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Cogswell College, a 600-student educational institution offering a unique curriculum fusing Digital Art, Engineering and Entrepreneurship, is pleased to announce that its current Game Design Engineering student Christian Sasso has just applied for his 16th patent. He is also the Lead Engineer on an original, student-designed math game for children, and is developing his own unique VR game integrating Google Cardboard technology.

A well established software engineer, Sasso, 40, decided to enroll in Cogswell College to begin a new career path in hopes of fulfilling his dream of becoming a video game designer. He says, "I felt the education that Cogswell was offering would certainly be well worth my time and money. Sincerely, I was a bit unsure whether, at the age of 40, it was really a good idea for me to go back to school and to acquire the new knowledge necessary to propel a career change. But when I realized that I have been living for eight years so close to an accredited college that actually teaches people how to make video games at a professional level, I took it as a sign that I had to at least give my crazy idea a try!"

Jerome Solomon, Cogswell's Dean of the College, Director of Game Design & Development, and Conference Chair, ACM SIGGRAPH 2017, adds, "Christian Sasso is truly an exceptional student and team member. He is also very smart. My goodness-he has 16 patents! An outstanding member of our Game Design Engineering concentration, we consider Christian a real rock star. I've found him to be a quick and sophisticated problem solver with a knack for elegant solutions. His accomplishments at our college have been impressive. He is well respected on campus and is really a great collaborator to work with."

Currently serving as the Lead Engineer within Cogswell College's "Game Studio 2 (Unity, C#,) Sasso is developing an original videogame called "Ingrid."  The project has been commissioned to Cogswell by external customer, Prairie Rainbow Company (http://www.prainbow.com/) a company which produces physical block-based games that are meant to teach children basic math skills.

The genesis of Sasso's original VR Game goes back to his participation, along with fellow student Steven Ulrich, in the recent, Cogswell-hosted 2015 Global Game Jam. During that event, the duo designed and implemented a virtual reality game, called "We R Ball," for Google Cardboard using Unity and C#. The men created a maze generator with treasures scattered around, which uses a ball controlled by the player's gaze through a Google Cardboard VR headset.

One night during the 2015 Game Jam, Google was giving the cardboards away for free to all participants. The duo decided to develop their mini-game in a way that the only "controller" required would be the VR headset itself. This original VR game is currently under active development by Sasso and Ulrich in hopes of it being shown during SIGGRAPH 2015.

Click to view a video of the prototype "We R Ball," showing its basic mechanics, please see:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ovGa9CrZuw

About CHRISTIAN SASSO
Currently the holder of 12 approved patents, Sasso, a former Cisco employee, has just been notified by Cisco lawyers that two of his patents have been filed worldwide, including Europe, South America, India, and China, as well as in the U.S. In addition, Sasso has 4 more patents that are still pending.

Sasso was a Software Developer (2013 to 2014) with Nest Labs, CA; was a Software Developer (2006 to 2012) with Cisco Systems, CA; and was also a Software Developer (2001 - 2006) with Andiamo Systems, CA.  For each of those three companies, Sasso designed and implemented standard network protocols.

In the area of video games, Sasso, during his Fall 2014 Cogswell semester, designed and implemented in Objective C a video game for iOS devices that runs unmodified on both iPhones and iPads.

To view a video of this game, please see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQpzByJ-Lsk&feature=youtu.be

In September 2014, Sasso won second place at the Ares Magazine's "Horror Game Design Contest," having designed an original game along with fellow Cogswell student Deoel Noveno. Earlier (in 2001) he wrote a video game for the Android platform using the Java language.  And in 2009, Sasso received an individual award for "Excellent Work on TCAM Layout Optimization" for his patent idea "Sub-Area FCID Allocation Scheme."    

About COGSWELL'S GAME DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT TRACK
Game Design & Development is the degree program at Cogswell that best exemplifies the intersection of engineering and art for games and various forms of interactive technology. As the market for computer games and gamification demands visually high detail, fun, interactive, compelling stories, & dynamic game play, there is a need for highly skilled people with specialized expertise.

Game Design & Development consists of two majors which represent the two sides of game development teams. These are: Game Design Art, which is focused on art and content creation; and Game Design Engineering, which is focused on engineering and the more technical aspects of game creation. Please see:  http://www.cogswell.edu/programs/game-design-and-development.php

About COGSWELL COLLEGE
Designed as a "fiercely collaborative, living laboratory," Cogswell College is located in the heart of the legendary Silicon Valley in Sunnyvale, California. The school is a WASC accredited, four-year institution of higher education with a specialized curriculum that fuses digital arts, audio technology, game design, engineering and entrepreneurship. In 2015, Cogswell was cited by Animation Career Review as "One of the Top 50 Private Game Design Schools and Colleges in the U.S."

Numerous alumni of Cogswell College have secured prominent positions within the entertainment, videogame, technology, computer, animation, and motion graphics industries throughout California and beyond. Several of these alumni have established careers with such high profile companies as Activision, DreamWorks Animation, Disney, Electronic Arts, Pixar, and Microsoft Game Studio. Many other alumni have launched their own creative ventures.

Recent Cogswell alumni were members of the Academy Award-winning production teams which worked on the blockbuster films "Frozen" and "Life of Pi." Some of the other well-known consumer projects to which Cogswell alumni have contributed include the feature films "Big Hero 6" and "The Avengers," and the popular videogames "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare," "Halo 4" and "Battlefield Hardline."     

Cogswell College is located at 1175 Bordeaux Drive, Sunnyvale, California, 94089. For more information, please call 1-800-264-7955 or visit: www.cogswell.edu