Discovery of Chemotherapeutic Co-Medication Properties for Multidrug Resistant Cancer
A Minecraft Crowdsourcing Project
manipulate co-medication data directly in Minecraft world. Modders, led by FTB and SMU Guildhall, will then build custom Minecraft gameplay systems that will be included into upcoming FTB modpack releases.
This project uses crowdsourcing and game-based volunteer distributed computing via Minecraft to identify properties for comedications that improve the effectiveness of chemotherapeutics to treat multi-drug resistant cancers. Instrumental researchers include SMU Guildhall Deputy Director of Research, Dr. Corey Clark, and biochemistry professors Pia Vogel and John Wise of the Center for Drug Discovery, Design and Delivery( CD4) at the SMU Dedman College Department of Biological Sciences.
Each player’ s interaction with these modpacks simultaneously clusters co-medications, but also supplies a training input into a deep neural network( DNN) that is learning and mapping the solution space. Clark and his team at SMU Guildhall are developing the distributed DNN for the HEWMEN game-based volunteer grid computing platform, which integrates directly with the Minecraft modpacks.
While performing standard gameplay actions in Minecraft, players partition co-medications into two cluster types:( a) positive, or improved the effectiveness of chemotherapeutic response, and( b) negative, or no effect on the chemotherapeutic response. Identifying the properties of these clusters will help Vogel and Wise to identify new co-medications candidates out of the millions of compounds available. The co-medication data sets are supplied to both Minecraft clients and servers through BMTs HEWMEN Java integration. This integration allows modders to visualize and
The Avatar Project
A Dating Violence Prevention Project
SMU Guildhall supports the research efforts of Dr. Ernie Jouriles of the SMU Department of Psychology, in collaboration with the Family Research Center, to raise awareness of dating violence and teach teens to practice assertiveness skills. SMU Guildhall first created a secluded car scenario VR simulation using Half-Life 2, for which a research article was published, Reducing Sexual
Victimization Among Adolescent Girls: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Trial of My Voice, My Choice. SMU Guildhall later recreated the simulation in 2015 for Unity with new Oculus VR support and is still developing for The Avatar Project, a further expansion of the Oculus Rift VR simulations. The Avatar Project will simulate the experience of a high school or college student at a party, helping students learn how to navigate high-stress social situations. The project will also add a third scenario where the avatar and the participant will sit in a school setting.