PI Kevin Ponto is an Associate Professor at WID and in the Design Studies Department at the School of Human Ecology. Ponto’s research has focused on designing virtual reality experiences of real-world environments for the purposes of creating new means for studying health in the home, investigating crime scenes, exploring difficult to reach environments and creating new methods of learning and training. Ponto was the PI on the Exploratory Pathways project, Exploring the Universe from Antarctica (OPP #1612504) and has led funded projects from many funding agencies including NSF, DOJ, and AHRQ.
Co-PI David Gagnon is the director of Field Day Lab, an award winning interdisciplinary team of education researchers, media designers, software engineers, artists, and storytellers at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER). His lab has produced over a dozen educational games, augmented reality and virtual reality titles, which are played over 1.5 million times yearly across formal and informal contexts.
Co-PI Diego Roman is an Assistant Professor in Bilingual/Bicultural Education at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at UW–Madison. Dr. Román’s research interests are located at the intersection of applied linguistics, bilingual education, and science education. He investigates the implicit and explicit ideologies reflected in the design and implementation of bilingual and science education programs, particularly how environmental topics are taught to multilingual students. He conducts his research from a Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective by analyzing the linguistic and multimodal characteristics of the discourse that take place in bilingual and science classrooms. Dr. Román has researched the language used to teach climate change at the middle school level and is currently examining science, environmental, and bilingual programs (Spanish/English and Kichwa/Spanish) in rural Wisconsin and in the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador.
Co-PI Jim Madsen is the Executive Director of the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center and Associate Director of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory where he directs the education and outreach program. His research interests include heliophysics and astrophysics projects based in Antarctica. In addition to research, Dr. Madsen is committed to reaching a broad audience beyond the research community. He is involved in education and outreach for the IceCube project including professional development courses for teachers and science and math instruction for the UWRF Upward Bound Program. He collaborates with a number of programs and institutions in addition to PolarTREC, including the Knowles Science Teaching Foundation, UW-River Falls Upward Bound and McNair Programs, and service groups (Rotary International, Boy and Girl Scouts, university alumni associations, etc.).
Ross Tredinnick is a Systems Programmer at the WID Virtual Environments group. Over the past seven years, Tredinnick has designed and developed VR experiences across a multitude of fields ranging from healthcare to cultural heritage to astrophysics. Tredinnick served as a Co-PI on the prior Exploratory Pathways project. Tredinnick has over fifteen years of experience implementing software solutions, and over five years’ experience mentoring students, graduate students, and support staff on federally funded research projects. Tredinnick will serve as the technology development lead for the three new VR experiences and also perform the retrofitting development on the prior two experiences.
Monae Verbeke is part of the Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI), which brings over 35 years of experience evaluating NSF-funded science learning projects that explore public engagement with science, as well as collaborations among community organizations. The ILI team brings deep experience with evaluation of informal STEM learning experiences, and the design of culturally responsive studies.
Mathews, Jim is an Associate Researcher at Field Day Lab at WCER. Mathews has supported the production and research of numerous educational desktop and mixed reality games, including Dow Day (Mathews & Squire, 2009), Sick at South Shore Beach (Mathews, 2008), and Up River (Wagler & Mathews, 2012). Mathews also directs the Field Day Fellowship program. In this capacity he has overseen the design and implementation of over 15 professional learning projects that engaged teachers in co-designing digital tools, including games, for use in formal and informal learning contexts.
Chris Baker is a Public Library Consultant with the Library Services Team of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. Gaming in all of its forms (and video games in particular) have been a lifelong passion of Chris’s, and have served as a keystone inspiration for his personal and professional endeavors. Before joining DPI, Chris worked as a Youth Services Librarian at the Spring Green Community Library, Teen Services Librarian (and eventually Adult Services Librarian) and Technology Coordinator at the Portage Public Library. Prior to that, Chris enjoyed a robust career in professional theatre, earning a BA in Theatre from UW-Parkside and an MFA in Theatre Pedagogy from Virginia Commonwealth University. He has published work on gaming & pedagogy, regularly presents about the intersection of games and learning within libraries, and looks to position WI as a national leader in the games + libraries space.