Voices of XR – Page 2

April 9, 2022May 11, 2022

Voices of XR: Sylvia Xueni Pan

Virtual Humans in VR

Dr. Sylvia Xueni Pan is a Senior Lecturer in VR at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has a BEng in Computer Science from Beihang University, an MSc in Graphics and PhD in Virtual Reality from UCL (funded by the EPSRC). Before coming to Goldsmiths, she worked as a research fellow in Computer Science at UCL and at the same University’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (ICN). Her research interest is the use of virtual reality (VR) as a medium for real-time social interaction, in particular in the application areas of training and therapy. Dr Pan has developed a unique interdisciplinary research profile, with journal and conference publications on both VR technology and social neuroscience. Her work has been featured on the BBC, in New Scientist magazine and the Wall Street Journal. Her 2017 Coursera VR specialisation attracted over 100,000 registered learners globally. She co-leads the Goldsmiths Social, Empathic, and Embodied VR lab (SeeVR Lab) and the MA/MSc in Virtual and Augmented Reality programme at Goldsmiths Computing.

The Voices of XR speaker series is made possible by Kathy McMorran Murray and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Traineeship (NRT) program as part of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Training in the Science, Technology, and Applications of Augmented and Virtual Reality at the University of Rochester (#1922591).

Where: Studio X & Zoom
When: Friday, April 22nd from 1 to 2pm EST
Register: bit.ly/VoXRSylviaPan

Recording

Event recording available for UR faculty, students, and staff with NetID and password: bit.ly/XRSylviaPan

graphic for XR speaker series entitled Voices of XR. On the bottom, is an illustration of a person in a headset reaching with neon geometric squares in the background. On the top is text that reads: "Voices of XR: A Studio X Speaker Series." On top of that, is the Studio X and River Campus Libraries wordmarks.

Voices of XR is a Studio X speaker series. Speakers are scholars, artists, and extended reality professionals who discuss their work with immersive technologies across disciplines and industries. All talks are free and open to the general public.

February 7, 2022April 19, 2022

Voices of XR: Scott McEldowney

“Optics of Virtual Reality”

Scott McEldowney, Ph.D. is a Director, Research Scientist for Reality Labs Research, Meta in Redmond, WA. His research spans areas from novel imaging systems to exploration of emerging concepts in near to eye display. Scott was the founding member of the optics research team within Reality Labs. He built and lead a team of researchers conducting advanced research in augmented and virtual reality display systems. Prior to Reality Labs Research, Scott was a Principal Optical Engineer for Microsoft incubating new hardware technologies. While at Microsoft, Scott helped develop and launch new 3D sensing platforms (Kinect) and was a core member of the team that developed the optic architecture for the first version of Hololens. Prior to Microsoft, Scott worked for 18 years in the Advanced Optical Technology division of JDSU developing optical components and systems for consumer electronics, medical instrumentation, and aerospace. Scott holds a MS degree in Mechanical Engineering and PhD in Optical Sciences from the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona.

This presentation will give an overview of Reality Labs (RL) Research, Meta and introduce many of the key elements necessary to build a successful augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) system, focusing on optics and displays. He will present recent advances at RL Research in near-to-eye display systems in aspects such as resolution, field of view, image quality, form factor, accommodation. Making progress requires not just uncovering new technological building blocks but also developing perceptual test vehicles to establish the benefits, limitations, and requirements for future VR and AR optics and displays.

The Voices of XR speaker series is made possible by Kathy McMorran Murray and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Traineeship (NRT) program as part of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Training in the Science, Technology, and Applications of Augmented and Virtual Reality at the University of Rochester (#1922591).

Where: In person in Studio X & Virtual on Zoom
When: Friday, April 15th from 1 to 2pm EST
Register: bit.ly/VoXR415

February 4, 2022May 11, 2022

Voices of XR: David Chalmers

“From the Matrix to the Metaverse”

David Chalmers is a leading philosopher of consciousness and philosophy of the mind. He is Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University. He is the Co-Director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness. He is also Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University and Co-Director of the PhilPapers Foundation. He studies the foundations of cognitive science, physics, and technology, as well as philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology, and many other areas.

He will discuss his new book, Reality+, which focuses on the philosophical implications of virtual and augmented reality. He argues that virtual worlds are not second-class worlds and that we can live a meaningful life in virtual reality.

