who we are

We are researchers that work with the industry to build responsible video games

MISSION

We develop new ways to use popular games to solve scientific problems and make valuable research progress. 

VISION

The video game of tomorrow becomes a responsible way to participate in resolving scientific and social problems. They connect and build trust of society in science and game industry.

VALUES
  1. Reliable: we are responsible for our scientific outcomes
  2. Trustworthy: we believe in strong partnership
  3. Focused: we love projects with concrete impact and deliverables
  4. Educational: we communicate science to people
  5. Talent development: we train experts who believe in sustainable gaming

The impact of our work

We engaged several millions and collected over half a billion contributions
Games Count

Total Games Played

Combined amount of games played from all our projects. 

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Games Played
User Count

Total Users

Combined amount of users who contributed from all our projects. 

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Users
PROJECTS COUNT

Projects Launched

Total amount of projects and variations of them we have successfully launched 

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Projects
Games Count

Total Games Played

Combined amount of games played from all our projects. 

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Games Played
User Count

Total Users

Combined amount of users who contributed from all our projects. 

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Users
PROJECTS COUNT

Projects Launched

Total amount of projects and variations of them we have successfully launched 

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Projects

"So there's your incentive, folks. Stay on Borderlands 3 and save some lives"

Evening Standard

"By simply completing levels in the mini-game you’ll help correct millions of small computer errors that arise as scientists try to map the microbiome of the human gut"

Kotaku

"Sometimes, contributing to breakthroughs in science can be as simple as playing a game"

Discover Magazine

The Press

Who is talking about us

Blog

From 2012-2023

Publications

/JOURNAL

April 2023.
Playing the System: Can Puzzle Players Teach us How to Solve Hard Problems?
Renata Mutalova, Roman Sarrazin-Gendron, Eddie Cai, Gabriel Richard, Parham Ghasemloo Gheidari, Sébastien Caisse, Rob Knight, Mathieu Blanchette, Attila Szantner and Jérôme Waldispühl
Contributed talk at the CH I2023 “ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems”

/JOURNAL

April 2023.
Playing the System: Can Puzzle Players Teach us How to Solve Hard Problems?
Renata Mutalova, Roman Sarrazin-Gendron, Eddie Cai, Gabriel Richard, Parham Ghasemloo Gheidari, Sébastien Caisse, Rob Knight, Mathieu Blanchette, Attila Szantner and Jérôme Waldispühl
Contributed talk at the CH I2023 “ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems”

/JOURNAL

May 2022.
Human-supervised clustering of multidimensional data using crowdsourcing,
Butyaev, Alexander, Drogaris, Chrisostomos, Tremblay-Savard, Olivier, and Waldispühl, Jérôme Royal Society Open Science, 9, pages 211189

/JOURNAL

May 2022.
When Citizen Science meets Teaching: A storified citizen science computer game to teach and contribute to genomic data analysis,
Drogaris, Chrisostomos, Butyaev, Alexander, Nazarova, Elena, Patel, Harsh, Singh, Akash, Kadota, Brenden, and Waldispühl, Jérôme bioRxiv, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, May, 2022.

/JOURNAL

September 2020.
Leveling up citizen science,
Waldispühl, Jérôme, Szantner, Attila, Knight, Rob, Caisse, Sébastien, and Pitchford, Randy
Nature Biotechnology volume 38, pages 1124–1126 (2020)

/JOURNAL

2019.
3DGV: Immersive Exploration of 3D Genome Structures using Virtual Reality
Zhang, Eric, Drogaris, Chrisostomos, Gédon, Antoine, Sossin, Aaron, Faraj, Rajae, Chen, Haifen, Cyr, Yan, Majewski, Jacek, Blanchette, Mathieu, and Waldispühl, Jérôme
bioRxiv, 2019.

