Applying Creative Technologies to Fields of Learning

Drew Davidson Director of Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon

Drew Davidson is the Director of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, a professional graduate program focused on the creative industries. The center specializes in helping students who are interested in designing video games, producing short films and animations, virtual reality, and themed entertainment.

While the program focuses on entertainment in and of itself, it also explores the ways entertainment technology can be applied to other fields, such as education, health, and medicine. The program is co-accredited by the CMU College of Fine Arts and School of Computer Science, which helps the program create a balance between design, art, and technology.

This innovative program is turning heads in both the world of arts and entertainment and the world of computer technology. A bright future lies ahead for Drew Davidson and the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon.

About

Drew Davidson is a professor, producer, and player of interactive media. His background spans academic, industry and professional worlds and he is interested in stories and transformational experiences across texts, comics, games and other media. He explores the art, design, and science of making media that matters, working to expand our notions of what media are capable of doing, and what we are capable of doing with media. He is the Director of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University and the Founding Editor of ETC Press and its Well Played series and journal.

Drew completed his Ph.D. in Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to that, he received a B.A. and M.A. in Communications Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He chaired Game Art & Design and Interactive Media Design at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and the Art Institute Online and has taught and researched at several universities.

He was a Senior Project Manager in the New Media Division of Holt, Rinehart and Winston. He was also a Project Manager in Learning Services at Sapient, and before that he produced interactive media at HumanCode.

He helped start the Higher Education Video Game Alliance and the Sandbox Symposium, an ACM SIGGRAPH conference on video games, and he served on the IGDA Education SIG. He founded the Applied Media & Simulation Games Center at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He is involved with Games for Impact, Games Learning Society, IndieCade, and South by Southwest.

Follow Drew Davidson on Twitter.

 
Further Reading

1. Shanghai Daily – Shanghai show to show robot technology
2. Variety: Disney – Invests in 11 Tech and Media Companies for 2017 Accelerator Program
3. The Star Online – What’s the future of virtual reality?