Geneva M. Smith, Ph.D. is a postdoctoral scholar and member of the Games Institute and HCI@Waterloo at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She develops methods and tools for IDN design and evaluation. Her previous work combined insights from game design, software engineering, affective science, and literary analysis to develop methods for the design and evaluation of generated game character emotions in service of character believability in game narratives. This is one factor that distinguishes IDNs from fixed narratives. She has presented her work as part of interdisciplinary panels at conferences for media ecology and interactive storytelling for games.

Christian Roth, Ph.D. is a media psychologist, a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer teaching interactive narrative design and impactful game design at the HKU University of Arts Utrecht, Netherlands, a co-founder of GameCamp Berlin, and a core member of the EU COST action INDCOR, which positions IDNs as a means to communicate complex topics. Roth is an advocate for positive change through immersive narrative experiences that encourage experimentation and perspective-taking. His work stands at the intersection of academia, education, art, and practical application, exploring and evaluating the use of interactive narratives, games, and extended realities for personal growth, transformative learning, and systemic thinking.

Mark Hancock, Ph.D. is the Associate Director of the Games Institute, Chair of the Department of Management Science and Engineering, and Director of the Touchlab at the University of Waterloo. He investigates novel interaction in games, mixed reality, and multi-touch digital surfaces, with a focus on physical-like 3D interaction. His work on narrative-specific gestures for digital tables and towards creating new and preserving existing narratives of physical artifacts and curated collections when migrating to digital formats are some examples that inform his work on IDNs.

Lennart E. Nacke, Ph.D. is the Associate Director of Graduate Studies at the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business, and the Director of the interdisciplinary HCI Games Group at the University of Waterloo. A pioneer in games and user experience, he conducts interdisciplinary research on interaction modalities and user modelling. His extensive work on game user research is invaluable for understanding, designing, and developing IDNs from a human-centred design (HCD) perspective.