At 5 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 26, Global Game Jam (GGJ) 2018 will begin. For the 48 hours that follow, jammers all over the world will develop games based on a common theme announced at the start of the GGJ event. In 2017, more than 7,000 wave-themed games were created at 700 locations in 95 countries, 20 of which were developed here at UCI at a GGJ site organized by Informatics Professor Theresa Jean Tanenbaum.
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Informatics Ph.D. Candidate Oliver Haimson Receives James Harvey Scholar Award
The recipient of the 2018 James Harvey Scholar award is Informatics Ph.D. candidate Oliver Haimson. The award recognizes graduate students who have excelled academically, have a financial need and are studying homosexuality, including but not limited to sociological, medical, political, historical or legal ramifications. Funds for the award were donated to the University of California in 1991 from Mr. Harvey’s estate. The award will cover Haimson’s resident fees for Spring 2018 and provide him with a $6,000 stipend paid over three months.
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2018 ICS Projects and Predictions
January 16, 2018
Professors Kurt Squire, Ramesh Jain and Vladimir Minin provide a sneak peak of what technological innovations are ahead in 2018.
Informatics Professors Promote Inclusiveness
Two Informatics professors have each received an Inclusive Excellence Spirit Award for their work in promoting equity, diversity and inclusion at UCI. Assistant Professor Bonnie Ruberg, along with Ph.D. student Amanda Cullen, received the award to help diversify esports, while Assistant Professor Aaron Trammell, along with graduate student Sarita Rosenstock, undergraduate student Grace Wood, and Library Event Coordinator Daniel Gilchrist, received the award for efforts to promote feminism and the politics of inclusion. UCI’s Office of Inclusive Excellence offers the awards, which include funding for related campus activities.
ICS Professors Presenting at AICRE Events for Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend
January 11, 2018
Two ICS professors are participating in events hosted by UCI’s Africana Institute for Creativity, Recognition and Elevation (AICRE) for Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. AICRE aims to “create a dynamic exchange of cultural, scientific, economic and spiritual knowledge between local communities and academia to positively impact the next generation, so people of African descent can equitably contribute to a more sustainable society and command respect worldwide.” Informatics Professor and AICRE Fellow Aaron Trammell and Computer Science Professor Magda El Zarki will be presenters at two of the public events, contributing to this exchange of knowledge.
Professor Mark Aims to Reduce Workplace Stress
December 22, 2017
Informatics Professor Gloria Mark has received funding from a National Science Foundation Cyber-Human Systems (NSF CHS) grant to study methods to detect and address workplace stress. The $1.2 million grant, “Managing Stress in the Workplace: Unobtrusive Monitoring and Adaptive Interventions,” with Ricardo Gutierrez-Osuna of Texas A&M University and Ioannis Pavlidis of the University of Houston, runs through July 2020. Mark’s share of the funding is $420,000.
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From Homebound to School Bound with Telepresence Robots
December 19, 2017
Informatics Professor Emeritus Judy Olson has teamed up with Ph.D. candidate Veronica Newhart to research telepresence robots for learning.
Motherboard: “The Reddit Moderator Getting a PhD in Online Moderation” (PhD student Kat Lo profiled)
December 13, 2017
Much of the internet runs on volunteer labor performed by people who are often unnoticed, such as online community moderators. When these people are recognized, it’s usually because they’ve become a target of harassment, are involved in a flamewar, or are accused of abusing their power.
Moderators make message boards, Reddit, Facebook groups, email listservs, and many other online communities function, and yet not a whole lot of time has been spent by mainstream academics understanding good internet moderation, or the psyche of a moderator. Kat Lo, a PhD student at the University of California Irvine, is bridging that gap by researching online communities at a time when most major platforms are trying reckon with widespread harassment.
Read the full story at Motherboard.
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute (MVLRI) interview with Mimi Ito
December 6, 2017
In this episode, we’re joined by two researchers affiliated with the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub – Mimi Ito from UC Irvine and Justin Reich from MIT. First we’ll get acquainted with their work more generally and learn about the unique research topics they’re pursuing at their respective institutions. Then, we talk extensively about a recent publication that they authored that was published through the Hub, called From Good Intentions to Real Outcomes: Equity by Design in Learning Technologies. We talk about the process of producing this report, including convening stakeholders from many different organizations involved in education technology and online learning, and the challenges and strategies identified with regard to equitable use of learning technologies in K-12 settings.
Listen to the episode on SoundCloud.
OC Register: “Placentia-Yorba Linda district students design mobile apps, get idea of STEM career options”
December 5, 2017
“When I come to teach these kids, they surprise me,” said mentor Jerry Granillo, a software engineer major at UC Irvine. “The ideas are all theirs. The programming is all theirs. I teach them the fundamentals and they take it from there. I’m pretty astonished by all of it.”
Read the full story at OC Register.