I work as an Associate Professor at the School of Literature, Communication & Culture (LCC) at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where I teach courses mainly for the Digital Media Masters and PhDs, as well as for the Computational Media undergrad program. I am founder and Director of the Digital World & Image Group (DWIG), which is the home for all my current projects. Some of our work is done in connection with the Experimental Game Lab.

I am a co-founder of the Digital Performance Initiative at Georgia Tech, an interdisciplinary group of scholars that look into the interconnection of Performance Studies and digital media. Within Georgia Tech, I am active member of a number of interdisciplinary centers and groups, these include the Graphics, Visualization & Usability Center (GVU), the Responsive Objects, Surfaces, and Spaces (ROSS) initiative, and the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology (GTCMT).

My main research interest are interactions in hybrid spaces. These include real-time 3-dimensional virtual environments as well as the physical locations where we engage with digital media. I am interested in the way human interact with each other across virtual and real spaces.

I run a blog about machinima, Freepixel and together with my students we run our studio blog.

I have been collaborating with a variety of academic and commercial partners on different research projects: Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE), the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies (CARET) in Cambridge, Alcatel-Lucent, the Georgia Tech Broadband Institute, as well as game developers Funatics, and EA's Tiburon. Currently my work is supported by the National Science Foundation, the GVU, and Google.

I hold an MA in Drama and German language from the Freie Universitaet Berlin. The final thesis was about writing screenplays for interactive environments. I did a MPhil in Architecture and the Moving Image at the University of Cambridge with a final thesis on 'The Architecture of Interactive Storytelling.' I finished my PhD in 2004 on 'Virtual Story Spaces' also at the University of Cambridge (Darwin College). You can find a one page summary of my thesis here. A completely re-worked version of the thesis was the basis of my first book 'Video Game Spaces. Imagery, Play, and Structure in 3D Worlds' (MIT Press, spring 2009).

If not immersed in some digital adventure I am collecting screenplays. In a former lifetime, I gathered some experience in independent film production, scriptwriting, and even before that I worked as Improv actor for some years at the Fast Food Theater, Munich. I also co-wrote the script for the commercial computer game Zanzarah. More currently, I am getting more and more fascinated by puppets.

You can download my CV (excluding service and teaching) here.

The Acrobat Reader can be downloaded here.