Magy Seif El-Nasr

Magy Seif El-Nasr is a professor and Chair of the Department of Computational Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2024, she was appointed an endowed chair position as the UC Presidential Chair. She directs the Games User interaction and Intelligence Lab at UCSC. In January 2026, she was appointed the editor in chief of the IEEE Transactions on Games, one of the premier journals in the field of technical games research. She is recognized for her work in serious games, game design, game analytics, affective computing, and artificial intelligence.

Early life and education Seif El-Nasr earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer science from the American University in Cairo in 1995. She complete dher Master of Science in Computer Science at Texas A&M University in 1998, followed by a Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science from Northwestern University in 2003.

Academic career Before joining UCSC, she held several academic positions, including professor and vice chair of the Serious Games Program at UCSC from 2020 to 2022, full professor at Northeastern University in 2020, and associate professor (tenured) at Northeastern University from 2011 to 2020. She was appointed assistant professor at Simon Fraser University from 2007 to 2011 and Pennsylvania State University from 2003 to 2007. Seif El-Nasr has also held teaching positions at Northwestern University and Texas A&M University.

As Chair of the Computational Media Department at UCSC, Seif El-Nasr oversees departmental budgets totaling over $4 million annually and has initiated several programs aimed at enhancing the student experience, increasing faculty diversity, and improving the department's visibility.

Research Seif El-Nasr's research focuses on serious games, game design, game data science, user experience, affective computing, and the application of artificial intelligence in interactive systems. She has published extensively in these fields, with over 130 peer-reviewed conference papers and 38 journal articles. She manages a lab of researchers, including several post-doctoral fellows, PhD students, and master's students, as well as undergraduate students and volunteers.

Awards and honors UC Presidential Chair (2024–2027) ACM Distinguished Member (2024) HEVGA Fellow (2017)

Funding and grants Throughout her career, Seif El-Nasr has secured approximately $36.6 million in research funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Department of Defense (DoD), and private industry.

Selected publications Books Game Data Science (2021, Oxford University Press) Game Analytics: Maximizing the Value of Player Data (2013, Springer)

Research papers