Brian M. Winn is the Founder and Director of the Games for Entertainment and Learning (GEL) Lab at Michigan State University. Winn is also a Professor in the Department of Media and Information.
Carrie teaches foundations of serious games and human-centered experience design courses and work with amazing students. She is also Director of MSU’s fully online graduate certificate in serious games.
Andrew is an artist, designer and instructor at Michigan State University. Andrew is a CG generalist who currently teaches courses covering modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, look dev, environment design, character art, game art, architectural visualization, 3d printing, and more.
Prior to joining the GameDev at MSU faculty, Jeremy taught for three years as a lecturer in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor where he taught game design and software development. And, from 2009-2013, Jeremy was an Assistant Professor teaching game design for the Interactive Media and Games Division of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts.
Ricardo is an Illustrator and Concept Artist with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts (Traditional Painting). He easily produces Speedpaintings, Matte Paintings, all in a great variety of styles and subjects. He previous worked as a Character Artist for Bilzzard’s “Diablo III” Intro Cinematics.
Dr. Ratan’s research focuses primarily on the psychological experience of media use, with an emphasis on video games and other interactive environments.
His research examines the creative collaborative work of videogame design and development and examines the cultural and collaborative dynamics that occur in both professional “AAA” organizations and formal and informal “independent” game development communities.
Wei’s primary research interest is to understand how to better use interactive technologies to influence human behaviors. Her recent projects focus on using digital games for health promotion, health education, and social change. Her broader research area is the social and psychological effects of information and communication technology.
Ryan Thompson holds a Ph. D in musicology from the University of Minnesota. As a scholar, his research focuses on intersections between gameplay and audio – instances in which the music is used as a means to communicate gameplay information to a player. As a musician, he sings in collaboration with other musicians to create remixes of video game music as part of OverClocked ReMix, an organization dedicated to the appreciation and promotion of video game music as an art form. He has presented at meetings of the American Musicological Society, the North American Conference on Video Game Music, and Music and the Moving Image.
Valeta evangelizes for the department by disseminating information about faculty projects, grants, events such as Meaningful Play, and classes. She is also the Internship Coordinator and facilitates for-credit internships. She received her M.A. in Telecommunication, Information Studies & Media at MSU, with an emphasis on Digital Media Art & Technology. She also produces fully online courses for faculty.
