Education Leaders Program / Andrew Phelps
Andrew Phelps
Rochester, New York
School affiliations
Websites and articles
- Rochester Institute of Technology
- RIT School of Interactive Games & Media
- Personal site
- Director Online: "Methodologies for quick approximation of 2D collision detection using polygon armatures"
- Director Online: "Simulating arcade style explosions in game environments"
- "Games first pedagogy: Using games and virtual worlds to enhance programming education"
Andrew Phelps is the director of the School of Interactive Games & Media and the director of game design and development at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. He is the cofounder of the Master of Science in Game Design and Development within the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences, as well as the Bachelor of Science of the same name. His work in games programming education has been featured in The New York Times and USA Today and on CNN.com and National Public Radio. He regularly publishes work exploring collaborative game engines and game engine technology.
As an associate professor at RIT, Phelps teaches courses in multimedia programming, game engine development, 2D and 3D graphics, and media design. His primary research interests include online gaming, electronic entertainment, 3Dl graphics and real-time rendering, virtual reality, and interactive worlds.
Phelps began his own education as a student of the fine arts, with degrees in traditional painting. From there, he moved to digital paint and animation, and then shifted gears in grad school to a very technical thesis on multiuser database-back-ended VR systems. Along the way, he developed a true affinity for software development. His career spans early work using Adobe® Photoshop® and Alias software on the SGI/IRIX platform to recent work using Adobe Flash® Professional and Flex. He is regarded by his students as someone who will use any language or tool to get the job done, and is equally well known for choosing projects based on the “fun factor” of the work. His current endeavors span a wide range of interactive art, game design, and rich media application development topics.