A 2023 CHCCS/SCDHM Achievement Award is presented to Professor Regan Mandryk, recognizing Regan’s exceptional contributions to human-computer interaction, games research, and digital well-being. Regan is recognized within HCI for her continued efforts to bring games research to the forefront of HCI, her leadership, and her outstanding mentorship.
Regan Mandryk has an interdisciplinary background in mathematics (B.Sc., University of Winnipeg), kinesiology (M.Sc., Simon Fraser University), and computer science (Ph.D., Simon Fraser University). Regan completed her dissertation Modeling User Emotion in Interactive Play Environments: A Fuzzy Physiological Approach in 2005. She presented three experimental studies that examine players’ physiological signals to model user emotions while they were continuously interacting with play technology. Regan’s work was visionary. The game industry was in its early stages, user evaluation approaches for game technology were underdeveloped, and affective computing was not much older than a decade. The quality of her work was recognized with the Dean of Graduate Studies Convocation Medal.
Regan joined the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Saskatchewan in 2007. Receiving an NSERC University Faculty Award in 2008, Regan implemented her visionary perspective on video games’ role in science and society. Her deep-reaching understanding of the importance of games and their potential to contribute to social, physical, and mental health has led to more than 200 publications in top venues, fundamentally changing the view of games in contemporary HCI research. Her research has been supported by prestigious networks such as the GRAND NCE, SurfNet, and SWaGUR —the first-ever Canadian graduate training program for games researchers that she created and led – which structurally advanced games research in Canada. Regan co-founded the thriving ACM SIGCHI conference series CHI PLAY to facilitate international recognition of the value of games research. She supported CHI PLAY’s transition to a journal format CHI PLAY PACM and continued her leadership of the conference series as a steering committee member from 2014-2022.
Over the last 15 years, Regan has advanced the design, development, and evaluation of novel technologies that improve people’s social, cognitive, and emotional well-being. With an h-index of 53, 13k+ citations, 26 best papers or honourable mentions, the quality of Regan’s excellence in research has received continuous recognition. She has received the Canadian Association for Computer Science’s Outstanding Young Canadian Computer Science (2015), the University of Saskatchewan New Researcher Award (2015), the E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship (2018), and the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Digital Gaming Technologies and Experiences (2020-2023). Regan was inducted into the ACM SIGCHI Academy in 2023, recognizing her many substantial contributions to the field of human-computer interaction.
Regan’s excellence has continuously inspired young researchers. Training she provided has been fundamental to the career of internationally successful faculty members at institutions in Canada (University of Waterloo, Dalhousie University) and Europe (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, GER, Eindhoven University of Technology, NL, Utrecht University, NL, and University College London, UK). Among her trainees are recipients of prestigious awards such as the Banting post-doctoral fellowships, the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, the Saskatchewan Governor General’s Gold Medal, and the CHCCS/SCDHM Bill Buxton award. She has positively impacted the career of more than 100 aspiring academics as a supervisor, mentor, and examiner and she has contributed to the career development of multiple national and international scholars. The Graduate Student Association at the University of Saskatchewan recognized her outstanding supervision in 2012, 2016, 2017, and 2018.
Involved in program committee work since 2006, Regan has dedicated herself to service to the HCI community. She chaired the CHI conference steering committee from 2019-2022, represented the CHI conference as the adjunct chair to the SIGCHI executive committee, and will serve on the CHI steering committee as the chair emeritus until 2024. Regan co-chaired CHI 2018 in Montreal. For CHI PLAY, Regan served as papers chair in 2014, 2015, 2023 and the upcoming 2024 and as technical program chair in 2016. The Graphics Interface conference holds a special place in Regan’s service work as it was her first program committee experience, her first session chairing experience, and she has been involved in the steering committee since 2006. Her service work has promoted advances in peer review and organizational processes across SIGCHI venues. She has continuously contributed to central challenges of volunteer-organized processes and she has tirelessly addressed critical community-wide challenges of diversity, equity, and inclusion, peer review, and continued community growth.
In 2023 Regan moved to the University of Victoria to join the Victoria Interactive eXperiences with Information (VIXI) lab at the University of Victoria, where she continues championing HCI and the science of video games. When Regan takes a break from changing the world, she enjoys travelling, finding amazing cocktail bars, and having academic adventures across the globe. You can find Regan in the largest crowd at any social gathering by listening for loud and cheerful laughter. Having relocated to Victoria, she enjoys spending time learning to sail with her kids, Foster and Rowan.