Curriculum Vitae for Dr Malcolm Ryan. Executive Summary

Transcription

1 Curriculum Vitae for Dr Malcolm Ryan Executive Summary I have been working as a computer scientist in academia since My major areas of expertise are in artificial intelligence and game design. My passion is for creative computing the use of advanced computing technologies in the pursuit of the creative arts. This goes deeper than using graphics programs to make art, moving into the growing field of code-based art, in which the artist is themselves a programmer. Over the years my research has evolved from pure, practical AI (reinforcement learning and planning) to more creative ends (story generation, game AI). I am also a passionate teacher and spend a lot of time considering how to improve my teaching practice. My interest in games and teaching has recently converged in a research project on educational game design. At UNSW I teach subject in game design, computer graphics, and introductory programming for designers. I am Director of the Game Design Lab and supervise students in games and AI related research projects. In my work and my spare time I develop games. I am an expert user of the Unity 3D game engine and it is my preferred platform. I have a small portfolio of games developed with this tool. i I am active in promoting creating computing in my school and the broader community. I have run several game programming workshops for high school students and with Dan Graf, I organised Game Jam Sydney at the Powerhouse Museum in 2010 and 2011, and Game Jam Junior in 2012 both events part of the worldwide Global Game Jam. I am a Community Developer for the local chapter of the Independent Game Developers Association, with over 1000 members. I am also academic mentor to the UNSW Game Developers Society. I review games-related books at the Words on Play blog ii and am starting my own independent game development practice.

2 Curriculum Vitae for Dr Malcolm Ryan Name: Malcolm Ross Kinsella Ryan Staff ID: Phone: Education Doctor of Philosophy (Computer Science - Artificial Intelligence) University of New South Wales Thesis title: Hierarchical reinforcement learning: a hybrid approach (awarded 2004) Foundations of University Learning and Teaching (FULT) University of New South Wales Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) with First Class Honours and University Medal University of New South Wales Experience Present Academic Fellow School of Computer Science and Engineering, UNSW Responsible for: Game Design Lab Director Supervision of Honours and PhD research students. Design and delivery of COMP4431 Game Design Workshop. Design and delivery of COMP1400 Programming for Designers Academic Fellow ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems (UNSW) Responsible for: Self-directed AI research. Supervision of Honours and PhD research students. Design and delivery of COMP4431 Game Design Workshop. Design and delivery of COMP1400 Programming for Designers Research Fellow

3 ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems (UNSW) Responsible for: Self-directed AI research. Supervision of Honours research students. Design and delivery of COMP4431 Game Design Workshop Research Engineer Canon Information Systems Research Australia (CISRA) AI research and programming Associate Lecturer School of Computer Science and Engineering, UNSW Lecturing, tutoring and administration for COMP2041 and COMP9021 Courses taught COMP4431 Game Design Workshop present COMP1400 Programming for Designers present COMP9021 Principles of Programming (1999 -) 2002 Research Publications Chapter - Scholarly Research Ryan, M R. (2004). Hierarchical Decision Making. In Handbook of Learning and Approximate Dynamic Programming, Wiley-IEEE Press. Journal - Refereed & Scholarly Article Ryan, M. R., & Costello, B. (2012). My Friend Scarlet: Interactive Tragedy in The Path. Games and Culture 7(2) pp California: SAGE Publications (ERA A) Ryan, M. R. (2008). Exploiting subgraph structure in multi-robot path planning. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) 31(1) pp California: AAAI Press (ERA A) Conference - Full Paper Refereed Sarlej M,, Ryan M. R. (2011) Representing Morals in Terms of Emotion, The Eighth Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE), California: The AAAI Press (ERA unlisted) Stapleton, A., Costello, B. M., & Ryan, M. R. (2012). Threshold Concepts: Implications for Game Design: Proceedings of SimTecT, Australia: Simulation Australia Ltd. (ERA C) Ching, N., Wang, M., Ryan, M. R., Stevenson, R., & et al. (2011). Beachcomber: A game for the visually impaired: Proceedings of 6th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, FDG 2011, New York: Association for Computing Machinery. (ERA C)

