CHONGYANG.IO

My name is Chongyang Wang, usually folks call me Gary! I'm a HCI Researcher (Novel Interfaces, cognition technologies, interaction/collaboration...for more details, check the "Interest" Section down below), Instructional Designer, and a Game Developer and Designer.

Prior to my research journey, I dreamt of emulating wizards in the entertainment world, like Miyamoto. I just LOVE every keystroke playing with game engines or other tools while trying to iterate fun ideas to reality since high school. Later, during my Columbia experiences, with the opportunities working along with prof.Joey Lee and Steven Feiner, there I found my TRUE INTEREST. Ford said, if you ask people (before automobile was invented) what they want, they always reply a faster horse wagon. Similarly, a younger me might have just wished for a cooler video game. However, in fact, what I really want may actually beyond a game bringing people just laughter, but a creative, interactive, thoughtful, or problem-solving experience, in short, some novel and fun Human-Computer Interaction experiences or interfaces typically for promoting our life.

Gladly, my game dev skills and tools mastery have served as a sturdy bridge during this transition. Yet, like someone said, "We will never be ready." The art of engineering and the quest for research are not usually the same path, but this may just be the allure of pursuing research that intrigues me always - we will never know what's the future looks like till we invent it. This spirit of exploration was further ignited during my Future Manufacturing research experience in the CGUI Lab (funded by NSF, produced publications such as one already accepted by ACM SUI). What I also learned is, having creativity, critical mind, and eyes of discovery alone are not sufficient for succeeding in research, but relentless perseverance matters too (actually, let's not use the word "Success", it's for engineers and business people, doing research is about discovery, and discovering something new can't really be judged as a success or failure whatsoever, especially considered within the current timespace. After all, the joy is in the discovery, in the journey, not just the destination).

M.A. in Instructional Technology, with program track - Design and Development of Digital Games, Columbia University

Cert. in Game Design, University of Wisconsin - Madison

B.S. in Computer Science, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Research Assistant at Columbia CGUI Lab (Computer Graphics and User Interface), Supervisor: Steven K. Feiner

Instructional Designer at Unity Technologies.