Immersive Technology: Use and Privacy

FREE November 5, 2021 @ 11:00am - 12:30pm ET
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Overview
Speakers
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Overview

The use of augmented reality, virtual reality, and emerging immersive technology are growing rapidly in an increasing number of areas outside of the gaming industry. This technology has opened new approaches to training, journalism, tourism, and healthcare including mental health reaping tremendous benefits. Along with these benefits, though, comes the realization that much can be learned about individuals as well as their surroundings when using immersive technology. 

The purpose of this webinar is to showcase three academic scholars investigating different uses and privacy concerns related to immersive technology. 

Presenters include:

  • Lauren Buck, PhD, Trinity College, Dublin Ireland – Privacy and personal space: addressing interactions and interaction data as a privacy concern
  • Powen Yao: PhD student, University of Southern California – Virtual equipment system: Face mask and voodoo doll for user privacy and self-expression options in virtual reality

This webinar is part of our Applied Privacy Research Coordination Network. This project was funded by the National Science Foundation to facilitate dialogue between the academic community and industry on topics related to data protection and privacy.

Speakers

Lauren Buck

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin

Dr. Lauren Buck is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin, working with the Graphics, Vision and Visualization Group. She earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science at Vanderbilt University, and her background spans computer science, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience. Her interests lie in understanding interaction and collaboration within virtual reality though interdisciplinary methodologies. Particularly, her work has sought to understand how people perceive interaction space within virtual environments and how to apply this understanding to applications that can assist with problems in different fields such as defense, medicine, and data privacy. Dr. Buck regularly publishes in premier conferences and journals in both the virtual reality and medical communities, and her research has been moving toward understanding the psychological impact and privacy implications of the availability of biometric data that stems from virtual reality technology.

Philip Lindner

PhD, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm University

Philip Lindner, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and head of the Digital Psychiatry Lab at the Center for Psychiatry Research at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. He has a decade of experience in the field of psychiatric eHealth and is a leading researcher on the topic of next-generation Virtual Reality interventions for mental health.

 

Powen Yao

Computer Science Ph.D. Candidate, University of Southern California

Powen Yao is a Computer Science Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, United States. His research area started with games and artificial intelligence in games and led to the research area of User Interface & User Interaction in Extended Reality (XR).

His thesis work of UI/UX in XR involves tackling the challenge of dealing with the many different contexts that come from placing the user at the center of computing. He proposes to focus on two key qualities – hyperphysicality and whole-body interaction. By examining the different aspects of hyperphysicality, developers can design and use techniques that do not exist in real life to better adapt to different contexts. Developers can then use whole-body interaction to prune the potential hyperphysical techniques that we explore and to evaluate whether a technique is better for a given context.

He has culminated a body of work under the banner of Virtual Equipment System. Virtual Equipment System is a user interface designed and evaluated using hyperphysicality and whole-body interaction, resulting in a highly adaptable equipment system that is only possible in XR. 

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