Teaching Philosophy: In my view, a classroom environment should not be restricted to transferring knowledge, but to engage students, of diverse backgrounds, in acquiring problem solving skills. Therefore, giving students tools to think, reflect, admit mistakes, and be creative and original, are qualities that I strive to stimulate in my teaching. In addition, in my class I encourage inclusiveness and I strive to find methods that are inclusive of individual and cultural differences. To nurture these values, I use Self Determination theory as a base theory for building a good learning environment that enhance autonomy and relatedness. Additionally, I use a problem-based teaching approach where I use a mixture of lectures, in-class activities and projects that allow student to apply the theories discussed on various sized problems
Recent courses taught:
- CMPM 80H: Human-Centered AI
- CMPM 230: Game Data Science
- GAME 251: Game User Research
- GAME 256: Serious Game Capstone II
- GAME 257: Serious Game Capstone III
- CMPM 280P: Player Experience
Mentoring
Current PhD Students:
- Reza Habibi , UCSC, CM
- Menna Hendawy, UCSC, CM
- Jonattan Holmes, UCSC, CM
- Jiahong Li, UCSC, CM
- Atieh Kashani, UCSC, CM
- Sai Siddartha Maram, UCSC, CM
- Zhaoqing Teng, UCSC, CM
- Nathan Partlan (fourth year) at Northeastern University – Co-supervised with Stacy Marcella
Alumni:
- Erica Kleinman (graduatef from UCSC 2023), joined Northeastern University as postdoctoral fellow
- Chaima Jemmali (graduated from Northeastern University 2021), joined Ubisoft as Gameplay Engineer.
- Sarah Bunian (graduated from Northeastern University 2021), joined Kuwait Petroleum Corporation as Computer System Analyst.
- Elin Carstensdottir (graduated from Northeastern University 2020); joined UCSC as Assistant Professor
- Zhengxing Chen (graduated from Northeastern University 2019); joined Meta
- Shree Durga (was a PostDoc at Northeastern University); joined Amazon
- Troung Huy Nguyen Dinh (was a Post Doc at Northeastern University); joined Google
- David Milam (graduated from Simon Fraser University 2012); joined Autodesk
- Maha Al-Saati (graduated from Simon Fraser University 2012); joined Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University in Saudi Arabia.
- Paola Rizzo, Managing Director at Interagens