research
These days, I spend a lot of time writing research proposals, developing collaborations for my division and performing various duties as a researcher in my areas of interest: health, behavior & interactive media. I am founder and director of the of my division’s Games For Health Initiative (established in 2007) whose mission is to translate interactive media innovation to the health researchers and practitioners community and develop new areas of investigation at the intersection of medicine, neuroscience and public health. I have co-developed, co-authored and contributed to 30+ proposals since 2007 for intramural, foundation, corporate and federal funding, 30% success rate (funded/reviewed)–proposal list supplied on request. I contributed to research development across all of our division’s priority areas: game design, mobile and environmental media and immersive technologies.
Here are some of my current projects and collaborations:
Principal Investigator/Project Director for Wellness Partners, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Pioneer Portfolio, Health Games Research. (Co-PI Thomas A. Valente, Co-I’s Maryalice Jordan-Marsh, Donna Spruijt-Metz). This research will assess the effectiveness of a social game as a lifestyle change intervention. The game will employ known effective game mechanics from casual games and features from online social networking in order to enable players to leverage their social network to meet individual and/or group wellness goals. This is a collaboration between the USC School of Cinematic Arts, School of Social Work, Keck School of Medicine, Annenberg School for Communication and the Center for Work and Family Life. The study is currently openly recruiting participants and we have begun data collection.
Principal Investigator/Project Director for Social Motivation Adaptive Reality Treatment Games (SMART-Games) to use a novel game controller and virtual environment based on Diana Hughes’ thesis project Pluff (2009) for treatment of children with autism spectrum disorder. This is a collaboration with the UCLA Center for Autism Research and Treatment (CART) (Project Site PI Judith Piggot) and the Autism Center at the University of Washington (Project Site PI Wendy Stone). The purpose of this project is to develop and pilot an innovative approach to improve social competence in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) functioning at diverse cognitive and language levels. Capitalizing on state-of-the-art game technology and rich clinical expertise, the SMART-Games Suite is designed to identify and remediate specific social impairments, thus improving social adaptation and long-range outcomes for the growing numbers of children diagnosed with ASD. The study is current recruiting children with and without ASD at UCLA and USC respectively.
Principal Investigator/Project Director for “Brain Architecture of the Developing Child”, in collaboration with the Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child (Albert Race) and the USC Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute (Pat Levitt) to develop interactive prototypes to help the public and policy makers understand the effects of gene and environment interactions on the brain architecture of the developing child.
Co-Investigator at the USC Interactive Media Mobile and Environmental Media Lab (MEML) led by Scott S. Fisher with funding from Nokia Hollywood Lab, Intel and Amdocs. Recent projects include Million Story Building and The Future of The Story. We are collaborating with the USC School of Architecture and the Keck School of Medicine Childhood Obesity Research Center.
Faculty Advisor for USC GamePipe to develop student produced games for health sponsored by the Humana Innovation Center. We are developing several sensor-based mobile games for nutrition, exercise and sleep hygiene.
