Horizons Faculty of Excellence Awards

Congratulations to our 2026 Faculty of Excellence Awardees!

You can nominate someone for next year’s awards HERE.

Although Horizons was created to highlight student work, none of it would be possible without the support and leadership of phenomenal faculty and instructors.

Awardees are selected for Excellence in one of three categories: teaching, innovation, and service. Faculty are eligible to be nominated by a peer or self-nominated and nominations are open to any faculty or instructor working in games, regardless of whether their school participated in Horizons. Awardees are selected by the Horizons Executive Committee after careful consideration of each nominee.

Horizons is designed to support, highlight, and enhance the work done across games education––for students, professors, researchers, educators, and administrators. Educators and schools are the foundation that supports student growth and flourishing. Horizons wants to recognize this crucial role and highlight the importance of educators in the games ecosystem.

Awards

Teaching: This award is for an individual who has made an important impact in their work as a teacher and educator.
Service: This award is for an individual who has made important and impactful contributions to the field through service.
Innovation: This award is for any individual with an innovative approach, conducting innovative research, and/or fostering innovation in others.
Lifetime Achievement

Eligibility and Nomination Process

Any and all game educators working in higher education are eligible. They do not need to be affiliated with an institution participating in Horizons. They do not need to be working at an institution of higher education; however, they must be working within the field of games and higher education.
Self-nominations are welcome.

Nominate an Educator of Excellence for 2027 Today!

2026 Excellence Awards

Dr. Ashley ML Guajardo is an Assistant Arts Professor at the NYU Game Center. Her research focuses on how play shapes desire. With over a decade of experience in higher education, she has served as Vice President of the Global Game Jam (2020-1), conference co-director of the IGDA’s Games User Research Special Interest Group (2021-2), and currently serves as president of the Digital Games Research Association (2025-7). In 2025, she was inducted as a fellow of the Higher Education Video Game Association.

https://amlbrown.com/

Brian Winn has been a pioneer in game education since the earliest days of the field. In 2000, he taught the first game development course at Michigan State University, and in 2005, he founded one of the nation’s first interdisciplinary undergraduate programs in game design and development, growing it into a top-ranked program recognized by Princeton Review. He also played a key role in establishing MSU’s serious games master’s program, helping shape a generation of designers working at the intersection of games, learning, and impact.

Beyond building programs, Winn has consistently advanced how games are taught and understood. His “Design, Play, Experience Framework” has become a foundational approach for designing meaningful play, games that go beyond entertainment to drive learning, health, behavior change, and social impact. His work exemplifies how games can be both engaging and transformative, and he has shared these ideas widely across both academic and industry communities, including IndieCade Horizons.

Winn’s leadership has also shaped the broader game community. He founded the International Conference on Meaningful Play in 2008 and led it for over a decade, creating a vital space for researchers and creators to explore how games can entertain, inform, and inspire. The conference continues today, reflecting the enduring influence of his vision.

His commitment to expanding access to game education is equally impactful. Through his Coursera specialization in Game Design and Development, Winn has reached more than 500,000 learners worldwide, opening pathways into the industry for a global and diverse audience.

https://gamedev.msu.edu/brian-winn/

Dr. Kimberly Hieftje is Co-Founder of the XRPediatrics Lab at Yale and Co-Founder of the Yale Center for Immersive Technologies in Pediatrics, where she leads projects that extend game design through extended reality, biometric integration, and nonvisual interaction. Her work examines how physiological signals and environmental context can shape gameplay, allowing systems to respond to players in real time.

She is currently involved in the development and testing of several health behavior change XR and game-based interventions and has published frequently on developing, evaluating, and implementing serious games. She has worked on games that have focused on topics including vaping/e-c-cigarette prevention, tobacco use prevention, risk reduction in adolescents, HIV/STI prevention, HIV/STI testing, empowering girls around healthy decision making, bystander intervention, LGBTQ bullying, school climate, and alcohol harm reduction.

Dr. Hieftje was a K12 Scholar in the Yale Implementation Science program (YSIS), where she focused on understanding the factors associated with successful implementation of videogame interventions in schools.

Dr. Hieftje is also the editor-in-chief at the Games for Health Journal and has played a central role in shaping research at the intersection of games, health, and behavior change.

