Houston Serious Games Consortium
Forming networking and collaboration opportunites for professionals
Houston Serious Games for Health Conference
On Thursday, December 4, 2008, the Games for Health Project announces a one day event for Houston, TX. This regional event offers a chance to get a great introduction to the games for health field including an excellent chance for local and regional networking. This event has been sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Games for Health Project. Additional thanks go to Rice University for the use of their excellent facilities.
Location: Rice University, Duncan Hall - McMurtry Auditorium (Rm 1055)
Schedule/Agenda:
8:30 AM – Registration, Coffee
9:00 AM – Welcome and Introductions (Ben Sawyer (DigitalMill); Joe Warren (Rice CS Chair))
9:30 AM – James Bowers (UTHSC-San Antonio) – Why Eat in Whyville?
10:15AM – Break
10:30AM - Chuck Hamilton (IBM) - Virtual Environments & Healthcare
11:15AM - Nina Fefferman (Tufts) - Social Behavior and the Dynamics of Corrupted Blood in World of Warcraft
Noon - LUNCH
1:30 PM - Jeanne Gleason (New Mexico State University) - Exergaming & CYFAR
2:15 PM - Miguel Encarnacao (Humana) – Fun to be Alive: Emerging Technology Applications to Health and Wellness
3:00 PM – Break
3:15 PM – Ron George (TAMUCC) - Avatars & Diagnosis: Experiential Learning in Virtual Space (PULSE)
4:15 PM – Regional Games for Health Project “Shorts” (a series of short project summaries from a variety of academic institutions and local companies working in the games for health space) *** FULL ***
5:00 PM – Closing Comments (Ben Sawyer/Tony Elam (Baylor College of Medicine))
5:00-6:30PM – Reception and Networking
The schedule will also feature a variety of short project summaries related to games for health from regional academic institutions and companies. If you have interest in presenting, please contact Tony Elam, Baylor College of Medicine, (elam@bcm.edu/713.798.2061). *Event is now full* This represents a great way to let others know what Games for Health projects and activities are going on in your institution and perhaps find new collaborators and partners in research and development.
Cost: Tickets are $49.00 until November 26, 2008.
After that tickets will rise to $79.00 for all attendees. Cost of attendance includes lunch and after-event reception.
General Public Tickets may be purchased online at:
https://www.regonline.com/gfhhouston
Rice Students and faculty may attend the event free-of-charge. Students need to email their intention to attend the event to bbryant@dmill.com
You can also look for additional information and updates on the Games for Health website:
http://www.gamesforhealth.org/index3.html
Additional details – Talks and Speakers:
Title: Why eat in Whyville?
Whyville.net was launched in 1999 as one of the Internet’s first virtual worlds and specifically as a site to promote learning and exploration. Now with more than 4 million registered users, the average user being 12 ∏ and female, Whyville.net is one of the leading virtual worlds for Tweens. Whyville.net is also one of the stickiest sites on the Internet with the average user spending more than 3 hours per month on the site. Whyville has also received several national awards for on-line safety and education. In his talk, Dr. Bower will describe Whyville's approach to engaging children around issues in health and nutrition. He will describe the Why-eat program, initially funded by the Vice Chancellors office of the University of Texas, to help children understand the consequences of eating choices. He will then describe activities in Whyville constructed with support from the Texas Workforce Commission to interest children in careers in biotechnology.
Dr. James Bower, is Chairman and Chief Visionary Officer, Numedeon Incorporated, producer of Whyville.net. Dr. Bower is also a professor of computational neuroscience at the University of Texas Health Science Center inSan Antonio, and at the University of Texas San Antonio. In his scientific career, Dr Bower is responsible for the GENESIS simulation system, studies both the cerebellum and the olfactory system, and has published more than 100 scientific articles and numerous books. Dr Bower also has a long standing interest in science education, having founded and directed the Caltech PreCollege Science Initiative for 17 years while a professor at The California Institute of Technology. Nine years ago he founded Numedeon Incorporated whose business objective is to design and construct learning-based virtual worlds. Dr. Bower has served on educational policy committees for the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and has published numerous articles on science education. He lives on a ranch outside San Antonio Texas where he raises children, Cleveland Bay Horses, and plays Polocrosse.
