Featured SMU Guildhall Research Projects
In addition to the specialized research projects that students complete for thesis and directed focus studies, many important research initiatives take place in collaborations between SMU Guildhall faculty, students, and academic research teams. Some of these initiatives include:
Gamification Learner Initiative Projects
- Mobile Games for Adult Literacy: Cross-platform mobile technology platform and games to help adult literacy skill development
- Simulation Game Platform for Pathogen Threat Response: Serious game platform to help train government agencies and officials around pandemic and pathogen threat responses
- Educational Minecraft STEM+C Games: Commercial game platform education mods to help learners access and acquire STEM-C skills
Embodied Learner Initiative Projects
- Games for Virtual Reality Surgical Simulations: Virtual Reality (VR) technology gamified simulations built with game engines to train novice surgeons in Zambia by practicing portions of virtual hysterectomies that are scored by the game and recorded for virtual feedback from real-life surgical faculty based in the U.S.
- XBOX Kinect Motion Games for Mathematic Learning: Motion capture technology single-player games to help math learners embody geometric principles intuitively with gestures
- Virtual Reality Role-Play Simulation for Managing Risky Situations: Virtual Reality (VR) technology avatar dyad simulations built with game engines to help teens and young adults learn and practice behavioral skills to avert instances of sexual violence and disengage from risky behaviors
- Educational Holographic Multiplayer Geometry Games: Collaborative Augmented Reality (AR) technology multiplayer team game to help math learners embody geometric principles intuitively with holographic shape manipulatives
Technology Enhanced Learner Initiative Projects
- Augmented Reality Scavenger Hunt Games for Algebraic Learning: Place-based Augmented Reality (AR) technology games to help math learners be ready to learn algebraic principles
- Racism Coping Skills VR Simulation: Virtual Reality (VR) technology simulations built with game engines to help persons of color and minorities learn about how racist experiences are linked to unhealthy behavior patterns and practice healthy behavioral skills to cope with microaggressions and others’ recounting of stories of racism
- Minecraft Games for Personalized Reading: Commercial game platform and artificial intelligence (AI) agents mods powered by large language models (LLMs) for personalized education provide universal access to learners with reading differences by offering tailored learning experiences to individual needs
- Virtual Reality Improv Simulations for Building Emotional Intelligence: Virtual Reality (VR) technology dyad simulations built with game engines to help individual team members build emotional intelligence skills through the practice of virtual improv scenarios with a live puppeted avatar improv partner
Machine Learning Initiative Projects
- Gen-AI Detective Games for Procedural Narrative Generation — Used to Fight Sex Trafficking: Next-gen artificial intelligence (AI) storytelling through large language models (LLMs) in a procedurally generated mystery game crafted from the player’s real-time free-form text inputs that shape an unfolding gameplay experience. This technology is being used for world-changing initiatives including partnering with law enforcement to help fight sex trafficking.
- Human Computational Games AI Training — Used for Optical Scan Improvement: Leveraging human pattern recognition skills through gamification to guide deep neural networks (DNN) machine learning algorithms, allowing for more accurate segmentation with significantly smaller datasets, applied to retinal layer segmentation in optical coherence tomography (OCT) scans.
- Minecraft Games for Cancer Discoveries: Minecraft mods of crowdsourced players as citizen scientists simultaneously clustering chemotherapeutic co-medication property data and suppling training input into a deep neural network (DNN) learning and mapping the solution space for multidrug resistant cancer.
- Gen-AI Psychometrics Games for Educational Simulations & Storytelling: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and knowledge-based queries AI framework within a simulation game that integrates a large language model(LLM) for game character decision-making and dialogue, supported by a graph database for tracking and contextualizing scenarios through emotion and memory psychological models that adapt the AI’s personality and social state for a model applicable to educational simulations, adaptive AI, and character-driven storytelling.
- Puzzle-Based Training for AI Field Training: Autonomous agent distributed architecture enable the creation of a network of specialized AI agents capable of performing complex tasks in data analysis, visualization, and decision support
Research Partnerships
These opportunities for project-based research in game design have been facilitated by SMU via various grants, licenses and technologies over the years. Some of the organizations that have partnered with the SMU Guildhall Graduate Game Development Program for research initiatives include:
Public Sector Partnerships
National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, US Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences, US Department of Justice National Institute for Justice, Wellcome Trust UK, Medical Research Council (UK), America’s Army, Texas Educational Service Center, Region 13, and the Texas Film Commission
Academic Sector Partnerships
SMU Simmons School of Education & Human Development Departments of Teaching & Learning and Department of Leadership & Public Policy, SMU Dedman School of Humanities and Science Departments of Chemistry and Department of Psychology and Department of Economics, SMU Lyle School of Engineering Department of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Louisiana State University, MU University Research Council, University of Oklahoma, and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Nonprofit Sector Partnerships
Center for Advanced Pathogen and Response Simulations (CAPTRS), Retina Foundation of Southwest, Literacy Instruction of Texas (LIFT), Dollar General Family Literacy Foundation, XPRIZE, talkStem, The Centsibility Project, and the PC Gaming Alliance
Private Sector Partnerships
BALANCED Media | Technology (BMT), Raytheon, Pangiam, Nerd Kingdom, Epic, Valve, Sony, nVidia, Samsung, Microsoft, Nintendo, Intel, Dell, Oculus VR, IBM, SJVR, Metalworking Fluid, and Complexity Gaming
Research In the News
Awards
Updated Fall 2024
Ongoing Projects
External Public Sector Funded Projects:
- 2023–2027: SMU Guildhall Director of Academics, Dr. Elizabeth Storz Stringer, is a contributor on a four-year grant awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute on Drug Abuse for $2,586,115. The SMU Dedman College of Humanities and Science Department of Psychology and the SMU Guildhall Graduate Game Development Education Program partnered with the University of Washington to create the virtual reality (VR) simulation for the technology-enhanced learner initiative project “Effects of Direct and Vicarious Discrimination on Alcohol and Cannabis Cravings: Virtual Reality Experiment”.
