Kimberly Hieftje, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Yale Pediatrics and Director of the play4REAL XR Lab, which focuses on the development and evaluation of videogame interventions using extended reality (virtual reality, augmented reality, etc) for health prevention and promotion, behavior change, and education in adolescents and young adults. She is currently involved in the development and testing of several health behavior change XR and game-based interventions and has published frequently on developing, evaluating, and implementing serious games. She has worked on games that have focused on topics including vaping/e-c-cigarette prevention, tobacco use prevention, risk reduction in adolescents, HIV/STI prevention, HIV/STI testing, empowering girls around healthy decision making, bystander intervention, LGBTQ bullying, school climate, and alcohol harm reduction.

Dr. Hieftje was a K12 Scholar in the Yale Implementation Science program (YSIS), where she focused on understanding the factors associated with successful implementation of videogame interventions in schools.

Dr. Hieftje is also the editor-in-chief at the Games for Health Journal.