My name is Joan Sol Roo, I am a software engineer, ex-academic researcher, and game entusiast. My main motivation is to enrich the physical world with the digital one, keeping the focus on what makes us human. Games in general, and video-games, in particular, are a great medium for this exploration, as the experience of play is intrinsically ours (even if shared with other animals).
In 2020 I turned my hobby into my full-time job, as I joined Asobo Studio as video-game engine programmer. In 2021, I took a lead position at 7-Shapes developing a mooc-based serious game. Since May 2022, I am a tech artist for Evil Empire.
Besides games and play, I am interested in novel technologies in general, in particular when related to mixed reality and ubiquitous computing, and their applications on art, education, and well-being. These topics were explored during my time in Research, and currently via Art and Science projects.
I performed my doctoral studies at Bordeaux (France), working as part of the Inria – Potioc team. During the 3 years of the PhD, I focused on the creation of spatially augmented reality applications (that is, creating augmented reality experiences without the need to instrument the user); in most cases, this augmentation was implemented using projectors. You can learn more about my PhD here.
After the PhD, I stayed at Saarland University (Germany) for a year, working at the Human-Computer Interaction Lab (Max Planck Institute for Informatics), researching novel interaction and fabrication techniques for wearable computing. Then, I returned to Inria – Potioc (France) as a post-doc researcher, working in collaboration with Ullo, with the objective of creating deployable technologies for well-being and human-human interaction. I am still in contact with the academic world, I just prefer the hands-on approach to Engineering.
Joan Sol Roo - Personal Website 