Professor Regan Mandryk

Based in Victoria, Canada

Bio:

Regan Mandryk is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Victoria, Canada. Prior to moving to UVic, she was a professor at the University of Saskatchewan for 15 years where she was a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Digital Gaming Technologies and Experiences. Her long-term research objective is to design, develop, and evaluate novel technologies that improve the social, cognitive, and emotional wellbeing of people. Having researched games since her first publications in the early 2000s, she has been at the forefront of legitimizing games research in HCI, with more than 200 top-tier publications, including 29 best paper awards and nominations. Together with her trainees, she has made foundational and significant contributions in modeling the emotional experience and personality of players, harnessing game motivation, facilitating social connection through play, combating toxicity within multiplayer games, and harnessing games for the assessment and treatment of mental health. Regan led Games research in the Canadian GRAND Network, led the first ever Canadian graduate training program on games user research (SWaGUR.ca), and was pivotal in establishing the gaming research community within SIGCHI—particularly in establishing and leading the ACM CHI PLAY conference. She also chaired CHI in 2018 and chaired the CHI Steering Committee from 2019–2022. She was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists in 2014, received the University of Saskatchewan New Researcher Award in 2015, the Canadian Association for Computer Science’s Outstanding Young Canadian Computer Science Researcher Prize in 2016, the prestigious E.W.R. Steacie Fellowship from NSERC in 2018, was inducted into the SIGCHI Academy in 2023, and received the Canadian Human Computer Communications Society’s Achievement Award in 2023.

Regan has been a member of ACM since 2007, serving consistently within SIGCHI in that time. She has held numerous volunteer positions over this time, including Works-in-Progress co-chair of CHI 2009 and CSCW 2010. She founded the ACM conference on Interactive Play (CHI PLAY) in 2014: was papers chair in 2014 and 2015, the technical program chair for 2016 and the chair of the inaugural Games and Play subcommittee for CHI in 2016, which was also the first virtual program committee at CHI. She transitioned CHI PLAY to the PACM HCI journal in 2021, serving as the PACM HCI GAMES track editor in 2021 and 2022, and as track chair (papers chair: CHI PLAY) for 2023 and 2024. She was the general co-chair of CHI 2018 (a conference with over 4000 attendees), and served on the CHI Steering Committee from 2106 until now, chairing from 2019-2022, navigating this community of over 10000 members successfully through the pandemic years, organizing and facilitating dozens of virtual townhall meetings, and writing guidance for the community on childcare, publications, and accessibility at conferences. She serves as chair emeritus and strategy director of CHI, and on the SIGCHI publications committee. She has been an editorial board member of ACM TOCHI for years, and is chairing the search committee for the new Editors-in-Chief in 2024. These contributions were reflected in her being inducted into the SIGCHI Academy in May 2023—a group of individuals comprising the principal leaders of the field of HCI, whose efforts have shaped the discipline, and led research and innovation in HCI.

Available Lectures

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Innovations in Social Play
Games have long been used to support social interaction and create shared experiences that draw us closer together. Digital games are increasingly being used to form and maintain relationships,...

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