Poplin Alenka

Alenka Poplin is an Associate Professor of Geoinformation Science at the Community and Regional Planning department at Iowa State University. She holds a PhD in geoinformation science from Vienna University of Technology, a Master of Business Administration from Clemson University and a Master of Surveying from the University of Ljubljana. She is also the director of the Geogames Lab and an editor and co-editor of the special issue journals in Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and Citizen science, Sustainability and Urban Planning. Alenka edited five books, the last one titled The Virtual and The Real in Planning and Urban Design: Perspectives, Practices and Applications.

Research interest: Her research interests include serious online geogames and games for change, online geogames for civic engagement, smart and sustainable cities, emotions related to places, mapping emotions in a geographic information system (GIS). She is actively involved in several projects including “Caretaker buddy” that focuses on creating a mobile gamified application for caregivers of patients with Parkinson disease and several projects that study learning and motivation by creating games in geotechnical engineering education.