Abstract : Virtual environments technology has the potential the enable transformative advances in the architectural design and building industries by enabling people to accurately experience the interior space of a designed structure before it is built. However, despite much progress over the past years, critical challenges remain to be overcome. In this talk, I will give an overview of my lab’s current research aimed at facilitating accurate 3D spatial perception in immersive virtual environments and supporting effective collaborative design review. Among other things, I will discuss our efforts related to: providing people with a photorealistic self-embodiment while exploring a virtual environment; advancing the effective use of VR for the assessment of models in the earliest as well as the later stages of design; effectively supporting multiple co-located users in HMD-based immersive virtual environments; and populating virtual building models with dynamically responsive autonomous virtual agents.
Bio : Professor Interrante's research focuses on applying insights from visual perception and cognition to the development of more effective virtual reality experiences and the more effective communication of complex information through visual imagery. In this work, she enjoys collaborating with colleagues in a wide variety of fields, from architectural design and neuropsychology to engineering and medicine.
Dr. Interrante is a recipient of the 1999 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, "the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers", and a 2001-2003 McKnight Land-Grant Professorship from the University of Minnesota.
She co-founded and served as the first general co-chair of the ACM/SIGGRAPH Symposium on Applied Perception, and is currently serving as co-editor-in-chief of the ACM Transactions on Applied Perception, as well as on the editorial boards of Computers & Graphics and IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications. She was an invited presenter at the 2004 National Academies Convocation on Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research, an invited participant at the National Academy of Engineering's Seventh Annual Frontiers of Engineering, and a member of the organizing committee for the Eighth German-American Symposium on Frontiers of Engineering, a joint project of the NAE and the Alexander von Humbolt Foundation.
In addition, Dr. Interrante has widely served on the international program/paper committees of numerous top international conferences in virtual reality, visualization and computer graphics, including ACM SIGGRAPH (2000), IEEE Visualization (ten times between 1998 and 2013), and IEEE Virtual Reality (seven times since 2007), among many others. In recent years, she has served as the co-General Chair of IEEE Virtual Reality 2014, and as co-Program Chair of IEEE Virtual Reality 2015, the 2010 Joint Virtual Reality Conference of EGVE, EuroVR and VEC, and the 2008 Eurographics Workshop on Computational Aesthetics. Most recently, she served as chair of the technical track on Graphics, Animation and Gaming at the 2015
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.
At the University of Minnesota, Dr. Interrante is also affiliated with the Center for Cognitive Sciences and the Graduate Program in Human Factors. She served from 2010-2013 as a member and 2013-2014 as co-chair of the Women's Faculty Cabinet, providing consultation and advice to the Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs to improve and enrich the academic and professional environments for women faculty at the University of Minnesota. She also served as Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Computer Science and Engineering from 2010-2013.
