Micaela Fonseca

Micaela Fonseca’s research has mainly focused on developing serious games and applied games using co-creation methodology and participatory research. Micaela is actively engaged as a research member of the EPIC-WE project. EPIC-WE is a Horizon Europe-funded project aiming to empower young people to participate in shaping European Culture through game-making. In her role as task leader at Óbidos Hub (Portugal), Micaela coordinates the research during the innovative cultural game jams within the quadruple helix ecosystem. Furthermore, as PI and co-PI for other recent projects, Micaela has been mainly focused on applied games with dynamic adaptive difficulty and fantasy contexts for interactive rehabilitation systems using Virtual Reality (VR) and biosensors. These projects showcase her expertise in game development, applied health sciences and social impact. VR4NeuroPain (PI) is a renowned project that has been awarded several distinctive prizes for patients with neuropathic pain. Com@Rehab (PI) is a collaborative research project awarded by Santander/NOVA to facilitate health communication for rehabilitation systems with VR for patients with neurologic disorders. Micaela is Co-PI of PlayersAll, a media agency and empowerment funded by FCT for upper limb rehabilitation with VR. Micaela Fonseca is a Physics Engineer who obtained her PhD in physics (NOVA FCT, 2011) and became an expert in data analysis and signal processing. After PhD, Micaela was a researcher at the Physics Department at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, and GSI. Since 2012, she has been an invited Assistant Professor at NOVA FCT and a researcher at LIBPhys-UNL. After returning to Portugal, between 2013 and 2020, Micaela was an Assistant Professor at IADE/UE and co-founded Games for Good, Portugal’s greatest game jam for social responsibility. She organised two new degrees at IADE/UE innovation teams: Games and Apps Development and Creative Tech. As IADE pedagogical practices coordinator, Micaela was responsible for several projects where creativity was entirely in synergy with technology. Since 2020, Micaela has held the positions of Principal Researcher at HEI-Lab—Digital Human-Environment Lab and Coordinator of the Wellbeing Interactivity Nexus Research Lab while also being an Assistant Professor at Lusófona University. Throughout this time, Micaela has actively engaged in promoting differentiated high-level education in games and research in applied games. Since 2022, she has been a member of the HEI-Lab’s direction board. Moreover, Micaela is a member of the team more directly involved with the submission of an Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters Games AI, the first Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters in Game Design approved (first intake 2024), the new Portuguese master's degree in Game Design and Game AI at Universidade Lusófona (approved for 6y A3ES). Micaela is editor of the International Journal of Games and Social Impact, and the conference general chair of the Games and Social Impact Media Research Lab Conference. Micaela was the local Chair of Foundations of Digital Games 2023 (FDG23) and Playful By Design (2024) conferences. For FDG24, Micaela is the track chair of Games Beyond Entertainment. Published 56 articles in journals and conference papers, 1 book chapter and 4 books. Micaela has organized 8 events between international conferences, summer schools and outreach activities. Currently, Micaela is the supervisor of 1 PhD thesis. Supervised 7 MSc dissertations and co-supervised 10. Micaela has received 6 awards and/or honors. Micaela is a member of the COST Action (CA22145) - Computational Techniques for Tabletop Games Heritage and COST Action (CA19104) - advancing Social Inclusion through Technology and EmPowerment. Erasmus+ projects, namely ID Games, Youth For Youth, TEGA and iDEAL. Micaela is a researcher at FilmEU: European Universities Alliance for Film and Media Arts, which integrates 8 institutions in Film and Media Arts education.