"I'm interested in how games can become spaces where people collaborate, discuss strategies, and explore different ways of responding to a problem."
My journey as a researcher began during my undergraduate studies, when I received a scientific initiation studentship to develop an open-source application for a motion capture lab. At the time, mocap was still mostly limited to major studios, so having access to it at the university was really exciting. I worked on character animations for a game developed by an indie studio within the university, which gave me great hands-on experience. Around the same time, I published my first paper on audio games and inclusive games, and research started to feel like a path I wanted to pursue.
I later completed a Master of Fine Arts and joined the interSignos Lab, where we explored the relationship between audio and video in contemporary artworks. There, I became interested in how audio is often subordinated to visuals in games, which led me to investigate sound as a primary driver of interaction through procedural systems and music generation. This work evolved into a PhD in Computer Science in the UK, focusing on computational creativity and music co-creation, with publications in HCI and AI venues. After my PhD, I joined the GUII Lab, where I began researching serious games for resilience building.
During a conference where I presented my research, I attended a talk from the lab and immediately became interested, not only in the work itself but also in its broader vision. I later found a GUII Lab postdoc call aligned with my research. It focused on human-in-the-loop systems, which felt like a nice fit for my work on music co-creation, especially questions around balancing machine autonomy and creative constraints so that humans and machines can compose meaningful pieces together.
"I'd like to explore research at the intersection of games, computational creativity, digital arts, co-creation, and HCI."
My research explores how games and interactive systems can help people think, learn, and make decisions together in complex situations. This can range from creative contexts, such as interactive systems for musical composition, to real-world challenges, like helping communities build resilience to natural hazards. I'm interested in how games can become spaces where people collaborate, discuss strategies, and explore different ways of responding to a problem.
My path into Computational Media and HCI emerged naturally from my background in game design and digital arts, where I focused on building components such as 3D assets, animation, and interactive audiovisual systems. Over time, I became more interested not just in creating these systems, but in how people interact with them and what kinds of meaning, learning, and creativity emerge from those interactions. This led me toward areas like computational creativity, procedural content generation, and music co-creation; fields that sit at the intersection of Computational Media and HCI.
There have been several moments that felt meaningful. One was publishing my first paper as an undergraduate, about inclusive games for blind players. The idea came after I attended a game event where I saw blind players trying to play a music game similar to Guitar Hero. They had developed their own strategies to make it work, which I found very inspiring. Another important experience was attending my first international conference during my master's. There was also the first time I visited UCSC and the GUII Lab before officially joining. I spent a few days getting to know the university and the town and briefly met a few of the researchers there (although many were away attending conferences at the time). That visit gave me a clearer sense of the kind of work happening in the lab and what it would be like to collaborate with the group.
"My path into Computational Media and HCI emerged naturally from my background in game design and digital arts ..."
I'd like to pursue a position in academia and eventually establish a lab/research group, continuing to explore research at the intersection of games, computational creativity, digital arts, co-creation, and HCI. At the same time, I try to remain open to where the path might lead. However, I'm fairly certain that research would still be part of what I do in some form. I'm also interested in continuing to build strong collaborations along the way, since many interesting research directions tend to emerge through interactions with researchers from different backgrounds.
Reach out, learn a bit about the current projects in the lab (there are always several happening at the same time) and get involved. What makes the lab special is not only the interesting projects and collaborations with academic and industry partners, but also the amazing group. It is easy to build relationships and partnerships that often continue well beyond a single project.
One that stuck with me is "Composing Video Game Levels with Music Metaphors through Functional Scaffolding" by Hoover et al. (2015). I found it while exploring music-driven level design after discovering Vib-Ribbon, a minimalist rhythm game where levels are generated from the music itself, and it felt exactly like the reference I was looking for.