Ben Schneider
Interactive Media & Game Development
Professor of Practice
Ben Schneider is a professor of practice in the Interactive Media and Game Development (IMGD) program at WPI. Schneider is a video game writer and designer with twenty years of industry experience, who has created content for games such as “Empire Earth”, “Titan Quest”, “Dawn of War”, “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning”, and “Lord of the Rings Online”. His creative interests include procedural narrative systems, conventional prose, folklore, and experimental interactive narrative.
Gillian Smith
Interactive Media & Game Development
Program Director
Computer Science
Associate Professor
Gillian Smith is an award-winning game designer whose work merges technical research in AI and HCI with creative practice in textiles and games. Their research interests are in computational creativity, game design, computer science education, and the intersection of traditional crafts and computation. In 2021, Professor Smith was appointed director of WPI's Interactive Media and Games Development program – one of the earliest gaming programs in the nation.