Monthly Archives: August 2017

OC Register: “Games are changing the world, just ask new UCI professor who worked in the White House” (Steinkeuhler profiled)

August 28, 2017

In 2017, Constance Steinkuehler and her husband Kurt Squire, another gaming whiz and designer, moved from Madison, Wisconsin, to Southern California to join a virtual wave created by the presence of Blizzard, Riot Games, Naughty Dog, Insomniac Games, Infinity Ward and others. A professor of Informatics at UC Irvine, Steinkuehler is a part of one of the most exciting gamer/education movements in the world.

“I’m going to build an empire here,” Steinkuehler said. “California is the land of digital milk and honey.”

Read the full story at the OC Register.

Forbes: “Plagued By Workplace Interruptions? Set Some Boundaries” (Mark quoted)

August 23, 2017

Interruptions at work are a pandemic. Professionals get bombarded constantly from all sides. A typical manager gets interrupted every three minutes at work, according to Gloria Mark, associate professor at the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. It’s no wonder that, by the end of the day, we feel frayed but not accomplished. To make matters worse, we interrupt ourselves nearly as often as others interrupt us. Be honest: How many times each day do you find yourself checking Instagram or compulsively tidying your inbox?

Read the full story at Forbes.

Tanenbaum collaborates on ‘Che’s Village’ VR experience

August 22, 2017

Karen Tanenbaum, a project scientist in the Department of Informatics, has completed work on a VR prototype called “Che’s Village” alongside UC Riverside’s Associate Professor of History Juliette Levy and Oregon Story Board Director Tawny Schlieski.

The experimental application, which was intended to stimulate intellectual learning and critical thinking for college-age users, was demonstrated for Levy’s History 75/History of Latin America course at UCR and for students and faculty at UCI. Many found the game to be an interesting and entertaining supplement to a traditional learning experience.

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Lopes honored with 2017 AITO Test of Time Award

August 21, 2017

Informatics Professor Cristina Lopes has been honored with the 2017 Association Internationale pour les Technologies Objets (AITO) Test of Time Award in recognition of her enduring contributions to the fields of computer programming and software development.

Lopes was recognized alongside fellow authors Gregor Kiczales, John Lamping, Anurag Mendhekar, Chris Maeda, Jean-Marc Loingtier and John Irwin for their 1997 paper “Aspect-oriented programming” at the 31st European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP) that took place June 18-23, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain.
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NPR: “‘Schoolifying’ Minecraft Without Ruining It” (Ito quoted)

August 10, 2017

“Scrappy educators and hackers and YouTubers kept adding stuff on, and it was very much an organic, geek-led movement,” says Mimi Ito, a cultural anthropologist at UC Irvine who studies how children and teens use media. She is also the founder of an online Minecraft summer camp.

Ito compares the game to a skateboarding park: a place that kids flock to and have a blast while also picking up wicked cool new tricks. “Kids are mostly hanging out, but they’re also learning from each other,” she explains. “Some are more advanced and are displaying their skills, so there are open invites to level up.”

Read the full story at NPR.

Mazmanian, Regan and Shahbaba appointed DECADE Graduate Faculty Mentors

August 4, 2017

The UCI Office of Inclusive Excellence (OIE) has appointed ICS professors Melissa Mazmanian, Amelia Regan and Babak Shahbaba to serve as DECADE (Diverse Educational Community and Doctoral Experience) Graduate Faculty Mentors. Mazmanian will serve as a mentor for the graduate program in informatics, Shahbaba will be the mentor for the graduate program in statistics; and Regan will serve as a mentor for the graduate programs in computer science, network systems and transportation science. They each will serve two-year terms that started in July.
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Ruberg co-editing special “Queerness and Video Games” issue of Game Studies journal

August 3, 2017

Assistant Professor of Informatics Bonnie Ruberg is co-editing a special issue of the journal Game Studies on the topic of “Queerness and Video Games: New Critical Perspectives on LGBTQ Issues, Sexuality, Games and Play” with Amanda Phllips, assistant professor in the Department of English at Georgetown University.

This special issue “seeks to explore new critical perspectives on queerness and video games, building from existing queer game studies work and broadening the current scope of the paradigm by inviting intersectional voices, highlighting underrepresented LGBTQ identities, and challenging those who study video games to make explicit the political implications of their work.”
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Ruberg has article featured in new Gaming Representation book

Assistant Professor of Informatics Bonnie Ruberg’s article, “Playing to Lose: The Queer Art of Failing at Video Games,” was included as a chapter in a new book titled Gaming Representation: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Video Games, which was published on July 3, 2017 by Indiana University Press. Gaming Representation examines the portrayals of race, gender and sexuality in a range of video games from casual to indie to mainstream. In their essays, the contributors to this volume argue that representation and identity function as systems in games that share a strong connection to code and platforms. The book was edited by Jennifer Malkowski, assistant professor of film and media studies at Smith College, and TreaAndrea M. Russworm, associate professor of English at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
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A shared passion for research on Capitol Hill

August 2, 2017

Ph.D. student Samantha McDonald continues her research on how technology affects political communication while interning for the Congressional Management Foundation in Washington, D.C.

Second-year informatics Ph.D. student Samantha McDonald is spending her summer as a research assistant at the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) in Washington, D.C., where she is conducting data analysis on satisfaction surveys that congressional representatives sent to their constituents in order to provide key findings and recommendations to improve future surveys. In addition to her research, she is also writing for the CMF blog about her findings and experiences.
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