/JOURNAL

March 2018
Ten simple rules to create a serious game, illustrated with examples from structural biology.
Baaden, Marc, Delalande, Olivier, Ferey, Nicolas, Pasquali, Samuela, Waldispühl, Jérôme, and Taly, Antoine
PLoS Comput Biol 14, pages e1005955, 03, 2018

/JOURNAL

October 2018.
Deep learning is combined with massive-scale citizen science to improve large-scale image classification,
Devin P Sullivan, Casper F Winsnes, Lovisa Åkesson, Martin Hjelmare, Mikaela Wiking, Rutger Schutten, Linzi Campbell, Hjalti Leifsson, Scott Rhodes, Andie Nordgren, Kevin Smith, Bernard Revaz, Bergur Finnbogason, Attila Szantner & Emma Lundberg
Nature Biotechnology volume 36, pages 820–828 (2018)

/JOURNAL

July 2017.
Science Game Lab: tool for the unification of biomedical games with a purpose,
Good, Benjamin, Santini, Sarah, Wallace, Margaret, Fortugno, Nicholas, Szeder, John, Mooney, Patrick, Waldispühl, Jérôme, Tsueng, Ginger, and Su, Andrew I
bioRxiv, Cold Spring Harbor Labs Journals, pages 156141, 2017.

/CONFERENCE

September 2017.
Lessons from an online massive genomics computer game,
Singh, Akash, Ahsan, Faizy, Blanchette, Mathieu, and Waldispühl, Jérôme
In Proceedings of the Fifth AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing (HCOMP 2017), 2017.

/JOURNAL

January 2016.
Massively Multiplayer Online Science,
Attila Szantner Levelling Up: The Cultural Impact of Contemporary Video games

/JOURNAL

October 2016.

Collaborative Solving in a Human Computing Game Using a Market, Skills and Challenges,

Tremblay-Savard, Olivier, Butyaev, Alexander, and Waldispühl, Jérôme
In Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, ACM, pages 130-141, 2016.

/CONFERENCE

2015.
Crowdsourcing RNA structural alignments with an online computer game,
Waldispühl, Jérôme, Kam, Arthur, and Gardner, Paul P
In Proceedings of the 20th Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing, pages 330-41, 2015.

/MISC

September 2014.
Un jeu pour faire avancer la génétique,
Waldispühl, Jérôme
In “La Recherche”, 491, pages 46-51, September, 2014.

/JOURNAL

October 2013.
Open-Phylo: a customizable crowd-computing platform for multiple sequence alignment,
Kwak, Daniel, Kam, Alfred, Becerra, David, Zhou, Qikuan, Hops, Adam, Zarour, Eleyine, Kam, Arthur, Sarmenta, Luis, Blanchette, Mathieu, and Waldispühl, Jérôme
Genome Biol, 14, pages R116, October, 2013.

/JOURNAL

March 2012.
Phylo: a citizen science approach for improving multiple sequence alignment,
Kawrykow, Alexander, Roumanis, Gary, Kam, Alfred, Kwak, Daniel, Leung, Clarence, Wu, Chu, Zarour, Eleyine, {Phylo players}, Sarmenta, Luis, Blanchette, Mathieu, and Waldispühl, Jérôme
PLoS One, 7, pages e31362, March, 2012.
From 2021

Talks

/TALK

April 25, 2023.
Playing the System: Can Puzzle Players Teach us How to Solve Hard Problems?
Invited talk at the CH I2023 “ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems”.

...

/TALK

January 28, 2021.
“Borderlands Science”, Talk at Amazon “Voice of the Customer”.
Seminar series (with Attila Szantner and Jonathan Moreau-Genest).

/TALK

February 5, 2021.
“Borderlands Science”.
Invited short talk at the 31st edition of Soup & Science.

/TALK

May 3, 2021.
“Le potentiel des jeux en ligne pour les sciences participatives”.
Invited talk at the 88e congrès de l’ACFAS “Engagement des Québécois et des Québécoises en sciences : pratiques multiformes”.

/TALK

May 13, 2021.
“On the Border: Where Science Meets Gaming”.
Invited online webinar organized by The Royal Canadian Institute for Science (with Gabriel Richard, Sarah Hays, and Nikki Stout).

