The researcher at the Santos Dumont Institute (ISD), Gabriel Alves Vasiljevic, received the award for best thesis at the 22nd Brazilian Symposium on Games and Digital Entertainment (SBGames'23). The conference, which took place in Rio Grande (RS), is the main one in the area of Games and Digital Entertainment in Brazil. In October 2023, Vasiljevic also won the national award for Best Doctoral Thesis at the 22nd Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Furthermore, it was a finalist in the Best Thesis category at the 43rd Congress of the Brazilian Computing Society (CSBC'23), which took place in August of the same year.
Titled “Model, Taxonomy and Methodology for Research Employing Electroencephalography-based Brain-Computer Interface Games” [Model, taxonomy and methodology for research applying games based on electroencephalography with Brain-Computer Interface, in free translation], the work developed by the researcher proposes a methodology and taxonomy model for research focused on Brain-Machine Interface games that use electroencephalography. Electroencephalography is a non-invasive method of analyzing brain electrical activity, using electrodes.05
Line of research at ISD, Brain-Computer Interface, also known as Brain-Machine Interface, is an area that deals with the interaction between the human brain and computational systems. It is widely explored in the area of rehabilitation, where it is used in different contexts, such as to move exoskeletons based on the user's thoughts. In recent years, it has also gained more space in other fields, such as education, art and games, a dimension explored in the researcher's thesis. Vasiljevic's work seeks to integrate these methods and classify them, which explains their innovative character and contribution to the scientific world.
“The award highlights the interdisciplinary contributions of the products resulting from the thesis, which involved multiple sub-areas of Computing, such as Human-Computer Interaction and Games, in addition to the fields of Neuroengineering and Neuroscience, focusing on brain-computer interfaces. Both the development of these interfaces and their use in research requires theoretical and practical knowledge in methods from different areas, and the thesis facilitates the integration of these methods,” explains the researcher.
The thesis was defended in the Postgraduate Program in Systems and Computing (PPgSC) at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN). Vasiljevic was supervised by professor Leonardo Cunha de Miranda, from the Department of Applied Mathematics at UFRN (DIMAp/UFRN), from the PAIRG group, which is the acronym for Physical Artifacts of Interaction Research Group, in English.
ABOUT ISD
The Santos Dumont Institute (ISD) is a Social Organization linked to the Ministry of Education (MEC) and encompasses the Edmond and Lily Safra International Institute of Neuroscience and the Anita Garibaladi Health Education and Research Center, both in Macaíba. ISD's mission is to promote education for life, forming citizens through integrated teaching, research and extension actions, in addition to contributing to a fairer and more humane transformation of Brazilian social reality.