Title: IBM@PLAY
IBM is leveraging play, games, and virtual worlds for real work in the real world. This talk will explore how places like IBM’s Virtual Heath Island, Virtual Recruiting Centers, and new games like INNOV8 apply to the healthcare business and what heath organizations can learn from these activities and new technologies.
About IBM@PLAY - If we were to group all of the activities, spaces and themes that make up our day, many of us would see three overarching categories or spaces we live in. These are the state being; at home, at work and at play. Even when we are between these spaces or mobile, we find that these themes overlap to such an extent, that the lines between the spaces are constantly blurred. IBM@PLAY, is an ongoing experiment and a whole new way to look at how play and work overlap to bring value to our business. Our hypothesis is that the playful approaches, playful work, the connected practices and tools observed in emerging social tools, games, game engines and converged virtual world spaces should be reusable in the work place. Play in this sense can be a great global connector and equalizer, as well as, a way to create and identify key new skills. Lead by IBM’s Center for Advanced Learning, IBM@PLAY is intended to help us to relearn how to playfully connect, as we live and work in a global context. If we are right, we will be at play for some time to come.
Charles Hamilton (Chuck) has been with IBM for ten years and currently holds two titles. He is the Director of IBM’s new IBM@PLAY program with IBM’s Centre for Advanced Learning, and he is also the Learning and New Media Leader for IBM’s new 3D Internet team. Chuck serves on and supports a number of e-learning organizations outside of IBM and is well known across the emerging eLearning industry. When he is not traveling around the world speaking and promoting the role of technology in education, he spends his time at Vancouver beach volleyball and playing traditional Irish music in a Celtic band.
Title: Social Behavior and the Disease Dynamics of Corrupted Blood
We'll discuss the 2005 Corrupted Blood Outbreak in World of Warcraft and chat about how real-world epidemiology can be informed by studying in-game dynamics of both deadly and not-so-deadly epidemics.
We'll explore how online games can be exploited by researchers in ways that could actually enhance player experience.
Dr. Fefferman is a mathematical epidemiologist whose research focuses on the interactions between host behavior and disease dynamics. She has consulted in areas of bio-defense to the US Dept. of Homeland Security and has published widely in a variety of fields. She is an assistant professor in the department of ecology, evolution and natural resources, an assistant research professor at the center for discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science (DIMACS) (both at Rutgers), and the co-director of the initiative for the forecasting and modeling of infectious diseases (InForMID) at Tufts School of Medicine.
Title: Exergaming & CYFAR
To many, computer games are seen as part of the problem regarding the nationwide obesity epidemic. Electronic games are seeing a new trend in using full body movement to control action — encouraging the user to swing, jump, move and wave. While research documenting the effect of these exergames is just now becoming available, these exergames show great promise in increasing physical activity for youth, helping families play together, and assisting those with limited mobility in becoming more active. New Mexico State University is leading a 5 year exergames research project in which they are researching the physiological, social and psychosocial impacts of exergames and developing a comprehensive guide on implementation.
Dr. Jeanne Gleason is the director of Media Productions at New Mexico State University. She has built a nationally recognized production center for creative videos, multimedia, and education game productions during thin financial times. She is the executive producer for more than 700 educational videos and 100 multimedia projects and supports a team of noted game developers. Dr. Gleason received the USDA Diversity Award and ACE Harmony Award for her programs for non-English speaking audiences. She has generated more than $12 million for NMSU through
100+ grants and contracts. Her documentaries have been featured at the Smithsonian Institution and carried on PBS stations in the USA, the Australian Broadcasting Company, and the Israeli Discovery Channel. Her interactive media productions are in use internationally and by numerous federal agencies, universities, and school systems. She is currently Co-PI of NMSU's exergames initiative.
Title: Fun to be Alive: Emerging Technology Applications to Health and Wellness
What do Games for Health, Personal Robotics, Persuasive Technologies and Virtual Worlds have in common? They're all explored at Humana's Innovation Center towards changing the context of healthcare from claims processing and disease management to managing and optimizing life and happiness. This talk will give an overview of various activities at Humana's Emerging Technology Applications group.
