Author: Richard Zhao

We welcome two new graduate students to our group: Ethan Pangilinan and Brett Lyle!

Parsa’s paper, Enforcing Narrative Reliability and Epistemic Pacing in LLM-Driven Detective Games via Structured Knowledge Trees, has been accepted for publication in the Twenty-Second AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE-26)!

The National AI Summit was held successfully on August 10, 2026 in Calgary. Dr. Richard Zhao was a General Chair in the AI Adoption track.

GEARS is a personalized, game-based tool that equips students with ADHD and learning disabilities to thrive in post-secondary education. Dr. Richard Zhao is the co-lead on the project. News article: https://www.ucalgary.ca/news/gears-video-game-helps-neurodivergent-students-succeed

Congratulations to Mahdi for successfully defending his thesis titled “Segmentation-Based Repair of Unstable Procedurally Generated Game Levels in Angry Birds“!

We welcome two new graduate students to our group: Caleb Cavilla and Jiayi Zhang!

Dr. Richard Zhao joined CBC Alberta at Noon with host Kathleen Petty to talk about how the consequences of AI technologies and answer audience questions. Full radio segment: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-1-alberta-at-noon/clip/16185526-do-trust-artificial-intelligence

We congratulate students from our group for the following publications! Matthew McConnell: From Frustration to Fun: An Adaptive Problem-Solving Puzzle Game Powered by Genetic Algorithm at the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital …

Mohamad has successfully defended his PhD thesis! Additionally, Mohamad’s paper, Poems to Lyrics: Automated Rephrasing with Beat Alignment, has been accepted for publication in the 16th International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC 2025)!

Dr. Richard Zhao joined Global News Morning Calgary program to talk about how AI will be used in our daily lives. Full video segment: https://globalnews.ca/video/10969810/whats-next-for-ai-in-2025/