News & Press

Monday, October 13, 2025

Our former Postdoc Erin J.K. Truesdell presented the paper, “Game Playbooks 2.0: An Updated Strategy for Supporting Game-Based Behavior Change Interventions” at CHI PLAY 2025, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The paper co-authored by Drs. Truesdell, Weser, Murray, Crocker, Marks, Martinello, and Hieftje, presents an updated Game Playbook framework—a collaborative tool that integrates theory, design, and evaluation to guide the creation of effective game-based behavior change interventions.

Thursday, October 9, 2025

Dr. Kimberly Hieftje presented the demo of, “Year of the Cicadas: Using Sound and Story to Understand Parental Grief,” coauthored by Drs. Hieftje, Marks, and Schartmann, at ISMAR 2025, South Korea. The narrative-driven VR experience uses spatialized sound and personal storytelling to explore parental grief and will be integrated into medical training for pediatric fellows and medical students in Spring 2026.

Monday, September 22, 2025

Our Research Associate Michael Gancz presented their poster, “Spatial Perception of HRTF-Matched Binaural Audio” at ISMIR, Daejon, South Korea! They present early results from a study quantifying listeners’ ability to localize sounds in near-field virtual space.

Thursday, August 14, 2025

Friday, June 27, 2025

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

Thursday, June 26, 2025

The XRPeds Team attended the 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.

Thursday, June 26, 2025

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.

Tuesday, June 17, 2025

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.

Wednesday, June 4, 2025

The XRPeds Team attended and presented at 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" (Link). Shu Wei presented her demo for "The Arborist: A Collective Bloom Through Physiological Data in Mixed Reality" (Link) , and Michael Gancz, their demo for "...Screenless Optical Theremin with Tremolo (ScOTT)." (Link)

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

The XRPeds team traveled to Los Angeles, CA for the Cedars-Sinai Virtual Medicine Conference. It was an inspiring and eventful weekend full of groundbreaking research using extended reality to revolutionize healthcare! Our team had a strong presence, presenting two posters, three talks, and one panel. The team also had an exciting journey to Universal Studios Hollywood where we visited Super Nintendo World! Overall, an incredibly successful and insightful weekend!