4 Gurto, D., Ryan, M. R., & Blair, A. (2011). Crafty: Dynamic vendor pricing in computer roleplaying games: Proceedings of 6th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, FDG 2011,. New York: Association for Computing Machinery. (ERA C) Ryan, M. R. (2010). Constraint-based multi-robot path planning: Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation, May 2010, Anchorage, Alaska. IEEE Press. (ERA unlisted) Ryan, M. R. (2009). Illuminati: The Game of Conspiracy -- A Close Reading: Proceedings of Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment 2009, December 2009, Sydney, Australia. (ERA B) Ryan, M. R. (2008). Constraint-based multi-agent path planning: Proceedings of 21st Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 1-5 December 2008, Auckland, NZ. Berlin, Germany: Springer. (ERA B) Ryan, M. R. (2007). Eleven programmers, seven artists and five kilograms of play-doh: games for teaching games design: Proceedings of Australasian conference on interactive entertainment 2007, 3-5 December 2007, Melbourne. (ERA B) Ryan, M. R. (2007). Graph decomposition for multi-robot path planning: Proceedings of 20th International joint conference on artificial intelligence, 6-12 January 2007, Hyderabad, India. (ERA A) Ryan, M. R., Hannah, N., & Lobb, J. M. (2007). The tale of Peter Rabbit: a case-study in storysense reasoning: Proceedings of Australasian conference on interactive entertainment 2007, 3-5 December 2007, Melbourne. (ERA B) Ryan, M. R. (2006). Multi-robot path planning with subgraphs: Proceedings of Australasian conference on robotics and automation 2006, 6-8 December 2006, Auckland, New Zealand. (ERA B) Ryan, M. R. (2002). Using Abstract Models of Behaviours to Automatically Generate Reinforcement Learning Hierarchies: Proceedings of 19th International Conference on Machine Learning, July 2002, Sydney, Australia. Morgan Kaufmann. (ERA A) Conference - Poster, not HERDC Sarlej, M., & Ryan, M. R. (2011). A Discrete Event Calculus Implementation of the OCC Theory of Emotion: Proceedings of The 4th Workshop on Intelligent Narrative Technologies, 10th-11th October 2011, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. Menlo Park, California: AAAI Press. Thesis Ryan, M. R. (2004). Hierarchical reinforcement learning: a hybrid approach psu.edu.

5 Grants Awarded (Project Lead in Bold) Kay-Lambkin, Teeson, Mills, Ryan, 2011, Internet-delivered treatments for depression, and alcohol/drug use, Major Research Equipment Infrastructure Initiative, UNSW, Amount: $97,320 Ryan, Woo, Sowmya, Pagnucco, Sammut, 2010, Games and Interaction Laboratory, Major Research Equipment Infrastructure Initiative, UNSW, Amount: $100,000 Ryan, Smith, 2009, Designing video games to provide balance rehabilitation for the elderly, Early Career Research Grant, UNSW, Amount: $ Pagnucco, Shaw, Ryan, Sowmya A Cognitive Programming Language for Interactive Narrative, Goldstar Award, UNSW, Amount: $40,000 Sammut, C., Pagnucco, M., Blair, A., Kadous, W., Ryan, M.R.K., Tonkes, B., Expansion of Robotics Research Laboratory, Research Infrastructure Block Grant, UNSW. Amount: $100,000. Pagnucco, Stothard, Rizos, Sammut, Blair, Ryan, Shaw, Del Favero, Kuchelmeister, Hardjono, FARO LS420 High Precision Measurement Scanner + software, UNSW, Major Equipment and Infrastructure Initiative, Amount: $110,000 HDR supervisions Robin Kiseok Le, 2009-, PhD, Designing computer games for treating amblyopia in children co-supervised with Catherine Suttle, School of Optometry) Margaret Sarlej, 2010-, PhD, Artificial Intelligence for Narrative Understanding Dan Staines, 2008-, PhD, Games for ethical training (co-supervised with Peter Slezak, School of Philosophy) David Collien, 2012-, PhD, Online Learning, Social Media, Games, Motivation and Addiction, (co-supervised with Richard Buckland) Theo Wadsley, starting in 2013, PhD, Narrative Generation using Emotional Agents in an Interactive Virtual Environment I am currently making arrangements with three new students: Theo Wadsley and Dean Utian who will be pursuing PhDs, and Martian Bastian who will be pursuing a Masters by Research (co-supervised with Steve Weymouth of COFA). All of them will be researching topics in AI for games. Academic Service I have served the profession in a number of ways including as a conference convenor, reviewer and a Program Committee member for several games and AI related conferences: Program Advisory Committee Member SAE Institute to advise on the development of their game design courses. Program Committee Member for Meaningful Play conference 2012 Program Committee Member for the Australasian AI conference 2007-present.

6 Program Committee Member DPG 2012 Program Committee Member GIC 2010 Program Committee Member IE Convener, 6th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment, UNSW, Dec 2009 Reviewer, MIT Press, 2008 Media I am a recognised local expert in matters related to game design and have been interviewed for newspapers, magazines, TV and radio: Game Informer interview about Game Jam Sydney, 2011 ABC TV Good Game interview about Game Jam Sydney, 2010 ABC Radio interview with Richard Glover about games, 2010 Daily Telegraph interview about PacMan anniversary, 2010 Hyper Magazine interview about Game Jam, 2010 Hyper Magazine interview about AI in Games, 2010 Byteside interview about Game Jam, 2010 SMH Interview on Poker AI, 2009 UNSW TV "On the Couch" 2009 iii Programming skills I have over two decades of programming experience and am skilled in a wide variety of languages. I have completed major projects in such languages as C, C++, C#, Java and Prolog. For game development my preferred tool is the Unity3D game engine, which I have been using since For AI development, my preferred tools are the Gecode Constraint Satisfaction Solver and the Potassco suite of Answer Set Programming tools. i Portfolio: ii Words on Play blog: iii UNSW TV appearance: