🎮 Topic 1 — Turning Play into Code
Games are chaotic—physics, quests, randomness, and player actions. We teach games to test themselves.
- Record key play traces (player stats, physics, mission flags, timers).
- Replay traces to auto‑generate unit tests that reproduce scenarios.
- Mismatch? Congrats, you just caught a bug 💥
🎨 Topic 2 — Helping Non‑Code Assets Talk Back
Art, audio, maps, and scripts shape gameplay. Let’s make them first‑class citizens in QA.
- Analyze changes to textures, levels, animations, and sounds.
- Track how assets impact gameplay, performance, and tests.
- Give each asset a “voice” in the pipeline 🎧
Who should apply & Term Info
🧑🏽🎓 3rd‑year CS / SE / Game Dev
💻 Comfortable with Python or C#/Unity
🧠 Bonus: ML or graphics interest
🔬 Curious, creative, research‑minded
Duration
4 months (May - Aug 2026)
Positions
Two students — one per topic
Program
NSERC URSA or UCalgary PURE
Reference
How to contact me?
- Send CV and unofficial transcript (both PDF) to nimmi.weeraddana@ucalgary.ca.
- Subject line: “URSA/PURE Application”
- State your topic: Topic 1 or Topic 2; include preference if you have one.
Deadline: December 1, 2025
Why join our lab?
Real‑world impact
Ship insights that make testing faster and smarter for game studios.
- Automated scenario‑driven unit tests
- Asset‑aware quality gates
Mentorship & growth
Weekly 1:1s, reading groups, and demo days. Learn research, engineering, and presentation skills.
- Clean coding & reproducible workflows
- Paper‑ and poster‑ready results