Her work has established a child-centered approach to designing and delivering games for health and social impact, using user-centered methods to bring immersive experiences into schools, hospitals, and communities. Dr. Hieftje has brought her games to thousands of youth and adults during her academic career and mentored hundreds of high school, undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students on best practices and creative approaches for developing immersive experiences and games for impact.

https://medicine.yale.edu/profile/kimberly-hieftje/

Dr. Lindsay Grace is a leader in game design education, scholarship, and cultural production whose career has helped define games as a medium of artistic expression, social impact, and global dialogue. As Knight Chair in Interactive Media and Professor at the University of Miami, as well as Vice President of the Higher Education Video Game Alliance and principal of Mindtoggle Consulting, his influence spans academia, industry, and public discourse. Across more than two decades, he has led the creation of three academic degree programs in Ohio, Washington, DC, and Miami, while mentoring generations of designers and scholars. His creative portfolio includes more than 20 games. A prolific author of more than 100 publications, including Doing Things with Games, Love and Electronic Affection, and the bestselling Black Game Studies, Grace’s work continues to shape how games are understood as tools for expression, equity, and human connection.

Grace’s impact extends well beyond the classroom and studio. A frequent keynote speaker at major global venues including the Game Developers Conference, SXSW, and the Games for Change Festival, he has become a leading advocate for games as instruments of education, diplomacy, and artistic practice. His leadership roles—from founding the American University Game Lab to serving on the board of the Global Game Jam and the Digital Games Research Association—reflect a sustained commitment to building inclusive, international communities of play and practice. Through curatorial work with institutions like the Smithsonian American Art Museum and long-standing engagement in global game jams, he has elevated emerging voices and expanded the reach of games as a medium of cultural storytelling. Lindsay was part of the original team that helped create the IndieCade horizons summit five years ago.

In recognition of a career that bridges design, research, and public impact, Lindsay Grace stands as a defining figure in the evolution of independent games and their role in shaping our collective cultural future.

https://professorgrace.com/

2025 Excellence Awards

Dr William Huber studies videogames, new media and digital/ludic culture. Currently Associate Professor of Game Studies at Falmouth University. He is the course leader for the BA(Hons) Game Development: Design, BA(Hons) Game Development: Writing, BA(Hons) Game Animation and BA(Hons) Esports and Livestreaming degree programmes, as well as supervising PhD and Master’s level students. Previously Head of the Centre for Excellence in Game Education in the School of Arts, Media and Computer Games at Abertay University, Dundee, Scotland, where he promoted efforts to advance game education at Abertay and create a vibrant international centre for the intellectual and artistic exploration of digital games and interactive media. As Assistant Professor of Cinema Practice in the Interactive Media and Games program at the USC School of Cinematic Arts where he spent five years teaching courses on videogame theory, design and history.

From 2017 to 2023, he served as the president of the Digital Games Research Association. As a member of the Software Studies initiative at Calit2 and the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts at UC San Diego, he produced visualizations of game play which have been exhibited internationally. As part of the cultural analytics research group led by Lev Manovich, I apply methodologies for data and visual analysis drawn from the natural sciences to the study of cultural activity, especially software-driven culture.

https://www.falmouth.ac.uk/staff/dr-william-huber

Amanda Cote is an Associate Professor and Director of the Serious Games Certificate in the Department of Media & Information at Michigan State University. She also co-leads the Esports and Games Research Lab, a multi-institutional consortium that studies the growth and institutionalization of collegiate competitive gaming. Cote’s work focuses on the industry and culture of digital and analog games, with an emphasis on areas such as gender, identity, and representation; game development and labor; and collegiate esports. She is the author of “Gaming Sexism: Gender and Identity in the Era of Casual Video Games” (New York University Press, 2020) and coeditor of “The Routledge Handbook of Esports” (Routledge, 2024). She has also published in locations including Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, Games and Culture, Feminist Media Studies, and edited book collections.

http://www.amandaccote.com/

Justin Andarza is a designer, producer, and creative director whose work merges storytelling, interactivity, and emerging technologies. He has built a career producing award-winning immersive experiences and games that blur the boundaries between the digital and physical worlds, earning recognition at the Game Developers Conference, IndieCade, and the Independent Game Festival.

Justin has helped lead the creative development and production for a range of experiential projects, with companies including Warped Worlds, Two Bit Circus, Fever, and Meow Wolf. His portfolio spans original IP and branded activations, with cross-disciplinary teams delivering activations for clients including Meta, Complex, and Vans. His approach unites scenic design, technology, performance, and storytelling into cohesive experiences that surprise and delight audiences.

In addition to his production work, Justin is an accomplished educator. As an educator at ArtCenter College of Design and other academic institutions, he has mentored students to industry acclaim, with projects winning top honors at alt.ctrl.GDC and IndieCade. His teaching emphasizes hands-on prototyping, immersive storytelling, and innovative worldbuilding, equipping the next generation of creators with industry-ready skills.

