Editorial Board
Editor-in-Chief
Gunther Eysenbach, MD, MPH, FACMI
Adjunct Professor, School of Health Information Science, University of Victoria, Canada
View Gunther Eysenbach's profile
Dr. Gunther Eysenbach, MD MPH FACMI, is founder, executive editor and CEO of JMIR Publications, a digital health and open science publisher, which he founded in 1999. Eysenbach is recognized by many as one of the leading academics in the field of digital health and eHealth and a pioneer of open access and open science. He is also a producer, editor and publisher of influential knowledge translation products. According to Ioannidis et al (Plos Biol 2019), Eysenbach is the most cited academic in medical informatics. In 2002, he created a new scientific discipline, "infodemiology,"which is now recognized by WHO as a core area of practice when dealing with an "infodemic." Eysenbach also cofounded TrendMD, a Knowledge Translation tool, is an angel investor in Digital Science and Digital Health startups, and is Adjunct Professor at the School of Health Information at the University of Victoria (Canada).
Former Editor-in-Chief
Nabil Zary, MD, PhD, Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Science, Dubai, UAE
Editorial Board Members/Section Editors
Mariano Alcañiz, PhD
Laboratory Of Immersive Neurotechnologies (LabLENI) / Human Centered Technologies Institute, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain
Prof. Mariano Alcañiz is the founding director of the Immersive Neurotechnologies Laboratory (LabLENI) at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) and professor of biomedical engineering at the UPV. He has published more than 350 academic articles in interdisciplinary journals such as Science, Scientific Reports, and Plos One, as well as domain-specific journals in communication, computing, education, medicine, management, and psychology. National and European agencies have continuously funded his work for 30 years. According to the most recent bibliographic review, Professor Alcañiz is among the ten authors with the highest number of publications worldwide on virtual reality. He received the Cybertherapy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012 from the US Interactive Media Institute for outstanding scientists who have demonstrated exceptional achievement in advanced technologies and health. He has been a Vice-President of the European Association for Extended Reality (EURO-XR) since 2015.
Prof. Alcañiz's general research interests hover around a better understanding and enhancement of human cognition, combining insights and methods from computer science, psychology, and neuroscience. His work is centered on using empirical, behavioral science methodologies to explore people as they interact in these digital worlds. Still, he researches to develop new ways to produce Extended Reality (XR) simulations. Towards this end, he has been involved in clinical psychology, neurodevelopmental disorders, consumer neuroscience, organizational neuroscience, education, and training projects.
René Baranyi, Dr. techn.
TU Wien (Vienna University of Technology), Vienna, Austria
René Baranyi holds a position at the Institute of Information Systems Engineering Research Group for Industrial Software (INSO) at TU Wien, leveraging over 15 years of dedicated involvement in Serious Games, Gamification, and healthcare. With expertise spanning Sports and Lifestyle Medicine, Prevention, Physiotherapy, Rehabilitation Medicine, and exergame development, his primary focus is the seamless integration of Serious Games and Gamification into healthcare practices.
Baranyi specializes in conceiving and crafting digital platforms aimed at simplifying rehabilitation and promoting healthier lifestyles. He is notable for his work in supporting the design, analysis, and development of more than 60 Serious Games and Gamified healthcare applications, aiming to reshape the digital healthcare and rehabilitation landscape.
Baranyi’s commitment extends to streamlining technology integration in healthcare, enhancing patient outcomes, and overall well-being. His multifaceted contributions in research and education foster innovation in the healthcare sector, yielding benefits for individuals and the industry as a whole.
Max Valentin Birk, PhD
Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands
Max Birk is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial Design at Eindhoven University of Technology. He received his graduate degree in Psychology from the University of Trier (Germany) in 2012 and completed his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Saskatchewan (Canada) in 2018. Max has collaborated with game designers in North America, Europe, and China, and also has experience working with independent developers.
Birk draws from psychology, interaction design, data science, and game design to investigate the effects of game-based design strategies on mental processes and design-induced behavior change. His research contributes to games user research, digital health, and motivational interface design.
Ben Gerber, MD, MPH
UMass Chan Medical School, USA
Dr. Gerber is Professor and Division Chief of the Division of Health Informatics and Implementation Science at UMass Chan Medical School. He is an internist, health services researcher, and software developer. He has developed various educational, entertaining, and interactive apps and online resources to support chronic disease self-management, and evaluated several of them through randomized controlled trials.
Gerber’s research focus is on behavior change and health education in the context of chronic disease self-management.
Anna McDaniel, RN, PhD
University of Florida, USA
Anna McDaniel is best known for her research in the subspecialty of consumer health informatics, focusing that work on the significant societal problem of nicotine addiction and tobacco control.. Her award winning video game, Escape from Nicotinia, blended deep knowledge of the behavioral motivational strategies common to adolescents with smoking prevention concepts. It addressed the health promotion needs of teenage girls and was the prototype for the NCI Small Business Innovation Research grants (Phase I and II) to develop and test an anti-smoking video game.
Marlies Schijven, MD, PhD, MHSC
Academic Medical Center of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Marlies Schijven is a surgeon with extensive experience in designing and validating serious games and simulations. She has supervised several PhDs on the issue, and is immediate past-president of the Dutch Society for Simulation in Healthcare, program committee member of Games for Health Europe, and Founder of the WATCH Society for use of Wearable Technology in Healthcare. Her research focuses on wearable technology, validation trajectories, situational awareness, and games aiming at training physicians/professionals in health care.
Tanjir Rashid Soron, MD, MPH
Founder NiHealth, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Dr. Soron is the founder and managing director of NiHealth and Telepsychiatry Research and Innovation Network in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He completed his MD in Psychiatry after completing an MBBS and MPH. Afterward he completed an MSc in Global eHealth from the University of Edinburgh, UK. He started his career as Assistant Professor in Psychiatry and subsequently established the Telepsychiatry Research and Innovation Network to increase access to mental health using technology and conducting research to reduce the wide mental health treatment gap in Bangladesh and other Low and Middle-Income Countries. He brings the concept of blending nature into digital health solutions in designing his next venture Naturalistic Intelligent Health (NiHealth). Along his professional journey, he has gained experience in strategic and policy development and developing and deploying low-cost innovative digital mental health solutions.
Dr. Soron is active in investigating the potential areas of user-centered, cost-effective technological solutions for mental health and their integration among vulnerable communities, specifically people with autism spectrum disorder and slum dwellers in Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs).
Past Editorial Board Members
Craig Anderson, Iowa State University, United States
Julian Alvarez, Lille 1 University, France / Play Research Lab, Ludoscience, France / Lutin UserLab, France
Ceclia Boyer, Health On the Net Foundation, Switzerland
Brian Cugelman, AlterSpark, Canada
Guido Giunti, University of Oulu, Finland
Maurits Graafland, Flevo Ziekenhuis, Netherlands
Daria Kuss, Nottingham Trent University, England
Emanuele Lettieri, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Ricky Leung, University of Albany, United States
Allan McDougall, Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Canada, Canada
Join the Editorial Board
We are currently looking to expand our Editorial Board. To apply to be an Editorial Board member/Associate Editor for JMIR Serious Games, please apply using the form linked in this article.
You should hold a PhD or similar higher degree, have a publication track record, and ideally have academic editing experience.