Marientina Gotsis is a Professor of Practice at the Interactive Media & Games Division (IMGD) of the School of Cinematic Arts and Founder/Director of the Creative Media & Behavioral Health Center (CM&BHC) at the University of Southern California. Since 2007, she has focused on educational and therapeutic interventions using games, virtual reality, and social media. Gotsis named the CMBHC’s lab “The Garden” (after the Garden of Epicurus) – an inclusive, cooperative-run research environment for students of any rank and discipline. Garden-affiliated researchers design, develop, and evaluate educational and therapeutic interventions using entertainment media (films, videos, animation, analog and digital games, and virtual reality).
Gotsis created and directs the first graduate degree in the world focused on Media Arts, Games & Health (an interdivisional MA in Cinematic Arts, est. 2015) and the Games & Health emphasis in the flagship IMGD MFA in Interactive Media. She is also a Visiting Professor at the Laboratory of Primary Health Care, General Practice & Health Services at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki School of Medicine in Greece. She is the inventor and executive producer of The Brain Architecture Game (2008), a tabletop game about the science of early childhood, played by thousands worldwide every day. Prof. Gotsis has mentored 20+ award-winning games to compete in festivals, such as Games for Change, Indiecade, Alt.Ctrl.GDC, and ACM SIGGRAPH.
She has received grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Palix Foundation, Department of Education, Department of Defense, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. She is Associate Editor of Frontiers Virtual Reality in Medicine. Gotsis holds a BFA in Photography/Film/Interactive Media and an MFA in Electronic Visualization from the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).
What Marientina’s research means to her
“My research efforts are focused on investing attention and effort on other people’s problems, working to meet collaborators and stakeholders more than half-way, sharing power or deferring completely to those who know better – all necessary to refine research questions before working on any solutions.”
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