This just in! Read the latest news featuring the work and members of XRPeds!
MiamiXR Conference Talk
Thursday, February 12, 2026
Dr. Kimberly Hieftje will be giving a featured talk at the MiamiXR Conference from February 12 - 13, in Miami. Her talk will focus on the development and evaluation of XR-based video-game interventions for health prevention and behavior change in adolescents and young adults.
XR Pediatrics at Super MAGFest 2026!
Friday, January 9, 2026
Our Co-Directors Drs. Asher Marks and Kimberly Hieftje, along with our former post-doc Dr. Erin J.K. Truesdell were panelists at the Super MAGFest Panel on January 9, 2026. Their panel talk focused on pushing the boundaries of what games can mean to their players, entitled “What’s Going On With Serious Games? Contemporary Perspectives on Games Beyond Entertainment”
Salzburg Global Seminar, 2025
Wednesday, November 5, 2025
Dr. Shu Wei was selected as a health fellow with Salzburg Global and joined the week-long seminar at Schloss Leopoldskron, focusing on “Transforming Information Pathways for Health, Well-Being, and Equity”. During the seminar, she spoke on the panel “How can public health programs better engage young people in digital age?” sharing insights from her research on immersive technologies and digital health interventions for youth.
CHI PLAY 2025
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.
IEEE ISMAR 2025
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.
ISMIR 2025
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.
XR Peds at Serious Play, 2025
Thursday, August 14, 2025
The XR Peds Team attended and presented at the Serious Play Conference in Rochester, NY. Drs. Asher Marks and Kimberly Hieftje gave a talk titled, "Future of Immersive Technology in Serious Games." Dr. Shu Wei gave her talk titled, "Beyond Pulse: Biometric XR for Health & Art."
NIME Conference, 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.
XRPeds at Games for Change, 2025
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.
XR Access Symposium, 2025
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.