Interactive games are now a $32B+ industry and that is expected to double in size over the next two years. In order to meet that expansion, the game industry requires large numbers of employees facile with game and game technology development. To help meet those requirement, the University of Southern California has created new degree programs on game development and a laboratory whose mission is research, development and education on technologies and design for the future of interactive games, the USC GamePipe Laboratory. Research in that laboratory has five main directions – infrastructure, cognition and games, immersion, serious games, and game design.  In this presentation, we look at work underway in the GamePipe Laboratory and some interesting new proposed research directions.

Bio

Michael Zyda is Director of the USC GamePipe Laboratory, and a Professor of Engineering Practice in the USC Department of Computer Science. At USC, he created the BS in Computer Science (Games) and MS in Computer Science (Game Development) cross-disciplinary degree programs and doubled the incoming undergraduate enrollment of the Computer Science Department. From Fall 2000 to Fall 2004, he was the Founding Director of the MOVES Institute located at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey and a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at NPS as well. From 1986 until the formation of the MOVES Institute, he was the Director of the NPSNET Research Group. Professor Zyda's research interests include computer graphics, large-scale, networked 3D virtual environments, agent-based simulation, modeling human and organizational behavior, interactive computer-generated story, computer-generated characters, video production, entertainment/defense collaboration, modeling and simulation, and serious and entertainment games. He is a pioneer in the following fields - computer graphics, networked virtual reality, modeling and simulation, and serious games. He holds a lifetime appointment as a National Associate of the National Academies, an appointment made by the Council of the National Academy of Sciences in November 2003, awarded in recognition of “extraordinary service” to the National Academies.  He is a member of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. He served as the principal investigator and development director of the America’s Army PC game funded by the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. He took America’s Army from conception to three million plus registered players and hence, transformed Army recruiting.

Professor Zyda began his career in Computer Graphics in 1973 as part of an undergraduate research group, the Senses Bureau, at the University of California, San Diego. Professor Zyda received a BA in Bioengineering from the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla in 1976, an MS in Computer and Information Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1978 and a DSc in Computer Science from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri in 1984.

For more information about our visitor please visit:

http://www.scienceandsociety.net/podcasts/archives/2006/07/dr_michael_zyda.html

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

3:00 - 4:30

Wu & Chen Auditorium

101 Levine Hall