Justin’s creative philosophy emphasizes interactivity as a catalyst for dialogue, community, and active engagement. Whether through gamified escape-room-style encounters, experimental alt-controllers, or large-scale activations, he views play as a powerful medium to connect people and transform environments.

https://www.jandarza.com/

Janet H. Murray is a first-generation college graduate and grateful beneficiary of public education in NYC and at SUNY Binghamton. In 1970 as a PhD student she taught one of the first women’s studies courses at Harvard, a seminar on “Heroines of English Fiction.” She was at MIT from 1971-1999 teaching some of the first courses in women’s studies in the 1970s. Her anthology Strong-Minded Women and Other Lost Voices of 19th Century England (1981) was a New York Times Notable Book.

Building upon her background in the history of narrative and her knowledge of programming, she initiated and humanities computing projects at MIT starting in 1981. In 1992 she taught the first MIT course in interactive narrative. In 1997 she published Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, which has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese. In 1999 she left MIT for Georgia Tech, where she served as Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Dean for Research. She initiated courses in Interactive Narrative, Game Design as a Cultural Practice, and Computational Media, and led the effort to establish one of the world’s first humanities-based PhDs in Digital Media (2005). Her textbook Inventing the Medium (2011) derives from her graduate course in interaction design. Her Prototyping eNarrative group (PENlab) explored interactive television, story-games, and virtual/augmented reality (http://penlab.gatech.edu ). As Director of the Digital Integrative Liberal Arts Center she joined in a collaboration with IndieCade and the National Academy of Sciences to create the Jamming the Curve (2020-1)

Janet Murray is an Emerita Professor of Digital Media at Georgia Tech, an Emerita Trustee of the American Film Institute, , and an Inaugural Fellow of the Higher Education Video Game Alliance.

https://inventingthemedium.com/

2024 Excellence Awards

David Abzug got his start in the game industry in 1990 at The BattleTech Center, the world’s first location based multiplayer VR center. From there he moved up to General Manager then Training Supervisor and Regional Manager over the BattleTech Center/Virtual World site. He opened sites in Chicago, San Diego, Dallas, Las Vegas, Houston, Pasadena, Indianapolis, Montreal, Sydney and Tokyo.

Moving over to the software end of things David began as a designer at FASA Interactive, making PC titles from FASA’s IPs. Over time, David worked in every design role possible, from associate level designer up to design director, on more than a dozen titles.

Finally, in 2018, David started teaching game design at Bradley University and has been there ever since, eventually heading up both the Game Design Bachelors Program and the Game Development Masters Program, which he developed.

Over the course of three separate careers David has been proud to have turned his favorite hobby, one he still loves, into a living and eventually a chance to pass that love on to others.

https://www.bradley.edu/academic/departments/im/faculty/

Dr. Kat Schrier is Full Professor and Founding Director of the Games & Emerging Media program at Marist, and the director of the Play Innovation Lab. Dr. Schrier has authored or edited over 100 scholarly publications including Knowledge Games: How Playing Games Can Help Solve Problems, Create Insight, and Make Change, and We the Gamers: How Games Teach Ethics & Civics. She has spent over 20 years producing websites, apps, and games for companies like Scholastic, Nickelodeon, BrainPOP, and PBS/Channel 13. Currently, she is consulting as a game designer at World Health Organization (WHO). She holds a doctorate from Columbia University, master’s degree from MIT, and a bachelor’s degree from Amherst College.

www.karenschrier.com

Eddo Stern is an artist & game designer and a Professor in the Design Media Arts Department at UCLA, where he is currently Chair. He teaches courses on game design and culture; game studies, computer game development; Cyberpunk; and physical computing in an art context. His work explores the uneasy and otherwise unconscious connections between physical existence and electronic simulation, surrounding the subject matters of violence, memory and identification. He works with various media including computer software & hardware, game design, live performance, digital video, and kinetic sculpture. He is a strong advocate for independent game development, and the inherent potential of game design as a medium for artistic expression and cultural impact.

His work has been widely exhibited at hundreds of international venues including The Tate Gallery Liverpool, The Sundance Film Festival, The Haifa Museum of Art, Museo Reina Sofia, Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), MuHKA, The Walker Art Center, KUNST-WERKE BERLIN (K2), Dundee Contemporary Arts, The Game Developers Conference (GDC), Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), The New Museum for Contemporary Art, NY, IndieCade, The Rotterdam Film Festival, The Kitchen, The Hammer Museum, Light Industry, ICC Tokyo, The Australian Center of the Moving Image (ACMI), Postmasters Gallery, The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), Machine Project, Forum des Images Paris, Image Forum Tokyo, The British Film Institute (BFI), The Adelaide Film Festival, Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). He is a recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation new media fellowship, an emerging fields grant from the Creative Capital Foundation, a McDowel/ Alpert Fellowship, a National Endowment for The Arts Grant, , & a Media Arts stipend from the Edith Russ Foundation.