- 2021-2026: SMU Guildhall Director of Academics, Dr. Elizabeth Storz Stringer, is a Co-PI on a five-year grant awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for $2,500,000. The SMU Simmons School of Education and Human Development Department of Teaching & Learning and the SMU Guildhall Graduate Game Development Education Program partnered with the non-profit talkStem to create the tablet-based augmented reality (AR) game MathFinders for the community walkStem technology-enhanced learner initiative project “Seeing the World through a Mathematical Lens: A Place-Based Mobile App for Creating Math Walks”.
- 2020-2024: SMU Guildhall Deputy Director of Research, Dr. Corey Clark is the Principal Investigator on a four-year grant awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for $1,521,615. The SMU Guildhall Graduate Game Development Education Program, the SMU Lyle School of Engineering Department of Computer Science, and the SMU Simmons School of Education and Human Development Department of Education Policy & Leadership partnered with local ISDs in Dallas area to integrate Minecraft education game mods for the STEM+C technology-enhanced learner initiative project “Teaching Computer Science and Computational Thinking with Community Gaming”.
- 2020-2024: SMU Guildhall Director of Academics, Dr. Elizabeth Storz Stringer, is a Co-PI on a four-year grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Education Institute for Education Sciences (IES) for $1,398,245. The SMU Simmons School of Education and Human Development Department of Teaching & Learning and the SMU Guildhall Graduate Game Development Education Program partnered with the University of Wisconsin-Madison to create the augmented reality (AR) game Flatlands AR for the Microsoft Holo-Lens 2 collaborative geometric reasoning embodied learner initiative project “Exploring Collaborative Embodiment for Learning (EXCEL): Understanding Geometry through Multiple Modalities".
External Private/Nonprofit Sector Funded Projects:
- 2023-2025: SMU Guildhall Deputy Director of Research, Dr. Corey Clark is the Principal Investigator on a grant awarded by the Dollar General Literacy Foundation for $400,00. The SMU Guildhall Graduate Game Development Education Program and the SMU Simmons School of Education and Human Development Department of Teaching & Learning partnered on the gamification learner initiative project “Utilizing Knowledge Graphs for Personalized Adult Literacy Game Based Learning”.
- 2021-2024: SMU Guildhall Deputy Director of Research, Dr. Corey Clark is the Principal Investigator on a grant awarded by BALANCED Media | Technology for $224,816 on the machine learning initiative project “Privacy Preserving Machine Learning Using Homomorphic and Distributed Computing”.
SMU Funded Projects:
- 2024-2025: SMU Guildhall Deputy Director of Research, Dr. Corey Clark is a Co-PI on a grant awarded by the SMU O’Donnell Data Science and Research Computing Institute for $50,000. The SMU Dedman College of Humanities and Science Department of Chemistry and the SMU Guildhall Graduate Game Development Education Program partnered for the computer-aided drug design machine learning initiative project “SmartCADD: AI-QM Empowered Drug Discovery Platform with Explainability in a Secure, Web-Based SaaS Platform”.
- 2023-2025: SMU Guildhall Deputy Director of Research, Dr. Corey Clark is a Co-PI on a grant awarded by SMU for $226,000. The SMU AT&T Center for Virtualization and the SMU Guildhall Graduate Game Development Education Program partnered for the efficacy of synthetic data machine learning initiative project “Bias Identification and Emulation of Facial Recognition Algorithms”.
Accomplished Projects
- 2022-2023: SMU Guildhall Deputy Director of Research, Dr. Corey Clark, was the Principal Investigator on a grant awarded by the Center for Advanced Pathogen Threat Response & Simulation (CAPTRS) for $289,821. The SMU Guildhall Graduate Game Development Program consulted with NATO personnel to create a serious multiplayer platform that enabled the rapid development and deployment of game scenarios to help train government agencies and officials around pandemic and pathogen threat responses on the gamification learner initiative project “Pathogen Simulations and Gaming”.
- 2022-2023: SMU Guildhall Deputy Director of Research, Dr. Corey Clark, was a Co-PI on a grant awarded by the Department of Justice (DOJ) Human Trafficking Institute for $1,187,000. The SMU Dedman College of Humanities and Science Department of Chemistry partnered with The SMU Guildhall Graduate Game Development Program to extract and complete human trafficking datasets using the integration of human-in-the-loop machine learning via human computation gaming on the machine learning initiative project “NLP Human Computation Gaming applied to Human Trafficking Data”.
- 2022-2023: SMU Guildhall Director of Academics, Dr. Elizabeth Storz Stringer, was the Principal Investigator on a grant awarded by SMU Guildhall for $5,000 on the technology-enhanced learner initiative project “Social Presence in Authentic Interpersonal Relationships with Mediated Dyadic Virtual Human Personas: Constructs of a Novel Anthropomorphoid Heuristic”.
- 2016-2020: SMU Guildhall Director of Academics, Dr. Elizabeth Storz Stringer, was a contributor on a grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Education Institute for Education Sciences (IES) for $1,390,000. The SMU Simmons School of Education and Human Development Department of Teaching & Learning partnered with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and collaborated with game design faculty and master’s students from the SMU Guildhall Game Development Graduate Education Program and undergraduate students in the SMU Lyle School of Engineering Department of Computer Science to create the Xbox Kinect motion capture technology geometric reasoning game Hidden Village for the “math in motion” embodied learner initiative project “How dynamic gestures and directed actions contribute to mathematical proof practices”.