I have just received word that three students who contributed to our paper on the mobile/RFID mixed reality game PAC-LAN (which I described in my very first blog) has won the Scholarship Prize from the ACM Computers in Entertainment for the best paper submitted for 2006. The Prize is $15,000 and will be presented at the world-renowned American Film Institute in Hollywood, California on November 4, 2006.  Each winners will be awarded up to $5,000 for interning at either the Mixed Reality Lab in Singapore or the Hollywood Lab in Los Angeles. 

The paper is:

Rashid, 0., Bamford, W., Coulton, P., Edwards, R., and Scheibel, J. PAC-LAN: Mixed reality gaming with RFID enabled mobile phones, to appear ACM CIE October 2006. 

One of the anonymous reviewers described the paper “as an important contribution in the field” and the three students involved are Omer Rashid and Will Bamford of Lancaster University (UK), and Jurgen Scheible of the University of Art and Design (Finland). As academics Reuben and I dont share the prize but do get an invite to the awards.

I would like to acknowledge the support provided by Nokia for this project in terms of the phones and access to the SDK without which we would not have been able to complete the project and in particular my special thanks to Harri Pennanen and Gerhard Romen.