News & Press

Thursday, March 5, 2026

Palomi Kurade, our Postgraduate Associate will present findings from our DPH- and NIH-funded Invite Only VR vaping prevention program evaluation at the 2026 SRNT Annual Meeting. 

On Friday, March 6, 2026 at 5 PM, she will present her poster, “Evaluating a Virtual-Reality Video Game for Nicotine and Cannabis E-Cigarette Prevention in Middle School Students,” highlighting feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy findings from a VR-based prevention pilot trial. 

On Saturday, March 7, 2026 at 9 AM, she will deliver a paper presentation, “Vaping to Cope: A Qualitative Study of Middle School Students’ Perceptions of the Mental Health Impacts of Nicotine and Cannabis Vaping,” examining how early adolescents perceive vaping as a strategy for managing stress and emotional distress.

Thursday, February 12, 2026

Dr. Kimberly Hieftje gave a featured talk at the MiamiXR Conference from February 12 - 13, in Miami. Her talk focused on the development and evaluation of XR-based video-game interventions for health prevention and behavior change in adolescents and young adults.

Monday, January 26, 2026

Our Associate Research Scientist, Dr. Shu Wei, and her interdisciplinary team developed Love, Hate and Robot, an award-winning mixed-reality prototype presented at Reality Hack @ MIT 2026. The project is a playful XR “dreaming machine” that externalizes everyday inner conflicts by combining Android XR, Gemini Live, and a Unitree humanoid robot to support reflective and confident decision-making.

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”

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.

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.