Dr. Ruhan Yang

Dr. Yang joined UCCS as an Assistant Professor in Game Design and Development in Spring 2026, where she leads the GAME Lab (Games, Artifacts, and Multisensory Experiences Lab) located in AEC 218. Her research is in Human-Computer Interaction, with a focus on playful and tangible computational systems that support learning, creativity, and broader participation in STEM. She develops serious games, paper robots, and material-based interfaces that make computation something people can build, touch, and explore directly.

 

Before joining UCCS, Dr. Yang earned her Ph.D. in Creative Technologies and Design from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2025, advised by Dr. Ellen Yi-Luen Do. She also received her M.S. in Creative Technologies and Design in 2021, and her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Applied Mathematics in 2019. Her work has appeared in venues including ACM CHI, TEI, DIS, SIGGRAPH, SIGCSE, HRI, and IDC.

 

Outside the lab, Dr. Yang enjoys snowboarding, rock climbing, crochet, and music, and is broadly interested in making and hands-on forms of creativity.