/TALK

July 13, 2021.
“One Billion Guns vs. One Billion Nucleotides”.
Invited panel member at the Games 4 Change Festival (with Rob Knight, Randy Pitchford, and Attila Szantner).

...

...

...

...

/TALK

February 26, 2016.
“Crowdsourcing genomics research”, Invited seminar, Chemistry department, University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France.

/TALK

November 13, 2015.
 “Helping Genetic Research Through Guilt-free Gaming”,
guest lecture for BIOT505, McGill University.

/TALK

April 15, 2015.
“Using games for research-based learning”,
invited lecture at the CRI Workshop “Leadership program”, Paris, France.

/TALK

March 4, 2015.
“Crowdsourcing Genomics Research”,
Invited seminar, Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA.

/TALK

November 19, 2014.
“Helping Genetic Research Through Guilt-free Gaming”,
invited lecture at POP! (symposium organized by the association of students in bioinformatics at UdM), Université de Montréal University.

/TALK

November 14, 2014.
“Helping Genetic Research Through Guilt-free Gaming”,
guest lecture for BIOT505, McGill University.

/TALK

November 6, 2014.
“Video game players advancing genetic research”,
Fourth Montreal Summit on Innovation, Montreal, Canada.

/TALK

April 30, 2014.
“Phylo: A human-computing game for genomic research”,
Games & Crowds Work- shop, Washington, DC, USA.

/TALK

April 29, 2014.
“Crowdsourcing Genomic Data Analysis with Human-Computing Video Games”,
invited talk at the White House OSTP Crowdsource Games Workshop, Washington, DC, USA.

/TALK

March 26, 2014.
 “Crowdsourcing Genomic Data Analysis with Human-Computing Video Games”,
invited talk at the CRI Workshop “Leadership program”, Paris, France.

/TALK

February 8th, 2013.
Invited Departmental Seminar, “Phylo: A Citizen Science Approach to Com- parative Genomics”, Shriner’s Hospital, Montreal, Canada.

/TALK

November 13, 2012.
 Invited panelist at round table “Bring Your Own Data follow-up session” organized by the U.S. Department of Health and Emergencies, Washington D.C., USA.

/TALK

July 14, 2012.
Invited lecture, International Workshop “Learning Through Research”, Paris, France. “Helping Genetic Research Through Guilt-free Gaming”.

/TALK

June 13, 2012.
Invited lecture, Game for Health Conference 2012, Boston, USA. “Phylo: Crowdsourcing Genetic Data Analysis”.

/TALK

May 22, 2012.
Talk at the Fabelier seminar series, University Paris 5 Descartes, Paris, France. “Helping Genetic Research Through Guilt-free Gaming”.

/TALK

March 5, 2012.
Invited lecture, Game Developer Conference, San Francisco, USA. “PHYLO: help cure disease through guilt-free gaming”.

/TALK

March 2, 2012.
Talk at the Nokia Research Center, Palo Alto, USA. “PHYLO: help cure disease through guilt-free gaming”.

/TALK

September 28th-30th, 2011.

Playing the System: Can Puzzle Players Teach us How to Solve Hard Problems?

Invited lecture, CUSP Conference, Museum of Modern Art, Chicago, USA. “PHYLO: Play video games and help Science”.

/TALK

February 26, 2016.
“Crowdsourcing genomics research”, Invited seminar, Chemistry department, University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France.

/TALK

February 26, 2016.
“Crowdsourcing genomics research”, Invited seminar, Chemistry department, University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France.

/TALK

November 13, 2015.
 “Helping Genetic Research Through Guilt-free Gaming”,
guest lecture for BIOT505, McGill University.

/TALK

April 15, 2015.
“Using games for research-based learning”,
invited lecture at the CRI Workshop “Leadership program”, Paris, France.

/TALK

March 4, 2015.
“Crowdsourcing Genomics Research”,
Invited seminar, Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA.

