Dr. Mitu Khandaker is a game designer, scholar, and entrepreneur. She is an Associate Arts Professor at the NYU Game Center, where she teaches game design and development. She holds a Ph.D. in designing games for immersive interfaces such as VR and AR and has a background in computer engineering. Mitu also co-founded Glow Up Games, a studio centered on telling stories about Black and brown joy, and the first-ever all-women of color-founded mobile game studio to raise over $1M in venture funding. Mitu was previously on the founding team at Spirit AI, a games AI middleware company, and has previously launched a location-based games startup. She also worked in the indie game space on titles such as the social simulation game Redshirt.
She has received a number of international accolades, including as a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit in 2013 and the Creative English Trailblazer Award in 2014. Mitu is particularly interested in encouraging diversity in game development and STEAM-related fields and has served on the advisory committee for the Advocacy Track at Game Developers’ Conference since 2014. She also served on the board of directors at Feminist Frequency and as an AAAS IF/THEN Ambassador to champion more middle school and teen girls into game development.