Kimberly Hieftje, PhD, is a Research Scientist at the Yale School of Medicine and Director of the play4REAL XR Lab. She is currently involved in the development and testing of several health behavior change videogames and has published frequently on developing, evaluating, and implementing serious games. She has worked on games that have focused on topics including JUUL/e-c-cigarette prevention, tobacco use prevention, risk reduction in adolescents, HIV/STI prevention, HIV/STI testing, empowering young women around sexual health, bystander intervention, LGBTQ bullying, school climate, and alcohol harm reduction in teens. Dr. Hieftje is also a K12 Scholar in the Yale Implementation Science program (YSIS), where she focuses on better understanding the barriers and facilitators to implementing videogame interventions in school-based settings. Dr. Hieftje is also the Editor-in-Chief for the Games for Health Journal.
Veronica Weser, PhD, is an Associate Research Scientist in the play4REAL XR Lab. Veronica received her PhD in cognitive psychology from the University of Virginia where she investigated user experience and motion sickness in virtual reality (VR) as part of a collaboration with Google VR. To the team she brings technical knowledge of human visual perception, programming insights into the game engines Unity and Unreal, and her passion for presenting scientific findings to lay audiences. Combined with her love of digital and analogue games, Veronica enjoys every step in the process of creating impactful VR gaming and learning experiences.
Andrew Schartmann is a Professor of Music Theory at the New England Conservatory. Prior to joining NEC, he served as an affiliate faculty member at Yale’s Center for Collaborative Arts and Media. He has taught courses on tonal harmony, counterpoint, musical form, composition, musicianship, and video game music, and takes a special interest in music pedagogy. In 2011, he was awarded the Schulich School of Music Teaching Award for his course on musical form in the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven; and in 2013, he created a companion site for the textbook Analyzing Classical Form (Oxford University Press, 2013). Schartmann is the author of two books, including Koji Kondo’s Super Mario Bros. Sundtrack (2015), which The New Yorker praised for its “overwhelming precision.” His third book, forthcoming from Bloomsbury, investigates Keiji Inafune’s role in establishing some of the gaming industry’s foundational design principles. Schartmann’s work has also appeared in Frieze, Slate, Bandcamp, Clavier Companion, and Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3: The B-Sides; and he has articles forthcoming in The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy and The Journal of Sound and Music in Games. In 2016, he worked with the BBC on the documentary “While My Guitar Gently Bleeps,” which traces the influence of retro video game sound on modern-day popular culture. He is the Associate Editor of DSCH Journal—a biannual publication devoted to the life and work of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich—and serves as a board member of The Journal of Sound and Music in Games. In 2019, Schartmann was elected Treasurer of the New England Conference of Music Theorists.
Sandra Jacobo has a Master of Education in Language and Literacy from Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley in Psychology. She is an experienced content strategist with over 8 years of experience developing interactive content for emerging new technologies. Her products include digital games, books, interactive curriculum, and wearable fitness trackers. She was pivotal in the development of games that were part of efficacy trials researched by the Play2Prevent Lab at Yale University, which has since yielded positive results for students. She also worked with Professor Yuuko Uchikoshi investigating how bilingual instruction enhances English achievement as well as Professor Kimiko Ryokai researching user experiences of tangible interfaces. Sandra’s primary research interest is exploring the use of technology to support individual development and collective learning in both digital and physical spaces. She is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley.
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