Research
My research focuses on novel approaches for optimizing an individual’s experience when creating, viewing and interacting with virtual and augmented spaces. My Google Scholar (publications) page is linked here. My ACM profile is linked here. A sample of my projects are listed below (click titles for more infomation).
Mobile Augmented Reality using Eye Tracking
This research develop the science needed to enhance mobile augmented reality applications with (a) eye tracking and (b) gaze direction. The project will advance discovery of visualization techniques to permit mobile applications to enhance the viewing of the physical world, while promoting the teaching and learning of science in multiple contexts. (solePI, 2013-2020)
Augmenting Spatial Cognition Capabilities
The goal of this research is to enable the future workforce to work in unfamiliar environments, including desolate hard to reach places such as: deep space, low Earth orbit, deep ocean, and polar regions, by combining Virtual Reality (VR), Eye Tracking and electroencephalography (EEG), (PI:Manish Dixit, CoPIS: Gregory Chamitoff, Joseph Orr, Jyotsna Vaid)., 2019-2020)
Multi-Screen Immersive Virtual Environments
This project will compares performance and user interaction on a low-cost, multi-screen spatially immersive visualization system against a more expensive continuous image platform. Knowledge and insights gained from this work should help make immersive visualization systems available in areas currently unable to afford such systems (CoPI: Dr. Frederic Parke, 2019-2012)
Generating Animal Avatar Animation with Specific Identifiable Traits
This project is to define a new framework that transforms biological locomotion into a content form, classified by identity-rich features which can be synthesized for use in animating animals, whether real or imagined. The research focuses on how species, age, and weight are perceived by people viewing real animals, with the intention of making virtual animals, or humans representing themselves as animal avatars, more expressive. (CoPI: Timothy McLaughlin, 2011-2015)
Walk a Mile in My Shoes: : Using Virtual Reality To Increase Empathy And Improve Transport Safety
Real-world testing of transportation interactions is difficult because of the dangers involved. Virtual reality (VR), however, provides a rich environment in which it is feasible, economical, and safe to create a variety of transportation scenarios, isolate the mechanisms between user interactions, test interventions, and better understand how to improve safety. (CoPIs: Dr.Tara Goddard and Dr. Ranjana Mehta, 2019-2022).
SimCRAFT: A Virtual Design Platform for Experiential Learning and Collaborative Engineering Design
SimCRAFT will create the opportunity for experiential learning, which is now well-established as being critical for teaching efficiency and student retention. SimCRAFT is an on-line open-source virtual collaborative platform for multidisciplinary system engineering and simulation. (PI: Greg Chamitoff, 2019-2020)