Faculty & Staff

A true hybrid across disciplines, professor Arroyo specializes in Learning Sciences, Computer Science and Educational/Cognitive Psychology. Her expertise is in the design of novel technologies for learning and assessment for mathematics, for students throughout the K-12 level. She and her team create intelligent tutoring systems that automatically assess students’ math skills, affective states and metacognitive states, respond to students on the spot, and report strengths and weaknesses (in real time) to the teacher, as students are working on computers or mobile devices. ... View Profile

Roshanak Bigonah has studied Education and Technology, and Media with concentration in Video Production and Advertising. For the past 13 years, she has taught a wide range of courses in Digital Arts including  Graphic Arts, Web Design,  Photography, Videography and 3D Design. Roshanak Bigonah has worked as a freelance graphic and web designer.  In addition to her teaching interests Roshanak Bigonah, is a poet and has published four poetry books in her native language, Farsi. A collection of her works has been translated and published in Dutch and German. ... View Profile

Mark Claypool has been a professor of Computer Science and Interactive Media Game Development at WPI since 1997. Mark has a B.A. in Mathematics from Colorado College and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed conference and journal papers and written two books on computer games. He has chaired several ACM conferences on networks, games and multimedia and served on the technical program committee for over 40 of them. ... View Profile

My position was created as a cross-appointed post: teaching at WPI while serving as curator at the Higgins Armory Museum, the only museum of armor in the western hemisphere. The synergies between the two sides are amazing! Most of my teaching is in IQP projects, bringing student teams to the museum to research some aspect of the museum's collection, and then devising some innovative way to share it with the public. The results speak for themselves: The Virtual Armory site showcases more than a decade of student work. ... View Profile

Information visualization is a powerful means for understanding data and informing human minds. As people begin to rely on visualizations to make high-impact and even life-critical decisions, there is a growing need to ensure that information can be perceived accurately and precisely. My research addresses these challenges by leveraging cognitive and perceptual principles to quantify and model user performance with visualizations. ... View Profile

WPI provides opportunities to investigate worlds beyond your major, and one of those worlds might be art. It might seem an alien world, but many art skills can be useful beyond making art. Drawing enhances spatial perception. Solving design problems hones communication skills. Dreaming up impossible ideas can illuminate what is possible. Sometimes students show up the first day of my course worried that they lack talent or experience. Instead, I recommend committing to practice the skills presented in class, as if approaching music or engineering studies. ... View Profile

Dean O’Donnell is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and game writer. He has been interested in video games since winning his first Atari 2600 in the Kellogg’s “Stick Up for Breakfast!” contest in 1976. While writing plays he earned extra cash writing strategy guides and dialogue for long-forgotten games like One Must Fall 2097, and Highway Hunter. He is a published playwright, and his 2002 short film, Legwork 2002 Tom Luce Christian Stolte, can be found on YouTube. His work can also be found in Titan Quest: Immortal Throne the 2004 expansion pack to the hit game Titan Quest. ... View Profile

My research examines human-centered computing in digital arts practice. I designed and developed a creative coding environment for the browser, Gibber (http://gibber.cc), that I use both for educational research and audiovisual performances. Gibber is used to teach computational media to middle school, high school and university students in locations around the world, and I've performed with it throughout the US, UK and Asia in the experimental performance genre known as live coding. View Profile

John Sanbonmatsu is interested in critical theory, including theories of social change, and political philosophy. View Profile

Dr. Smith's research interests are in computational creativity, game design, computer science education, and the intersection of traditional crafts and computation. Her interdisciplinary work merges technical research in AI and HCI with creative practice in textiles and games, with a view towards addressing social issues and broadening participation and perspectives on computing. ... View Profile