Ben Samuel
Assistant Professor at University of New Orleans
San Francisco Bay Area United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolBen Samuel is an assistant professor and game designer with a PhD in Computer Science who blends AI research, interactive narrative, and theatre into award-winning playable experiences. With 11 years of experience, he researches and teaches AI and game development at the University of New Orleans while advancing a design practice centered on shared authorship between players and systems. His projects—such as Prom Week, the Ensemble social physics engine, and the computational performance piece Bad News—demonstrate a rare fusion of improvisational performance and deep social simulation. Trained in both computer science and theatre at UC Santa Cruz, he builds systems that enable collaborative storytelling rather than scripted outcomes. He also brings hands-on stagecraft and acting experience to technical design, informing how emergent narrative can be staged and performed. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, he is focused on creating interactive works where theatrical practice and computational models co-author novel experiences.
11 years of coding experience
University of California Santa CruzMaster’s Degree, Computer Science, Master’s Degree, Computer Science at University of California, Santa Cruz - Jack Baskin School of Engineering
Github Skills (8)
assembler9
simulation9
climate-change8
reinforcement-learning8
phaser6
ai-framework6
gemini4
compiler4
Programming languages (2)
Github contributions (5)
ensemble-engine/ensemble
Feb 2015 - Jun 2017
A rules-based AI framework for social simulation
Contributions:99 commits, 2 pushes, 51 issues in 2 years 4 months
social-simulationreinforcement-learningsimulationai-frameworkrules-based
LudoNarrative/asp-phaser-generator-2
Apr 2017 - Jun 2017
Contributions:54 commits, 47 pushes in 2 months
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