Dr. L. Miguel Encarnação joined Humana's Innovation Center in 2007 after 15 years of academic and private industry research and teaching in Intelligent User Interfaces, Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies, and interactive digital media applications. As Director of Emerging Technology Applications at the Innovation Center, he has been the architect of Humana's Games for Health and Home-Centered Healthcare initiatives as well as the academic liaison to several academic research universities collaborating with Humana in this space, incl. USC, Georgia Tech, MIT, and University of Miami. Maintaining his academic ties, he is the Associate Editor in Chief of IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications, a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Technology & Human Interaction and the International Journal of Virtual Reality as well as a regular review panelist for the US National Science Foundation.
Title: Avatars & Diagnosis: Experiential Learning in Virtual Space
Pulse!! The Virtual Clinical Learning Lab is an interactive virtual environment simulating operational health-care facilities, procedures and systems. The game-based platform is a cognitive, experiential learning tool for military and civilian health-care providers. This state-of-the-art simulator employs cutting-edge technologies to create a realistic, complex, high-fidelity virtual health-care lab. Multiple scenarios present clinically variant pathologies, patients, settings and emergencies in a controlled virtual environment. Such simulations expose learners to practical experience with rare, life-threatening patient problems where actual frequency is low while the stakes are high. Pulse!! allows individualized learning through levels of difficulty, performance feedback and capture of clinical environment and patient variation. Case-based scenarios confront users with diverse patients exhibiting disease states and trauma from catastrophic injury and battlefield wounds. Repetitive practice on reproducible virtual patients within a cognitive loop design allows errors to be corrected and performance improved independent of time or location – and at no risk to patients.
Dr. Claudia L. McDonald, Associate Vice President for Special Projects at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, oversees the university’s Center for Virtual Medical Education, a leader in research and development of sophisticated learning platforms utilizing cutting-edge video-game technology. In 2004, McDonald conceived Pulse!! The Virtual Clinical Learning Lab, the center’s signature project, which since March 2005 has received more than $12 million in congressional funding through the Office of Naval Research. McDonald has recruited an international research and development team of renowned subject-matter experts for Pulse!! and partnered with top-flight BreakAway Ltd. of Hunt Valley, Md., to produce the Pulse!! learning. McDonald has been at A&M-Corpus Christi since 1988. From 2001 to 2004, she developed and deployed “eLINE” (Electronic Learning in Nursing Education), an nationwide online delivery system for competency-based education. McDonald holds a doctorate in nursing from the University of Texas at Austin and is a fellow in the inaugural class of the Executive Nurse Fellows Program sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Location: Rice University, Duncan Hall - McMurtry Auditorium (Rm 1055)
Schedule/Agenda:
8:30 AM – Registration, Coffee
9:00 AM – Welcome and Introductions (Ben Sawyer (DigitalMill); Joe Warren (Rice CS Chair))
9:30 AM – James Bowers (UTHSC-San Antonio) – Why Eat in Whyville?
10:15AM – Break
10:30AM - Chuck Hamilton (IBM) - Virtual Environments & Healthcare
11:15AM - Nina Fefferman (Tufts) - Social Behavior and the Dynamics of Corrupted Blood in World of Warcraft
Noon - LUNCH
1:30 PM - Jeanne Gleason (New Mexico State University) - Exergaming & CYFAR
2:15 PM - Miguel Encarnacao (Humana) – Fun to be Alive: Emerging Technology Applications to Health and Wellness
3:00 PM – Break
3:15 PM – Ron George (TAMUCC) - Avatars & Diagnosis: Experiential Learning in Virtual Space (PULSE)
4:15 PM – Regional Games for Health Project “Shorts” (a series of short project summaries from a variety of academic institutions and local companies working in the games for health space) *** FULL ***
5:00 PM – Closing Comments (Ben Sawyer/Tony Elam (Baylor College of Medicine))
5:00-6:30PM – Reception and Networking
The schedule will also feature a variety of short project summaries related to games for health from regional academic institutions and companies. If you have interest in presenting, please contact Tony Elam, Baylor College of Medicine, (elam@bcm.edu/713.798.2061). *Event is now full* This represents a great way to let others know what Games for Health projects and activities are going on in your institution and perhaps find new collaborators and partners in research and development.
Cost: Tickets are $49.00 until November 26, 2008.
After that tickets will rise to $79.00 for all attendees. Cost of attendance includes lunch and after-event reception.
