Jerome Waldispuhl

Gaming with a Purpose: Empowering Players through Citizen Science

Over the last eight years, an unlikely marriage has formed between AAA games and crowdsourced citizen science. Players of EVE Online and Borderlands 3 were introduced to new in-game features through which players can resolve scientific challenges through EVE Online: Project Discovery and Borderlands Science, which engaged over 5 million players, amassed over 700 million scientific data analyses, and were praised by worldwide media in coverage from the New Yorker to the front-page of Nature Biotechnology, becoming two of the most active and impactful citizen science projects to serve science.

During this talk, panelists will discuss the story of how games and gamer communities can manifest themselves as a force for good in the world through lessons of community building and engagement, employee retention through real-world impact, and a pipeline to acquire new and ethically motivated employees.

Bio:

Jerome Waldispuhl is an associate professor of computer science at McGill University, where he conducts research in bioinformatics. He contributed to pioneer the use of video games for genomic research with Phylo, Borderlands Science, and Project Discovery Phase 3 - a line of research he presented at the White House OSTP, Quebec Parliament, and French Academy of Science.