Where: In person in Studio X & Virtual on Zoom
When: Wednesday, April 6th from 12 to 1pm EST
Register: bit.ly/VoXRDavidChalmers

Recording

Event recording available for UR faculty, students, and staff with NetID and password: bit.ly/XRDavidChalmers

February 3, 2022April 14, 2022

Voices of XR: Muhsinah Morris

VR Pioneer in the Higher Education Metaverse

Muhsinah L. Holmes Morris, Ph.D., is the Director of “Morehouse in the Metaverse,” a VR Project at Morehouse College and Assistant Professor of Education for the Morehouse Center for Excellence in Education (ECEE). She is an alumna of Clark Atlanta University (BS) and Emory University (MS, PhD). She teaches her chemistry courses in VR on Morehouse’s digital twin campus created by VictoryXR on the Engage Platform.

Her research encompasses working in the Morehouse Makerspace Exploration Center, 3D Printing Specialized Laboratory Equipment for those with Autism and other Developmental Disorders. She is the PI of the Morris Research and Innovation Group, where they research and develop technologically innovative solutions for those with autism. Dr. Morris won the 2021 Vulcan Teaching Award of Excellence and launched her Advanced Inorganic Chemistry course in virtual reality in the spring of 2021 in the digital twin campus. She is a pioneer in this space as the chemistry content in VR is limited to non-existent. Wife to a gamer and mom to five sons, she is an inventive autism mom, a volunteer advocacy ambassador, National Community Advisory Council member, and grant review committee member for Autism Speaks. Her purpose in life is to create inclusivity in STEAAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, agriculture, and math). She believes that VR provides a pathway for creating that inclusion through immersive education, vocational rehabilitation services, and therapeutic experiences.

Where: In person in Studio X & Virtual on Zoom
When: Friday, March 25th from 1 to 2pm EST
Register: bit.ly/VoXRMuhsinahMorris

Recording

February 2, 2022April 12, 2022

Voices of XR: Kavya Pearlman

Who Owns Our (Virtual) Identities?: XR, Data, Privacy, & Safety

Well known as the “Cyber Guardian,” founder & CEO of the XR Safety Initiative (XRSI), Kavya Pearlman is an award-winning cybersecurity professional with a deep interest in immersive and emerging technologies. Kavya is a pioneer of the novel XRSI Privacy Framework for the Immersive Technologies and Spatial Computing Domain, security awareness in the metaverse, and various baseline security and privacy standards for XR. She has been named one of the top cybersecurity influencers for three consecutive years, 2018-2019-2020, by IFSEC Global.

Kavya has previously advised Facebook on third-party security risks during the 2016 US presidential elections and worked as the head of security for the oldest virtual world, “Second Life” by Linden Lab. Kavya is the leading voice in cybersecurity, privacy, and ethics for emerging technologies including AR, VR, XR, exploring cross-sections of 5G, AI, and BCI – leading standards development and promoting diversity and inclusion in the immersive technologies. Kavya is one of the Top 50 speakers in the cybersecurity industry and constantly shares knowledge via webinars, conference talks, and blog posts around application security, cloud-native technologies, machine learning, and the global challenges that come along with the next iteration of the internet, the metaverse and web 3.0.

Kavya has founded The CyberXR Coalition that now focuses on diversity and inclusion and the cross-section of cybersecurity and XR, helped launch a trustworthy XR news platform, ReadyHackerOne, established a Medical XR Advisory Council and Metaverse Reality Check (The MRC).

Where: Studio X & Zoom
When: Friday, March 18th from 1 to 2pm EST
Register: bit.ly/VoXRKavyaPearlman

Speaker slides

February 1, 2022March 15, 2022

Voices of XR: Nathalie Mathe

Virtual Reality Creator & Educator

Nathalie Mathe is a pioneer virtual reality (VR) creator and a globally recognized consultant, educator, and public speaker. A former NASA AI scientist and visual effects artist, she combines her artistic passion with a solid scientific and technical background to explore new frontiers in VR storytelling and embodiment. She is the founder of NativeVR, an independent VR studio in California, where she focuses on creating immersive experiences with a transformative and social impact, generating a more diverse and equitable future.

Her original interactive VR film UTURN, a comedy raising awareness on the gender gap in the tech industry, was nominated for best interactive experience at the Raindance and FIVARS festivals and screened at a dozen international film festivals. Her latest VR project Wallada explores themes of trauma and healing through poetry, calligraphy, and volumetric video.

She has contributed to dozens of VR projects as director or post-prod supervisor for JauntVR, Condition One, Google, Facebook, and World Vision, and created visual effects for feature films like Fast & Furious 6, Skyfall and Dark Knight Rises. She is also a public speaker and has taught VR at Drexel University and University of the Arts.