/TALK

November 19, 2014.
“Helping Genetic Research Through Guilt-free Gaming”,
invited lecture at POP! (symposium organized by the association of students in bioinformatics at UdM), Université de Montréal University.

/TALK

November 14, 2014.
“Helping Genetic Research Through Guilt-free Gaming”,
guest lecture for BIOT505, McGill University.

/TALK

November 6, 2014.
“Video game players advancing genetic research”,
Fourth Montreal Summit on Innovation, Montreal, Canada.

/TALK

April 30, 2014.
“Phylo: A human-computing game for genomic research”,
Games & Crowds Work- shop, Washington, DC, USA.

/TALK

April 29, 2014.
“Crowdsourcing Genomic Data Analysis with Human-Computing Video Games”,
invited talk at the White House OSTP Crowdsource Games Workshop, Washington, DC, USA.

/TALK

March 26, 2014.
 “Crowdsourcing Genomic Data Analysis with Human-Computing Video Games”,
invited talk at the CRI Workshop “Leadership program”, Paris, France.

/TALK

February 8th, 2013.
Invited Departmental Seminar, “Phylo: A Citizen Science Approach to Com- parative Genomics”, Shriner’s Hospital, Montreal, Canada.

/TALK

November 13, 2012.
 Invited panelist at round table “Bring Your Own Data follow-up session” organized by the U.S. Department of Health and Emergencies, Washington D.C., USA.

/TALK

July 14, 2012.
Invited lecture, International Workshop “Learning Through Research”, Paris, France. “Helping Genetic Research Through Guilt-free Gaming”.

/TALK

June 13, 2012.
Invited lecture, Game for Health Conference 2012, Boston, USA. “Phylo: Crowdsourcing Genetic Data Analysis”.

/TALK

May 22, 2012.
Talk at the Fabelier seminar series, University Paris 5 Descartes, Paris, France. “Helping Genetic Research Through Guilt-free Gaming”.

/TALK

March 5, 2012.
Invited lecture, Game Developer Conference, San Francisco, USA. “PHYLO: help cure disease through guilt-free gaming”.

/TALK

March 2, 2012.
Talk at the Nokia Research Center, Palo Alto, USA. “PHYLO: help cure disease through guilt-free gaming”.

News

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Nominations, Awards & Honours

Nominations and awards
won by our projects.

Our users understand the value of our projects and their impact. It is our great honour for our team to be recognized for these projects.

Project Discovery
Public Service, Activism, and Social Impact
Peoples Voice Winner, 2021

Diverse network of professionals

Team Members

Principal Investigators

Scientific Collaborators

Professional Staff

Graduate Students

Alumni

Partners

Collaboration

Got a project?
Let’s talk.

We are very excited to discuss new ideas and are very keen on new collaborations in both, science and industry

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Borderlands Science

Borderlands Science is a tile matching video game accessible in Borderlands 3 to map the DNA of microbes from the human gut.

  • Genre

    Tile matching game

  • Domain

    Microbiology

  • Partners

    Gearbox Studio Québec, The Microssetta Initiative

  • Availability

    Free DLC in Borderlands 3

View Project

Project Discovery

Project Discovery 3 is a data annotation activity in Eve Online designed to help with the analysis of immune systems. Participants identify patterns in flow cytometry data. 

  • Genre

    Drawing game

  • Domain

    Immunology

  • Partners

    CCP games & BC Cancer Research

  • Availability

    Free activity in Eve Online

View Project

Colony B

Colony B is an experimental mobile game to contribute to microbiome data analysis. The game aims to discover similar human microbiome patterns. 

  • Genre

    Drawing game

  • Domain

    Microbiology

  • Availability

    Mobile application

View Project

Phylo DNA Puzzles

Phylo is a puzzle game whose solutions help to analyze genes associated with diseases. It features a research portal allowing scientists to upload their own sequence and...

  • Genre

    Tile matching game

  • Domain

    Genetics

  • Availability

    Web & mobile application

View Project