Biographies

• Micah Hrehovcsik, Game Architect Studio, The Netherlands

Micah Hrehovcsik is an experienced game designer and director based in the Netherlands. Micah holds a PhD in Game and Interactive Media Design and an MA in Art & Technology. He founded Game Architect Studio and currently serves as Game Director at Nixxes, a Sony studio. His career spans game design lecturing, research, and professional roles at game studios like Overloaded Endemol. Micah has received honors, including the iZovator and Growing Games awards. He has published on topics like serious game design and game design education. With his universal approach to game design across technologies and domains, Micah brings his expertise in entertainment, serious, and applied games.

• Eddie Melcer, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

Eddie Melcer is an independent game developer and Assistant Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is also director of the ALT Games Lab. His primary teaching and research interests are at the intersection of games, human-computer interaction, and learning science where he explores the usage of novel designs and interfaces and to enhance educational games. Eddie’s serious games have won awards in venues such as the Serious Games Showcase & Challenge and Games for Learning Design Competition, and his independent games have been featured in a number of venues such as IndieCade, IndieCade East, and Come Out & Play. Eddie received his BS in Computer Science from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (2013), MS in Computer Science from the New York University Tandon School of Engineering (2016), and PhD in Computer Science from the New York University Tandon School of Engineering (2018).​ 

• Michael Miljanovic, Ontario Tech University, Canada 

Michael Miljanovic is a member of the SEER (Software Engineering and Education Research) Lab, formerly under the supervision of Dr. Jeremy Bradbury. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Science at Ontario Tech University in Canada. Michael received his PhD in Computer Science in 2020 and his M.Sc. in Computer Science in 2015 from Ontario Tech University, and his B.Sc. in Computer Science in 2013 from the University of Toronto. His primary research area is in Computer Science Education, and his PhD thesis was titled "Adaptive Serious Games for Computer Science Education." Michael's work on serious programming games has included the development of several games that have been used in introductory computer science courses at Ontario Tech and the University of Toronto, including RoboBUG, Robot ON!, and GidgetML.

• Ciprian Paduraru, University of Bucharest, Romania

Ciprian Paduraru is currently an Associate professor at University of Bucharest and Machine Learning Researcher at Google and Romanian Academy. He teaches courses such as Reinforcement Learning and Parallel Programming (CPU, GPU, Cloud). His research is currently focused on three areas:  (a) automatic software testing and security aspects in the research teams at the University of Bucharest, (b) procedural content generation for appearance and motion of humans, and (c) software engineering and AI in game development. Within these research groups, Ciprian is involved in prototyping and publishing using classical AI, Deep Learning and more recently Reinforcement Learning methods. He has also worked in the game development industry for the last 16 years, focusing on implementing AI in top games. He is active in the simulation engine developer’s community and has worked and prototyped with several public or proprietary ones.