In this talk, she will describe her work creating VR projects with a transformative and social impact, and how she experimented with teaching VR remotely during the pandemic.

Where: Zoom
When: Friday, March 4th from 1 to 2pm EST
Register: bit.ly/VoXRNathalieMatte

Recording

September 2, 2021February 3, 2022

Can We Walk in Our Patients’ Shoes?

Immersive Virtual Reality as an Empathy Training Tool for Medical Students

Drop-In Friday Event with Riham Alieldin, MD, MSc

Owing to its ability to immerse its user in a sensory real-life experience, immersive virtual reality (IVR) has been proposed in literature as a promising technology for medical empathy training by allowing its users to virtually “step into the patients’ shoes”. Given that perspective-taking is a core component of empathy, it is not surprising that VR experiences have been shown in literature to enhance empathy in its users by enabling them to embody another person in a virtual realistic environment.

This talk will provide an overview of a research project that was done to examine the role of IVR in teaching clinical empathy to medical students at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. In this research project, first-year medical students experience a user-focused VR scenario using the Embodied labs platform from a first-person perspective. A scenario that focuses on loneliness and social isolation in elderly patients and their effect on their health outcomes is used for this project. The IVR training focuses on key strategies of empathy and empathic communication that involve recognizing patients’ emotions, the importance of eliciting a shared understanding of the patient’s experiences and responding empathically to patients.

The talk will describe the VR software platform that was used and will share some of the students’ feedback on the training. Additionally, the talk will outline the role of VR in health professionals’ education in current the literature as well as provide a glimpse into the limitless possibilities afforded by XR/VR technologies in medical education and patient care.

Dr. Alieldin is a physician and a medical educator whose expertise lies in teaching and designing curricula for health professionals. She was involved in the educational reform process of her medical school by implementing new medical curricula, providing professional development opportunities to the medical faculty, and working with her school’s accreditation teams. She is currently an adjunct faculty at the Warner School of Education and enjoys teaching graduate students in the master’s in health professionals’ education degree program.

Dr. Alieldin obtained her master’s degree in health professionals’ education at the Warner School of Education at the University of Rochester in 2015 and is currently a Ph.D. Candidate at the same university. Her research focuses on the evaluation of the transfer and acquisition of knowledge, attitudes, or skills in medical education to produce physicians who are prepared to serve the fundamental purposes of medicine and patient care.

Dr. Alieldin is keen on providing relevant, meaningful, and interactive learning experiences to her students as she believes that providing a safe and efficient health care service to our community starts by building a sound educational system for its health professionals.

Where: Studio X & Zoom
When: Friday, November 12th at 1pm

Recording

February 24, 2021December 7, 2021

Voices of XR: Ahmed Ghazi

AR/VR Applications in Surgical Training

Dr. Ghazi MD, FEBU, MSc, received his medical education from Cairo University, Egypt in 2000, where he also completed his surgery training and Urology residency 2001-2005. Following his training he completed a series of worldwide fellowships in state-of-the-art minimal invasive Urological surgery, in Paris and Austria (2009-2011), where he received his accreditation from the European Board of Urology. He completed an Endourology and robotic surgery fellowship at the University of Rochester Medical Center, New York (2011-2013). He was appointed Assistant professor of Urology at the University of Rochester (2013).

Dr. Ghazi specializes in the diagnosis and minimal invasive treatment of urological cancers as well as complex stone disease. In addition to his clinical duties, he perused research grants in education, simulation research and surgical training. To further enhance his educational background, he was awarded the George Corner Deans Teaching fellowship (2014-2016), completed the Harvard Macy Institute program for Educators in Health Professions in 2016 and a Master’s in Health Professions Education program at the Warner School of Education, University of Rochester (2016-2020).

In 2015, Dr. Ghazi was appointed as the Director of Simulation Training for the Department of Urology. In this role, he collaborates with educators nationally, and internationally, in a variety of disciplines to enhance the role of simulation in surgical education. He founded and led a research laboratory staffed with a team of biomedical engineers that combine 3D printing, mechanical testing, and hydrogel polymer technologies to fabricate realistic procedural models that replicate the texture, appearance and tissue reaction of human organs. Furthermore, his educational approach to the development of these realistic innovative models has enhanced the efficiency, safety, and comprehensiveness of surgical training.

