MIT Faculty & Researchers

Scot Osterweil
Managing Director, LUDUS: the MIT center for games, learning, and playful media

Scot Osterweil is the Creative Director of the Education Arcade and MIT Game Lab and a research director in the MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing Program. He is a designer of award-winning educational games, working in both academic and commercial environments, and his work has focused on what is authentically playful in challenging academic subjects.  He has designed games for computers, handheld devices, and multi-player on-line environments. He is the creator of the acclaimed Zoombinis series of math and logic games, and leads a number of projects in the Education Arcade, including the MIT/Smithsonian curated game, Vanished (environmental science), Lure of the Labyrinth (math), Kids Survey Network (data and statistics), Caduceus (medical science), iCue (history and civics) and the Hewlett Foundation’s Open Language Learning Initiative (ESL).  He is a founding member of the Learning Games Network.

Sara Verrilli
Development Director, MIT Game Lab

At the MIT Game Lab, Sara Verrilli works on experimental game designs, working with other researchers to express their ideas in game forms.  She teaches game design and project management, and works with students to develop games. She is currently design lead for Livable Cities, a game about socially responsible real estate development being made for the Samuel Tak Lee MIT Real Estate Entrepreneurship Lab.

Sara started her work in games as a Quality Assurance lead at Looking Glass Technologies, and since then has been a game designer, a project manager, QA manager, and a producer.  From 2008 until 2012, she managed the summer game development curriculum for the multiple award-winning Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. She holds a Bachelor of Sciences degree from UC Santa Cruz and is a Certified Scrum Master

Rik eberhardt

As Studio Manager for the MIT Game Lab, Rik Eberhardt spends his days playing Tetris: with people, boxes, tasklists, equipment, money, and time. He is also an instructor for two MIT Game Lab classes on game production and has served as a mentor and director for multiple game development projects including elude, a game about depression produced in the summer of 2010. He is currently working on Livable Cities, a game about socially responsible real estate, and has started work on a new game about Martin Luther, the printing press, and the Protestant Reformation.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the College of William & Mary, is a Certified Scrum Master, a PMI Agile Certified Practitioner, and received an MA Certificate in Serious Games from Michigan State University.

andrew grant

Andre Grant is Technical Director and Lecturer at the MIT Game Lab. Thanks to two wonderfully dedicated game-playing grandmothers, Andrew started playing games before he could hold the cards. From there, he went on to explore board games, strategy games, role-playing games, and computer games. This exploration shows no signs of slowing down.

Andrew graduated from MIT in 1993 with Bachelor's degrees in both Computer Science and Mathematics (6 and 18, darnit) and a minor in Creative Writing. After 6 months in the real world, he discovered that someone would actually pay him to design and program computer games, so he returned to his gamer roots by joining Looking Glass Technologies, and then DreamWorks Interactive. Since then, Andrew has survived 13 years as a programmer-for-hire and independent developer in projects ranging from underwater robotics to augmented reality to yet more games.

philip tan

Philip Tan is a research scientist at the MIT Game Lab. He teaches courses in game design and production at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research translates the joy of expert challenge (e.g. in scientific, professional, and competitive fields) into playful forms that are accessible to laypeople. For 6 years, he was the executive director for the US operations of the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, a game research initiative.

He has served as a member of the steering committee of the Singapore chapter of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) and worked closely with Singapore game developers to launch industry-wide initiatives and administer content development grants as an assistant manager in the Media Development Authority (MDA) of Singapore.