General Public Tickets may be purchased online at:
https://www.regonline.com/gfhhouston
Rice Students and faculty may attend the event free-of-charge. Students need to email their intention to attend the event to bbryant@dmill.com
You can also look for additional information and updates on the Games for Health website:
http://www.gamesforhealth.org/index3.html
Additional details – Talks and Speakers:
Title: Why eat in Whyville?
Whyville.net was launched in 1999 as one of the Internet’s first virtual worlds and specifically as a site to promote learning and exploration. Now with more than 4 million registered users, the average user being 12 ∏ and female, Whyville.net is one of the leading virtual worlds for Tweens. Whyville.net is also one of the stickiest sites on the Internet with the average user spending more than 3 hours per month on the site. Whyville has also received several national awards for on-line safety and education. In his talk, Dr. Bower will describe Whyville's approach to engaging children around issues in health and nutrition. He will describe the Why-eat program, initially funded by the Vice Chancellors office of the University of Texas, to help children understand the consequences of eating choices. He will then describe activities in Whyville constructed with support from the Texas Workforce Commission to interest children in careers in biotechnology.
Dr. James Bower, is Chairman and Chief Visionary Officer, Numedeon Incorporated, producer of Whyville.net. Dr. Bower is also a professor of computational neuroscience at the University of Texas Health Science Center inSan Antonio, and at the University of Texas San Antonio. In his scientific career, Dr Bower is responsible for the GENESIS simulation system, studies both the cerebellum and the olfactory system, and has published more than 100 scientific articles and numerous books. Dr Bower also has a long standing interest in science education, having founded and directed the Caltech PreCollege Science Initiative for 17 years while a professor at The California Institute of Technology. Nine years ago he founded Numedeon Incorporated whose business objective is to design and construct learning-based virtual worlds. Dr. Bower has served on educational policy committees for the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and has published numerous articles on science education. He lives on a ranch outside San Antonio Texas where he raises children, Cleveland Bay Horses, and plays Polocrosse.
Title: IBM@PLAY
IBM is leveraging play, games, and virtual worlds for real work in the real world. This talk will explore how places like IBM’s Virtual Heath Island, Virtual Recruiting Centers, and new games like INNOV8 apply to the healthcare business and what heath organizations can learn from these activities and new technologies.
About IBM@PLAY - If we were to group all of the activities, spaces and themes that make up our day, many of us would see three overarching categories or spaces we live in. These are the state being; at home, at work and at play. Even when we are between these spaces or mobile, we find that these themes overlap to such an extent, that the lines between the spaces are constantly blurred. IBM@PLAY, is an ongoing experiment and a whole new way to look at how play and work overlap to bring value to our business. Our hypothesis is that the playful approaches, playful work, the connected practices and tools observed in emerging social tools, games, game engines and converged virtual world spaces should be reusable in the work place. Play in this sense can be a great global connector and equalizer, as well as, a way to create and identify key new skills. Lead by IBM’s Center for Advanced Learning, IBM@PLAY is intended to help us to relearn how to playfully connect, as we live and work in a global context. If we are right, we will be at play for some time to come.
Charles Hamilton (Chuck) has been with IBM for ten years and currently holds two titles. He is the Director of IBM’s new IBM@PLAY program with IBM’s Centre for Advanced Learning, and he is also the Learning and New Media Leader for IBM’s new 3D Internet team. Chuck serves on and supports a number of e-learning organizations outside of IBM and is well known across the emerging eLearning industry. When he is not traveling around the world speaking and promoting the role of technology in education, he spends his time at Vancouver beach volleyball and playing traditional Irish music in a Celtic band.
Title: Social Behavior and the Disease Dynamics of Corrupted Blood
We'll discuss the 2005 Corrupted Blood Outbreak in World of Warcraft and chat about how real-world epidemiology can be informed by studying in-game dynamics of both deadly and not-so-deadly epidemics.
We'll explore how online games can be exploited by researchers in ways that could actually enhance player experience.
Dr. Fefferman is a mathematical epidemiologist whose research focuses on the interactions between host behavior and disease dynamics. She has consulted in areas of bio-defense to the US Dept. of Homeland Security and has published widely in a variety of fields. She is an assistant professor in the department of ecology, evolution and natural resources, an assistant research professor at the center for discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science (DIMACS) (both at Rutgers), and the co-director of the initiative for the forecasting and modeling of infectious diseases (InForMID) at Tufts School of Medicine.
