News & Press

Wednesday, June 17, 2026

Our Co-Director, Dr. Kimberly Hieftje, and the Year of the Cicadas team received the 2026 Auggie Award for Best Indie Creator(s) at AWE USA 2026 in Long Beach, California. Year of the Cicadas is an immersive virtual reality experience exploring parental grief, child loss, and meaning-making over time. During AWE USA, the project was also featured as a technology demonstration at the AWE Playground and Art Festival, where attendees experienced the installation firsthand.

This recognition follows a series of milestones for Year of the Cicadas. The project was selected as a the International Serious Play Awards finalist, 2026 and a Games for Change Awards finalist, 2026 in the Best in Health & Wellness category.

Monday, April 6, 2026

The Cutie was recognized as a 2026 EdTech Awards Cool Tool Finalist in the VR/AR Solution category.

Thursday, March 26, 2026

Dr. Kimberly Hieftje moderated a symposia and gave a talk on No Screen, No Problem: Designing Non-Visual Immersive Experiences for Clinical and Community Settings and Dr. Frank Lee, our collaborator at Drexel University, gave a talk on From Idea to Award: How a Four-Institution Consortium Secured an NIH STTR for Life at 100.4. 

Wednesday, March 25, 2026

Year of the Cicadas, created by Dr. Kimberly Hieftje, received an Honorable Mention for Best XR Gallery at the 33rd IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VR 2026). The immersive virtual reality experience explores grief, child loss, and meaning-making through an interactive narrative.

Saturday, March 7, 2026

Palomi Kurade, our postgraduate associate, presented findings from our DPH- and NIH-funded Invite Only VR vaping prevention program evaluation at the 2026 SRNT Annual Meeting.

She presented 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. Palomi also delivered 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 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.