cruz, application deadline January 3rd

[Katherine Isbister]

Please share this announcement with students interested in graduate work at
the intersection of computation and aesthetic expression.


Computational Media is all around us — video games, social media,
interactive narrative, smartphone apps, computer-generated films,
personalized health coaching, and more. To create these kinds of media, to
deeply understand them, to push them forward in novel directions, requires
a new kind of interdisciplinary thinker and maker. The new graduate degrees
in Computational Media at UC Santa Cruz are designed with this person in
mind.

The M.S. is designed to help you build on your existing strengths and move
into new areas. Maybe you're a computer scientist or educator who wants to
develop a deeper understanding of game design or human-computer
interaction. Maybe you're a storyteller or digital humanist who could
explore new territories, but would need deeper technical skills. Maybe you
have a background in health care or community organizing and want to find
ways to engage the possibilities of computational media to assist and
empower people. Maybe you're already doing interdisciplinary work, but want
to develop a deeper understanding of the field and a stronger portfolio.

The Ph.D., on the other hand, is designed for those who are already
actively working in computational media and want to develop new knowledge
that will change what is possible and how we understand it. You might be
doing pathbreaking work in generative game design, software or platform
studies, interactive narrative or characters, assistive technology, games
and emotion, social and embodied interaction, highly personalized media, or
a wide range of other areas. You might be interested in a broad set of
applications for computational media, from social support or personalized
learning to emotional engagement or critical commentary. The Ph.D. will
provide you with an interdisciplinary foundation and supportive research
community for moving your work forward.

The faculty of the Computational Media department are:

   -

   Nathan Altice: Media researcher with a focus on hardware platforms,
   humanities computing, and computer archaeology. Sound artist and musician.
   Author of I AM ERROR: The Nintendo Family Computer / Entertainment
   System Platform.
   -

   Katherine Isbister: Human computer interaction and games researcher,
   focused on emotion and social connection. Builds and studies games and
   other playful experiences using novel interfaces (wearables, tangibles,
   biosensors, motion-tracking). Author of How Games Move Us: Emotion by
   Design.
   -

   Michael John: Game designer and developer with more than 20 years
   commercial experience. Co-author of ‘Cerny Method’ game development
   methodology. Interested in level design, game analytics, and alt-control
   input and output systems.
   -

   Sri Kurniawan: Works on designing interactive systems for social good
   with and for populations with special needs, including older persons,
   people with disabilities, those from low socioeconomic and educational
   backgrounds and those from third world countries. Her scientific pursuit is
   in how assistive, educational and therapy technology can be enjoyable,
   usable, and useful through combining design and functionalities.
   -

   Michael Mateas: Works in the area of AI-based art and entertainment.
   Interested in how AI and simulation approaches open up new forms of
   computational media, including new approaches to interactive storytelling,
   new kinds of AI-assisted game and media-design tools, new kinds of games
   and interactive media using generative methods, and new forms of
   interactive art. Previous works include the interactive drama Facade,
   the social simulation game Prom Week and the vision-based visual art
   generator Tableau Machine.
   -

   Adam M. Smith: Applied AI researcher, using information retrieval,
   probabilistic logical inference, combinatorial search, knowledge
   representation and machine learning to loosen bottlenecks in exploratory
   game design and support high-assurance generative systems. Builds design
   automation tools with active designers on experimental game projects such
   as Refraction, DragonBox Adaptive, and RiddleBooks.
   -

   Erin Robinson Swink: Game designer and entrepreneur. Creative Director
   of Masters Program in Games & Playable Media. Created indie games Gravity
   Ghost and Puzzle Bots, and was lead designer of Fair Play, an
   educational game funded by the NIH Pathfinder Award. Background in
   behavioral neuroscience.
   -

   Noah Wardrip-Fruin: Works on digital fictions, games, and art (e.g., The
   Impermanence Agent, Screen, Prom Week) and new technologies and
   approaches for enabling and understanding them. Author of Expressive
   Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies.
   -

   Jim Whitehead: Generative methods researcher, focused on procedural
   generation of game levels and real world artifacts. Software engineering
   researcher focused on generative models of software evolution. Has a habit
   of starting game programs.


Other UC Santa Cruz faculty who collaborate with computational media
faculty include: Michael Chemers, Robin Hunicke, Soraya Murray, Warren
Sack, Elizabeth Swensen, Susana Ruiz, Leila Takayama, and Steve Whittaker.

UC Santa Cruz is a campus of the University of California with a
longstanding and deep commitment to interdisciplinary knowledge and
creation. Its main campus is located in a beautiful redwood forest,
overlooking Monterey Bay. It also has a new campus, a short drive away, in
the heart of Silicon Valley. (The Computational Media department offers a
professional M.S. in Games & Playable Media at this location.) UCSC values
diversity, with more than 40% first-generation college students, recent
recognition as a Hispanic-serving institution, and consistent rankings
among the the nation’s best campuses for GLBTI students. In the 2015-16
Times Higher Education world rankings, UC Santa Cruz was ranked second in
research influence as measured by the number of times its faculty's
published work is cited by scholars around the world.

Applications for the new programs opened October 1st and close January 3rd.
The GRE general test is required. For more information, please visit:

http://graddiv.ucsc.edu/prospective-students
https://www.soe.ucsc.edu/departments/computational-media
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