Robert F. Nideffer

Robert F. Nideffer is a Professor in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and is Chair of the Department of the Arts. Nideffer holds a Ph.D. in Sociology (1994) and an MFA in Computer Arts (1997) from the University of California, Santa Barbara. From 1998-2013, he was  a Professor of Art at the University of California, Irvine, and held a courtesy appointment in the Department of Informatics in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences.  In 1999 he founded the Game Culture and Technology Lab, and in 2005 an undergraduate academic Concentration in Game Culture and Technology housed between the School of Information and Computer Science and the School of the Arts. From 2005-07 he was Co-Director, and from 2007-09 Director, of the Art Computation Engineering (ACE) Graduate program. His work has been shown at a variety of venues including the Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte, Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; the Museum of Modern Art and the 2002 Whitney Biennial, New York, NY. He has lectured extensively both inside and outside academia, and his projects have been discussed in major media outlets including books, journal articles, television, the Internet, film, and radio.