RECENT RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
• 2022-2023 : SMU Guildhall Deputy Director of Research , Dr . Corey Clark , is Co-PI on a grant awarded by the Department of Justice : Human Trafficking Institute for $ 1,200,000 .
• 2022-2024 : Dr . Clark is the Principal Investigator on a grant awarded by BALANCED Media | Technology regarding Privacy Preserving Distributed Machine Learning for $ 250,000 .
• 2020-2024 : Dr . Clark ’ s four-year $ 1.5MM grant from National Science Foundation as Principal Investigator for integrating Minecraft into STEM + C education with local ISDs in Dallas area . This grant is supporting SMU Guildhall master ' s students as well as students moving to the PhD program in Computer Science after graduating from SMU Guildhall .
• The Games for Society Initiative at SMU grew with SMU Guildhall ' s 2020 move to the new Gerald J . Ford Hall for Research and Innovation .
• Dr . Clark was awarded $ 289,821 as PI for a grant from the Center for Advanced Pathogen Threat Response and Simulation ( CAPTRS ) to design and build a serious game platform to help train government agencies and officials around pandemic and pathogen threat responses . The funding provided direct sponsorship of four SMU Guildhall students . The research team worked directly with CAPTRS and NATO personnel to create a multiplayer platform that enabled the rapid development and deployment of game scenarios within the Unity game engine that are driven by a custom high fidelity simulation environment .
• 2021-2026 : The Simmons School of Education and SMU Guildhall partnered with the non-profit talkStem on a five-year NSF grant for $ 2.5 million to create the AR application for walkStem “ Seeing the World through a Mathematical Lense : A Place-Based Mobile App for Creating Math Walks .” The Simmons School of Education and SMU Guildhall also were awarded a four-year $ 1,398,245 NEA IES grant “ Exploring Collaborative Embodiment for Learning ( EXCEL ): Understanding Geometry through Multiple Modalities ," U . S . Department of Education Institute for Education Sciences ( IES ), R305A200401 . SMU Guildhall Director of Academics , Dr . Elizabeth Storz Stringer , is Co-Principal with C . A . Walkington ( Principal ) and Nathan Mitchell ( Co-Principal ).
• SMU Lyle School of Computer Engineering and SMU Simmons School of Education and Development collaborated for Hidden Village , a Unity engine and Xbox Kinect motion capture technology game for a “ math in motion ” geometry adventure game . Guildhall students worked under the educational research team led by faculty at SMU and the University of Wisconsin to expand the game ’ s narrative , update the original graphics , develop a new version of the game in Unity , transition the motion capture technology to utilize the Microsoft Kinect and to create project documentation and a development plan for future teams to utilize .
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