Michael Zyda, PhD

Michael Zyda is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science Practice at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, where he founded and directed the USC GamePipe Laboratory and built the university’s games curriculum from nothing: the B.S. in Computer Science (Games), the M.S. in Computer Science (Game Development), and the joint Advanced Games course that runs across USC Games.

Before USC he was the founding director of the MOVES Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, from 2000 to 2004, and a professor in its computer science department. MOVES is where America’s Army was built, and the work there ran on the same question this platform runs on: what it takes to get research out of a laboratory and into something that ships.

He is a Fellow of the ACM and of the IEEE, a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors, a National Associate of the National Academies, and a winner of the IEEE Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award. His doctorate in computer science is from Washington University, his master’s from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and his bachelor’s, in bioengineering, from the University of California, San Diego.