3-year PhD openings in the Exertion Games Lab at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
Application deadline: 31 October 2012
The Exertion Games Lab (exertiongameslab.org) at RMIT University
(Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) in Melbourne, Australia,
is seeking exceptional PhD candidates to research the future of
exertion games and play.
The Exertion Games Lab is looking for exceptional candidates who value an
interdisciplinary perspective, are highly motivated, willing to learn
a variety of skills, are extremely creative as well as technical, and also have
highly developed analytical and communicative skills. Prior research
experience is desirable and so are programming skills (such as in Processing, etc.)
and hardware prototyping abilities (Arduino, etc.). If you do not have such skills, you should
be excited about learning them. In essence, we are looking at potential for creativity,
excellence and drive in relation to Exertion Games.
There are three PhD positions available right now:
WEARABLE EXERTION PLAY: The PhD candidate will collaborate with an industry
partner to research how wearable digital play devices can support people to live a
more physically active life as part of a large-scale campaign. The challenge here is to
utilize the partner’s knowledge about health and the data about their customers to
improve the player’s health, while at the same time ensure player’s autonomy and privacy.
DESIGN OF EXERTION GAMES: The PhD candidate researches how we can
improve the design of exertion games to enhance both engagement and physical
health benefits.
EXERTION GAMES: We also have an opening for a PhD candidate who wants to
develop his/her own topic around the notion of play, the body and technology.
However, this position requires a scholarship (or self-funding), which you will need to
apply for by the same deadline. There are different options available depending on
your circumstances, application status (e.g. domestic or international) etc., ranging
from ticking a simple box as part of the application (for Australian nationalities), to
completely separate applications; see www.rmit.edu.au/scholarships/
International students will be mostly looking at RUIRS, and
Australian/New Zealand citizens at APA. There is also jason.edu.au for
more scholarships, and your home country might also offer scholarships
to conduct PhD research overseas, for example we had great
experiences with DAAD and Fulbright.)
Entry requirements:
You will need to have a four-year degree (Honours if you have an Australian degree) or a
three-year Bachelor and a Master’s degree. Typical backgrounds are game design,
interaction design, human-computer interaction, computer science, industrial design,
electrical engineering and arts but we are curious to hear what you can contribute. All
nationalities are encouraged to apply. The PhDs in the Exertion Games Lab take 3 years. All
applicants will need to apply for and be accepted to the PhD program in Media and
Communication at RMIT University, further details can be found at www.rmit.edu.au/
The application deadline is 31 October 2012. Start date is early/mid 2013.
The Exertion Games Lab is a new lab that researches the future of
gaming and play in order to understand how to design better interactive
experiences, in particular games that require intense physical effort
from players. We call it the intersection between gaming and sports.
Our research is focused on the merging of play, technology and the active human
body, drawing from research streams such as interaction design, human-
computer interaction and computer games research.
The culture in the Exertion Games Lab is one of interdisciplinary
work. At the Exertion Games Lab, we do not just philosophize and write
about the future, we actively invent it. We emphasize the development
of working prototypes in order to fully understand what play is, why
we play, and how we will play in the future. We do this because we
believe playing and gaming is a fundamental part of what makes us
humans who we are, and an understanding of this brings us closer to
our vision of a better world filled with interactive technologies that
support human values.
We are offering a great open-plan lab environment in the Design Hub,
Australia’s newest interdisciplinary design research centre at RMIT University.
You will be supervised by Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller, who created the lab based on his prior
experiences from MIT’s Media Lab, Media Lab Europe, Xerox Parc, Fuji Xerox, Microsoft
Research and Stanford University.
Please email your initial expression of interest ASAP to us: exertiongameslab at rmit.edu.au
Looking forward to reading your applications!
Thanks,
The Exertion Games Lab
http://exertiongameslab.org/
* We should also mention that you will be doing your PhD right in the
heart of the world’s most livable city, Melbourne:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/
* Here is what Wired said about us:
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/
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3-year PhD openings in the Exertion Games Lab: