Mike Christel is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center, where he focuses on the development and evaluation of transformational games, particularly in the fields of education and health care. Mike joined the ETC in 2008, bringing expertise from Carnegie Mellon’s Computer Science Department, where he worked at the intersection of speech recognition, image processing and multimedia interface development. As a member of the Informedia Digital Video Library research team, he earned the prestigious Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence.
Before joining the ETC, Mike worked at Carnegie Mellon’s Computer Science Department (1997-2008), and before that at CMU's Software Engineering Institute from 1987 to 1997. He earned his Ph.D. from Georgia Tech in 1991, where his research explored dynamically generated digital video interfaces, laying the foundation for his interest in interactive and transformative technologies.
Beyond his academic and research achievements, Mike enjoys building experiences through travel and has visited all 50 U.S. states with his family, enriching his perspective on storytelling and entertainment through real-world exploration.
Mike Christel joined the ETC in 2008.
Education
PhD, Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, United States 1991
MS, Information and Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, United States 1984
BS, Mathematics and Computer Science, Canisius College, Buffalo, United State 1983
Home Team, Fall 2024: Home Team developed "Torn Apart", a narrative game that sheds light on the loss of culture and legacy due to gentrification. Student-pitch project; taught with Heather Kelley.
PicoLock, Fall 2023: In collaboration with CMU's picoCTF. The team crafted an open-world environment with three distinct levels of gameplay, interlacing real-world cybersecurity concepts within its puzzles. The game is hosted within picoCTF as "Cryptography and picoGym Learning Intro"; taught with Jonathan Walton.
INTENT, Fall 2023: INTENT, short for "Interactive Tool for Empathy in Neurotypicals", worked with researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland to produce a web browser game where the player can choose to be an ally for autistic co-workers by working through realistic situations in an office setting. The prototype game, which may undergo further revisions by the research team and is meant to be part of a larger set of training materials, is available for play within the ETC project website. This game was the winner of the Best Poster & Demo at the Joint Conference on Serious Games in New York in Nov. 2024 as presented by Morgan Evans; see the JCSG 2024 reference at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-74138-8_35. Client Andrew Begel, CMU Software and Societal Systems (along with his research team and partners); taught with Scott Stevens.
STEMspire, Fall 2022: STEMspire created a game, alongside a teacher run workshop, to raise awareness among 8th graders about racial bias. The game, Power Core Values, seeks to engage the player in the story and puzzle while giving workshop facilitators examples of racial bias that can be pulled from the game and used as discussion points. This game is designed to be used in concert with a workshop to spark conversations about racial bias. See also a Joint Conference on Serious Games 2023 paper (https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44751-8_19) about such a workshop plus game offering. Client CMU/Pitt Collaboratory Against Hate (now Center for Applied Research on Targeted Violence represented by John Balash; taught with Ricardo Washington.
Blindspot, Spring 2021: The Blindspot team created an interactive transformational experience to raise awareness and inspire action to counteract the negative impact of microaggressions that emerge in everyday campus contexts. The deliverable is a 2D web-based game that tells a story of a Chinese girl new to the U.S. who experiences microaggressions in her college life. The game consists of a prologue that gives background information of the protagonist, three chapters that happen in different places, and an ending that summarizes points made with various minigames. The experience unfolds a story where the protagonist is hesitant at the beginning but becomes stronger and stays true to who she is in the end. See also an IEEE Conference on Games paper (https://doi.org/10.1109/CoG52621.2021.9619151) about the project. Client Carnegie Mellon University Data-Driven Diversity Lab (Geoff Kaufman); taught with Shirley Saldamarco.
Techtile, Fall 2019: The Techtile team designed and built an interactive experience that merges technology with tactile play. They used Arduinos and RFID tags to control infinity mirror light effects in cubby holes arranged in a display box fostering curiosity and encouraging investigation. They playtested with dozens of children throughout the semester, discovering the importance of onboarding, hinting/scaffolding, and surprising through visual rewards available with their system. Their work was installed for a number of years beginning in 2019 at the MuseumLab, part of the Pittsburgh Children's Museum. Student-pitch project; taught with Chris Klug.
Industry Collaborations & Achievements
Mike continues to work with The HistoryMakers on their large scale African American oral history archive, an effort which has earned accolades, publications, and invited talks over the years. This collaboration shows how entertainment technologies, text analytics and digital video processing can empower digital humanities scholarship through resources like the 150,000 African American stories in The HistoryMakers Digital Archive.
Mike sees the value of playcentric design and iterative development informed by playtesting with stakeholders, and runs playtesting workshops every semester at the ETC, launched through an early CMU Simon Initiative grant. Mike is particularly interested in transformational games, helping student teams win "best serious game" awards at various venues.
