About

New realities are popping up all around us. How can we create and curate them for learning and impact? Let's find out together.

Kimberly Hieftje, PhD

Kim is a research scientist at the Yale School of Medicine and director of the play4REAL XR Lab at Yale, which focuses on the development and evaluation of theory and evidence-informed videogame interventions using XR technology. She is currently involved in the development and testing of several health behavior change games and has published frequently on the development, evaluation, and implementation of “serious” games. Most recently, with funding from Oculus, Kim and her team created Invite Only VR, a virtual reality-based vaping prevention game for teens, which is currently undergoing an effectiveness trial with 290 middle school students. Her team is also working on an augmented reality game focused on alcohol harm reduction and prevention in teams, which is being developed for the Magic Leap One with funding from Epic Games and Unreal Engine.

Kim is also a scholar at the Yale Center on Implementation Science (YCIS), with a specific goal of better understanding the factors associated with successful implementation of education and behavior change games in schools.

Chocolate is my nemesis. 

Dan Roy

Dan is a Research Scientist at the MIT Education Arcade. Dan leads game design for the Collaborative Learning Environments in VR project, with support from Oculus Education. The CLEVR project imagines how VR may work in schools, starting with a cross-platform, collaborative game called Cellverse. 

Dan is writing a report about XR in education in partnership with HP and Digital Promise, scouring research, games, and school implementations. The goal is to develop a set of design heuristics useful to XR creators and curators focused on powerful learning experiences. 

Dan is also the CEO of Skylight Games, inspiring a love of learning through play. Through Skylight, he has developed the mobile game Lyriko: Learn Languages with Music, along with a VR prototype. 

In his free time, he enjoys imagining learner-led communities oriented around interest and impact.