Dr. Ghazi was awarded several awards at international scientific and academic conferences as well as grants including a Clinical and Translational Science Award (2017), academic PI of a NIH, STTR grant, and PI of a NIH, NIBIB grant to evaluate the impact of his innovative simulations in improving surgical performance and their translational impact on patient outcomes. Dr. Ghazi believes in a reciprocal relationship between research, teaching & surgery, where each informs & strengthens the others. He has developed educational curricula seeking to improve and better prepare trainees for the operating room experience. He strives to produce academically rigorous research that is theoretically sound but translates directly into a safer surgical environment with reduced surgical errors and improved patient outcomes.

This series is generously supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Traineeship (NRT) program as part of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Training in the Science, Technology, and Applications of Augmented and Virtual Reality at the University of Rochester (#1922591).

Where: Zoom
When: Wednesday, April 7th from 10:25 to 11:40am
Register: bit.ly/XRVoices

Voices of XR is a Studio X speaker series, presented in collaboration with the Goergen Institute for Data Science. Speakers are scholars, artists, and extended reality professionals who discuss their work with immersive technologies across disciplines and industries. All talks are free and open to the general public. See the full spring 2021 series.

February 23, 2021December 7, 2021

Voices of XR: David Glowacki

Cloud-Mounted VR Experiments During COVID Times

David Glowacki is originally from Milwaukee. He has appointments as a Royal Society Research Fellow, Philip Leverhulme award holder, and ERC grantee at the University of Bristol where he founded a research group called the ‘Intangible Realities Laboratory’ (IRL) joint between the Centre for Computational Chemistry and the Department of Computer Science. The IRL develops open-source immersive technology software projects at frontiers of scientific, aesthetic, and technological practice.

He has published across several domains, for example non-equilibrium molecular physics, classical & quantum dynamics, computational biochemistry, human-computer interaction, high-performance computing, computer graphics, evolutionary algorithms, machine learning & data science, digital aesthetics, interactive computational art, religion & power, cultural theory, optics, and scientific instrument development.

His computational artworks have experienced by more than 200,000 people across three continents, and featured at a number of well-known cultural and media venues like the Barbican Arts Centre (London), the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Technology (Karlsruhe, Germany), the London 2012 Olympics (London, UK), the Stanford University Art Institute (Palo Alto, California), the Bhutan International Festival (Thimphu, Bhutan), and many others.

In this talk, he will describe his recent research to investigate the use of cloud and VR through two different projects during the COVID-19 pandemic:

Narupa – a flexible, open-source, cloud-mounted, multi-person VR software framework, which enables groups of researchers across the world to simultaneously cohabit real-time simulation environments and interactively build, inspect, visualize, and manipulate the dynamics of complex molecular structures with atomic-level precision. This framework was used recently to investigate the binding dynamics of molecular inhibitors to the Sars-Cov-2 main protease.
Isness – a cloud-mounted, multi-person VR experience, in which participants have produced effects statistically indistinguishable from moderate to high doses of psilocybin, a serotonergic psychedelic drug used to treat anxiety, depression, and addiction in clinical contexts. The efficacy of Isness illustrates its potential to provide therapeutic and mental health benefits, which are comparable to drug interventions but without the associated risks. The distributed cloud-mounted Isness environment enables individuals to undergo the experience of ‘energetic coalescence,’ a new class of embodied phenomenological experience, which elicits poignant responses from participants.

Where: Zoom
When: Wednesday, March 31st from 10:25 to 11:40am
Register: bit.ly/XRVoices

February 20, 2021December 7, 2021

Voices of XR: Anand Santhanam

Medical Use for AR/VR

Professor Santhanam (Assistant Professor, Dept. of Radiation Oncology, University of California Los Angeles) is a Founder, Director and an Advisor for SegAna. Dr. Santhanam has worked on the biomechanical modeling of lungs since 2002 for different applications ranging from computer animation, virtual reality, rehabilitation, tissue engineering to radiation oncology. His PhD dissertation was focused on developing High Performance Computing based algorithms for physics and physiology-based 3D lung dynamics using state of-the-art Graphics Processing Units (GPU). He was Principal Investigator for the James and Ester King 2008-10 Team Science Project grant for $1 Million in collaboration with the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Orlando, which focused on incorporating 3D biomechanical lung dynamic models for assisting in the treatment efficacy of lung radiotherapy. His research focus is on developing algorithms for 3D/4D image processing, model-based lung registration, lung anatomy deformation modeling, lung deformation-based elasticity estimation, tumor dosimetry and lung deformation-based radiotherapy evaluation. He has published several journal papers in the field of biomechanical organ modeling.

Where: Zoom
When: Monday, March 29th from 10:25 to 11:40am
Register: bit.ly/XRVoices