Title: Exergaming & CYFAR
To many, computer games are seen as part of the problem regarding the nationwide obesity epidemic. Electronic games are seeing a new trend in using full body movement to control action — encouraging the user to swing, jump, move and wave. While research documenting the effect of these exergames is just now becoming available, these exergames show great promise in increasing physical activity for youth, helping families play together, and assisting those with limited mobility in becoming more active. New Mexico State University is leading a 5 year exergames research project in which they are researching the physiological, social and psychosocial impacts of exergames and developing a comprehensive guide on implementation.
Dr. Jeanne Gleason is the director of Media Productions at New Mexico State University. She has built a nationally recognized production center for creative videos, multimedia, and education game productions during thin financial times. She is the executive producer for more than 700 educational videos and 100 multimedia projects and supports a team of noted game developers. Dr. Gleason received the USDA Diversity Award and ACE Harmony Award for her programs for non-English speaking audiences. She has generated more than $12 million for NMSU through
100+ grants and contracts. Her documentaries have been featured at the Smithsonian Institution and carried on PBS stations in the USA, the Australian Broadcasting Company, and the Israeli Discovery Channel. Her interactive media productions are in use internationally and by numerous federal agencies, universities, and school systems. She is currently Co-PI of NMSU's exergames initiative.
Title: Fun to be Alive: Emerging Technology Applications to Health and Wellness
What do Games for Health, Personal Robotics, Persuasive Technologies and Virtual Worlds have in common? They're all explored at Humana's Innovation Center towards changing the context of healthcare from claims processing and disease management to managing and optimizing life and happiness. This talk will give an overview of various activities at Humana's Emerging Technology Applications group.
Dr. L. Miguel Encarnação joined Humana's Innovation Center in 2007 after 15 years of academic and private industry research and teaching in Intelligent User Interfaces, Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies, and interactive digital media applications. As Director of Emerging Technology Applications at the Innovation Center, he has been the architect of Humana's Games for Health and Home-Centered Healthcare initiatives as well as the academic liaison to several academic research universities collaborating with Humana in this space, incl. USC, Georgia Tech, MIT, and University of Miami. Maintaining his academic ties, he is the Associate Editor in Chief of IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications, a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Technology & Human Interaction and the International Journal of Virtual Reality as well as a regular review panelist for the US National Science Foundation.
Title: Avatars & Diagnosis: Experiential Learning in Virtual Space
Pulse!! The Virtual Clinical Learning Lab is an interactive virtual environment simulating operational health-care facilities, procedures and systems. The game-based platform is a cognitive, experiential learning tool for military and civilian health-care providers. This state-of-the-art simulator employs cutting-edge technologies to create a realistic, complex, high-fidelity virtual health-care lab. Multiple scenarios present clinically variant pathologies, patients, settings and emergencies in a controlled virtual environment. Such simulations expose learners to practical experience with rare, life-threatening patient problems where actual frequency is low while the stakes are high. Pulse!! allows individualized learning through levels of difficulty, performance feedback and capture of clinical environment and patient variation. Case-based scenarios confront users with diverse patients exhibiting disease states and trauma from catastrophic injury and battlefield wounds. Repetitive practice on reproducible virtual patients within a cognitive loop design allows errors to be corrected and performance improved independent of time or location – and at no risk to patients.
Dr. Claudia L. McDonald, Associate Vice President for Special Projects at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, oversees the university’s Center for Virtual Medical Education, a leader in research and development of sophisticated learning platforms utilizing cutting-edge video-game technology. In 2004, McDonald conceived Pulse!! The Virtual Clinical Learning Lab, the center’s signature project, which since March 2005 has received more than $12 million in congressional funding through the Office of Naval Research. McDonald has recruited an international research and development team of renowned subject-matter experts for Pulse!! and partnered with top-flight BreakAway Ltd. of Hunt Valley, Md., to produce the Pulse!! learning. McDonald has been at A&M-Corpus Christi since 1988. From 2001 to 2004, she developed and deployed “eLINE” (Electronic Learning in Nursing Education), an nationwide online delivery system for competency-based education. McDonald holds a doctorate in nursing from the University of Texas at Austin and is a fellow in the inaugural class of the Executive Nurse Fellows Program sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
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