The GAME School

🎉Please join us in congratulating Isabella Zelasko, our spring 2026 outstanding graduate student for The GAME School! 👏👏Isabella, or Bella, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in media arts and sciences with a concentration in games and interactive media. She was recognized in a special ceremony on May 12 for all of this semester's Herberger Institute outstanding graduates was joined by her parents and The GAME School’s Director Pavan Turaga, Clinical Associate Professor Kimberlee Swisher and Program Coordinator Senior Connor Rawls.

Faculty in The GAME School recognize Bella as a high performing student, as well as a skilled 3D fabricator, illustrator and UX designer. Bella excels in designing people-centered digital spaces, with a passion for creating meaningful and experimental multimedia experiences. Her work focuses on creating new ways for people to interact with media arts in the ever-evolving digital age. She was also employed by our FabLab, where she assisted students in using wood shop machinery, operated laser-cutting and CNC machines and managed 3D printers. During summer months, she routinely assisted The GAME School staff in hosting our signature summer camp — Digital Culture Summer Institute — designed for middle school through high school students interested in digital media and the arts.

Congratulations, Bella! We can’t wait to see what you do next!

☀️Our Digital Culture Summer Institute starts Monday, June 1! If you have an 11–18 yr old interested in 🎮 game design, 🤖 robots, 🎤audio recording, 👾 maker machines and more, don’t miss your chance to grab a spot for them in this unique, two-week camp taught by The GAME School faculty, staff and graduate students.

Classes are almost full, so be sure to register ASAP at links.asu.edu/DCSI!

📣 Calling all students with 45+ credits: Have you ever wondered what it takes to launch your own game? Find out this fall in AME 494: Indie Game Studio, which runs Wednesdays from noon–2:45 p.m. starting Aug. 20 at the ASU MIX Center.

🎮 During the course, you’ll operate as an indie game studio, taking a game from concept through production to public release. Leave with a shipped game and a portfolio-ready postmortem!

👉 Learn more and register at https://ow.ly/sPMy50Z4Xys

👏👏Congratulations to all the recipients of the recently announced ASU Humanities Institute spring 2026 seed grants, including four faculty from The GAME School: Adam Nocek, Stacey Moran, Kristy Kang and Pavan Turaga!!🌱✨

From philosophy-guided experiments around microbial ecologies, environmental design and ecological health to using AI to help identify Pacific barkcloth patterns for digital repatriation and revitalizing lost design traditions, there are some wonderful projects being funded by these awards!

👉 Read more about the recipients and their projects at news.asu.edu/b/20260519-asu-humanities-institute-announces-spring-2026-seed-grant-recipients 🔗

🎉🎉Congratulations to the newly minted Dr. Lein De Leon Yong, our spring 2026 outstanding graduate student for The GAME School! She has completed her PhD in media arts and sciences after successfully defending her dissertation, “Cognition, Computation, and Cinema. Tracing an Interdisciplinary Bridge to Test the Use of Computational Vision Tools in Film Studies.”

Join us in giving her a big round of applause for this huge achievement!👏👏👏

👉Read more about Lein and her research here: https://news.asu.edu/20260504-arts-humanities-and-education-phd-grad-reframes-media-research-through-computer-science

💛🎓Congratulations to all our spring 2026 graduates from The GAME School! We have been so happy to celebrate with you this week!🎓💛

After years of assignments, tests, work in the Fab Lab and/or Electronics Lab, late nights, projects and more … you did it!! We hope you look back with pride on all you’ve accomplished during your time at ASU. We can’t wait to see what you do next! 🎉

We had an amazing time celebrating the winners of the ASU X UEL Combine today! 🏆✨💛

The Combine is an ASU-wide, competition-based scholarship opportunity made possible via a gift to The GAME School by .

We expect to host another competition in the fall semester, so we encourage all ASU students interested in esports to participate!

Congratulations again to all the scholarship winners!!🎉

1st place: Allyson G. - $5,000
2nd place: Phiphatphon L. - $3,000
3rd place: Iris W. - $1,000
4th place: Mia P. - $1,000

Congratulations to Assistant Professor Jaime Kirtz on her recent publication in Media, Culture & Society! 🎉

The article, “Save As … : The PDF as archive, authentic interface and epistemic object,” explores how PDFs shape our digital memory, showing how both visible features (like marginalia) and hidden elements (like metadata) work together to construct digital authenticity.

Introducing the idea of transversal authenticity — how authority and legitimacy emerge from the interaction of historical print conventions, digital infrastructures and sociocultural narratives — Kirtz argues the authenticity of PDFs influences our cultural and legal understandings and carries potential consequences affecting our relationship with how knowledge is recorded and communicated.

🔗 Read the article at journals.sagepub.com/eprint/NCTXKMETPQRCV4DEGSEM/full

Turning movement into music 🎶

Two students in The GAME School are transforming wearable music technology. Their startup, BioSynth Music Co., features a smart watch that lets users create or manipulate sound with simple movements at a much lower cost than comparable tech on the market. Their goal is to make creating music more accessible for all.✨

👉 Check out the full story: https://news.asu.edu/b/20260501-music-motion

It was an incredible afternoon seeing students (mostly graduating seniors) show off their capstone projects at our Spring 2026 Showcase! From video games and VR to escape rooms and murder mysteries, and from baby music and blind boxes to custom fashion and game controllers...not to mention an interview with an evil brain in a jar...student creativity was on full display.✨✨

Many projects came with an extra layer of meaning, seeking to connect audiences to important topics beyond entertainment, including navigating toxic online messaging, enhancing self awareness, engaging with the desert ecosystem and much more.

Congratulations to all our students on their impressive work! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

✨Our Spring Showcase is THIS Friday, May 1, Noon–3 p.m. in Stauffer B, Rm 125!!✨

Step inside a world of creativity and explore an amazing lineup of student-made projects from games and interactive media to immersive installations and experimental experiences.🤯

💡Meet our talented students, learn about their work and see their innovative ideas coming to life through projects that are the culmination of months of effort. You do NOT want to miss it!

ASU Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts