Events

Drs. Kimberly Hieftje and Asher Marks presented talks at the Pediatric Palliative Oncology Academic Leadership Collaborative & Symposium, November 6 – November 7, 2025, Memphis, TN.

Dr. Hieftje presented her talk “Year of the Cicadas: An Immersive VR Experience Exploring the Enduring Nature of Parental Grief,” and Dr. Marks  presented “Simulated Digital Psychedelics (Si-PHI): A Non-Pharmacologic Immersive Intervention for Pediatric Palliative Care.” Learn more here.

Our Creative Producer/Project Director, Justin Berry spoke with Stuart Neilson, PhD, about neurodivergent people’s experience of place and space within art museums. This keynote conversation was held at the Yale Center for British Art.

Dr. Kimberly Hieftje and Bernard François (Founder, Preview Labs) gave a seminar talk on “Co-Creating Immersive Experiences: Where Research Meets Prototyping. They share how researchers and game developers can collaborate to create impactful health-focused VR projects. Their partnership combines research insight with rapid prototyping, showcased through two works to illustrate how close collaboration can expand VR's potential in clinical training and personal storytelling.

Dr. Asher Marks presented the lab’s work at Mayo Clinic’s Grand Rounds during his sabbatical this past September. The title of the talk was “The Yale Center for Immersive Technologies in Pediatrics: Using Immersive Technologies to Improve the Health and Well-Being of Youth and Young Adults.” 

Michael Gancz participated in the NIME Conference, showcasing a presentation of the Screenless Optical Theremin with Tremolo (ScOTT) and earning a paper acceptance.

Justin Berry attended the XR Access Symposium as a plenary speaker in New York, NY. His talk, "Lemmings: Tools for Accessible Gestures", introduces Lemmings, an open-source Unity tool that makes gesture-based controls more accessible by replacing complex hand shapes with simpler, customizable motion inputs, enabling users to interact using movements that are more physically comfortable and achievable. 

Dr. Kimberly Hieftje, Dr. Shu Wei, Skylar Bartush, and Chris Shia attended Games for Change in New York, NY. Shu Wei presented her talk, "Emotional Avatar: Virtual Humans for Automated Mental Health Therapy", which uses data to demonstrate how affect character design can reshape user trust, engagement, and physiological response in VR therapy.

Dr. Kimberly Hieftje was a keynote speaker at iLRN 2025 in Chicago, IL. Her keynote "Reality Check: What Immersive Technology Needs from Education", highlighted findings from our statewide study based in Connecticut public high schools which examined how immersive technology is being integrated, the challenges schools are navigating, and what educators say they need to move from interest to meaningful implementation.

Justin Berry (Project Director), Michael Gancz (Research Associate), and Dr. Shu Wei (Postdoctoral Associate) attended the IMX Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Justin Berry presented his latest work in his talk, "Lemmings: Creating Re-mappable Gestures for More Accessible Immersive Experiences." Shu Wei presented her demo for "The Arborist: A Collective Bloom Through Physiological Data in Mixed Reality", and Michael Gancz, their demo for "...Screenless Optical Theremin with Tremolo (ScOTT)."