Eddo has been involved with IndieCade since the first showcase back in the old days, and has exhibited various projects over the years and helped out as a judge on numerous occasions.

www.eddostern.com

2023 Excellence Awards

Sonia Michaels is the Chair of the Humanities and Social Sciences Department at DigiPen Institute of Technology, working at the intersection of the Humanities and game development education to promote the importance of critical thinking, cultural literacy, and communication across the creative process. She has taught English (composition, literature, and science fiction/fantasy), professional communication, and public speaking for 30+ years, and has worked extensively as a career coach and admissions consultant. Soniahas presented at GDC, PaxDev, GeekGirlCon, and the New Directions in the Humanities International Conference. In April of this year, she completed a three-year elected term on the Board of Directors of the International Game Developers Association.

Jim Huntley is a Marketing and Brand Management Executive with over 20 years of experience leading teams across multiple industries. A lifelong gamer, he worked professionally at THQ for nearly 5 years as their VP of Marketing. He is an Associate Professor in the top-ranked Games Program in North America, USC Games. While there, he has led the development of their official esports organization, USC Trojan Esports, created the Gerald A Lawson Fund for Black and Indigenous Students, and is Lead Faculty for the program’s capstone class, Advanced Games Projects (AGP).

Lien B. Tran (she/her) is an Assistant Professor at DePaul University and director of Matters at Play lab, a transdisciplinary design lab partnering in the creation of interactive advocacy solutions for positive social transformations. She is an award-winning social impact and interaction designer, who creates interactive solutions at the intersections of social justice, health, and environment at the local, national, and international levels. Lien applies design thinking and human center design techniques in order to create informed, goal-directed solutions including games, apps, websites, and emerging technologies such as VR. Her work often addresses and advocates for underrepresented, marginalized communities. Previous project partnerships include Open Society Foundations, World Bank, United Nations, and Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.

Bob De Schutter is an award-winning game designer, researcher, educator, and advocate for meaningful play in later life. He is a Professor of Applied Game Design at Northeastern University, where he is jointly appointed between the College of Arts, Media and Design and the Khoury College of Computer Sciences. He is also the owner of award-winning game company Lifelong Games (LLC). His work focuses on the importance of play throughout the entire lifespan and speaks out against the stereotyping of older video game players in game design and marketing.

Frans Mäyrä is the Professor of Information Studies and Interactive Media, with specialization in digital culture and game studies in Tampere University, Finland. Since 2002, he has been heading the Tampere University Game Research Lab, having taught and studied digital culture and games from the early 1990s. He is widely consulted as an expert in socio-cultural issues relating to games, play and playfulness, and has served as the founder and first President of DiGRA – Digital Games Research Association. His research interests range from game cultures, meaning making through playful interaction and online social play, to borderlines, identity, as well as transmedial fantasy and science fiction. He is also the director of the Academy of Finland funded Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies.

2022 Excellence Awards

Chris Totten is an Assistant Professor of Game Design at Kent State University and the founder of Pie For Breakfast Studios. With a background as an artist, animator, designer, and project manager, the goal of Chris’s work is to build a wider appreciation of games in the context of other arts. Through multiple books, articles, games, and curated events, Chris has been an innovative force in the field by bringing game making, curation, and publications into a symbiotic relationship, breaking down barriers between traditionally disparate fields.

Sharon Tolani-Sage is an inspirational educator, researcher, and coordinator for the Women in Games Educational Ambassador Programme which works to support institutions and educators in championing diversity and increasing the numbers of women and girls engaging with their curriculum. She has inspired countless women through her work as a lecturer at Norwich University of the Arts. Through her service, she has made the games industry a better place, for those in it and those about to join it.

Redelia is a Professor of Communications & Media Studies at Santa Monica College and the Founder and CEO of Life Media Projects, a nonprofit dedicated to producing, promoting, and inspiring meaningful storytelling for and about marginalized communities. Redelia has been teaching at Santa Monica for over a decade and is widely recognized as an outstanding teacher and educator on campus. Redelia secured several grants and stipends to create Santa Monica College’s Esports Production Team and support their student esports team team. She has been a longstanding shepard and provider of work-based learning opportunities for her students.

Colleen Macklin is a game designer and Associate Professor in the school of Art, Media and Technology at Parsons School of Design. In 2006 she founded and co-directs PETLab (Prototyping Education and Technology Lab), a lab that develops games for experimental learning and social engagement. She was inducted as an inaugural HEVGA Fellow in 2017, recognizing her as an important scholar that has helped shape the field since its infancy. They are a member of the game design collective Local No. 12, makers of many award winning games including, The Metagame (2015) and Dear Reader (2019). She co-authored with John Sharp Games, Design and Play: A detailed look at iterative game design (2016) and Iterate: Ten Lessons in Design and Failure (2019).