Research Scientist
Director, play4REAL XR Lab at Yale
Deputy Director, Yale Center for Health & Learning Games/play2PREVENT Lab
Yale School of Medicine
Editor-in-Chief, Games for Health Journal

Kimberly Hieftje, PhD, is a Research Scientist and the Director of the play4REAL XR Lab at the Yale School of Medicine, which focuses on the development and evaluation of theory and evidence-informed videogame interventions using XR technology. For the past 12 years, her research has focused on the development and testing of health behavior change and education videogames and has published frequently on developing, evaluating, and implementing game interventions. She has worked on games that have focused on topics including e-cigarette prevention, tobacco use prevention, risk reduction in adolescents, HIV/STI prevention, HIV/STI testing, empowering Black teen girls on their sexual health, alcohol use prevention and harm reduction in teens, bystander intervention, LGBTQ bullying, and school climate.

Dr. Hieftje is a third-year K12 Scholar in the Yale Scholars in Implementation Science program (YSIS) at the Yale School of Medicine funded by NHLBI, a program designed to train junior faculty in implementation science. Her research focuses on better understanding the factors associated with successful implementation of game interventions in schools.

Dr. Hieftje is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Games for Health Journal, the premier journal in the field of serious games for health.