Raluca D. Gaina is currently studying for her Ph.D. in Intelligent Games and Games Intelligence at Queen Mary University of London, in the area of rolling horizon evolution in general video game playing, after completing a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Computer Games at the University of Essex. In 2018, she did a 3 month internship at Microsoft Research Cambridge, working on the Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning in Malmo Competition (MARLO). She was the track organiser of the Two-Player General Video Game AI Competition (GVGAI) 2016-2019 and is the Vice-Chair of the IEEE CIS Games Technical Committee in 2020. Her research interests include general video game playing AI, reinforcement learning and evolutionary computation algorithms.

Find out more of what I get up to on the blog.

Read an interview about my PhD experience here.

AWARDS

Best Artifact Award, AIIDE, Atlanta, 2019

Paper: Analysis of Statistical Forward Planning Methods in Pommerman (Artifact)

Best PC Member Nomination, AIIDE, Atlanta, 2019

Video Competition, IEEE CoG, London, 2019

2nd Place - Video : Project Thyia: A Forever Gameplayer

Video Competition, IEEE CIG, Maastricht, 2018

3rd Place - Video : General Win Prediction from Agent Experience

Best Paper Award Nomination, IEEE CIG, Maastricht, 2018

Runner-up - Paper: General Win Prediction from Agent Experience

IEEE Present Around The World Competition, University of Essex, 2017

Runner-up

IET Game AI Hackathon Competition, University of Essex, 2017

Runner-up Best Game Design

MSc Project Prize in the area of Computer Science, University of Essex, 2016

Awarded for the highest mark obtained in an MSc project in the CSEE department.

K.F Bowden Memorial prize, University of Essex, 2014

Awarded for achieving one of the top four overall highest marks in the second year in the CSEE department.

K.F Bowden Memorial prize, University of Essex, 2013

Awarded for achieving one of the top four overall highest marks in the first year in the CSEE department.

FUNDING

Global Game Jam (GGJ) scholarship for attending the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2020, 2020
AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-19) Travel Grant Award, 2019
AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE) Travel Grant Award, 2018
EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence (IGGI) Grant, 2016-2020
Postgraduate Support Scheme 10k Grant, University of Essex, 2015