This past week was Fall Break at Vanderbilt University so I took the opportunity to accept an invitation from Dr. Bill Thompson and head out to the University of Utah. I am currently in the process of looking at PhD programs and this was my first trip out to see a school in person.
I was supposed get in on Thursday morning, but unfortunately my flight was cancelled due to a mechanical issue with the door so I didn't end up arriving until Friday at 10:30 am. Dr. Thompson picked me up from the airport and we promptly performed an exercise in perception while riding up and down the escalators with one eye closed, demonstrating the difficulties that people with extremely low vision face.
We then headed to campus and went straight to a group lab meeting where I was introduced to the graduate students who work with Dr. Thompson, Dr. Sarah Creem-Regehr and Dr. Jeanine Stefanucci. I, along with another visiting student named Kaushik Satyavolu, presented our most recent work to the group and had a chance to discuss it with them. I also got a chance to talk to them about their VR setup, and got some good ideas on how I will implement dyadic interactions within our own here at Vanderbilt.
The research group is a unique blend of psychologists and computer scientists working together to do research on topics such as perception and action and presence, using virtual reality as a highly effective tool for studying such areas of research.
Overall, I had a very nice visit and got a chance to talk to many different faculty with a variety of research interests. I'm still trying to decide what to do at the end of this year, and this trip helped me a take a big step in figuring out what exactly I'm looking for!
No comments:
Post a Comment