QuHarrison Terry is the featured speaker for Studio X’s 2023 reading group on the metaverse. He is a co-author of this year’s text, The Metaverse Handbook.

Anurag Kumar is a research scientist and technical research lead at Meta Reality Labs Research. His primary research interests are in machine learning for audio and speech processing and audio-visual learning. 

Lieutenant Colonel Stephanie I. Raffo is currently the Director of Innovation at the Headquarters Space Operations Command, Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado. Colonel Raffo leads the Innovation Directorate, delivering software and hardware solutions for Space Force operational missions and fostering the innovative culture across the Command. Prior to her current assignment, Colonel Raffo led a 6-member team as an Operations Officers in technical analysis and development of weapon systems and authored well over 100 technical reports at the Munitions Directorate, Eglin Air Force Base, FL.

Dr. Suarez-Jimenez is an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Rochester. His research program in the ZVR lab aims to use virtual reality (VR), multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and machine learning to elucidate the psychological and neural signatures of PTSD and anxiety disorders. Particularly, to delineate the contextual aspect of threat and reward learning, discrimination, and monitoring.

Damien is a creative technologist, digital archivist, and augmented reality (AR) artist and developer. He is the founder of Black Terminus AR, a camera app and no-code AR art studio in your pocket that helps bring archives to life. He aims to make AR easy for artists, brands, and museums. Black Terminus AR allows user to view and create 2D and 3D AR projects using just a phone or tablet. Its drag and drop interface empowers users to create AR content without learning a ton of code or buying a bunch of gadgets. It saves artists and curation teams time and money.

Dr. Haddas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Orthopaedics Center for Musculoskeletal Research at the University of Rochester. He specializes in the care of patients with musculoskeletal and neurological disorders.

Michael J. Murdoch is an Associate Professor and Director of the Munsell Color Science Laboratory at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he teaches topics including colorimetry, psychophysics, lighting, and imaging. He leads a research project on color appearance in augmented reality (AR) funded by a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and additionally conducts research on displays and temporally dynamic LED lighting. A recipient of a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award, he spent Fall 2023 in Ghent, Belgium, for collaborative research with K.U. Leuven.

The Ferryman Collective is a passionate group of creative and technical professionals dedicated to bringing groundbreaking live, immersive narratives to life in virtual reality. Their company was born of the desire to explore what storytelling, interaction, immersion, and entertainment can be rather than what it has been, to define a new generation of media with live performance in XR. They are a new kind of virtual reality studio, paving the way forward in this brave new world.

Co-presented by Studio X, Goergen Institute for Data Science, and the Institute of Optics

Dr. Sylvia Xueni Pan is a Senior Lecturer in VR at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has a BEng in Computer Science from Beihang University, an MSc in Graphics and PhD in Virtual Reality from UCL (funded by the EPSRC). Before coming to Goldsmiths, she worked as a research fellow in Computer Science at UCL and at the same University’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (ICN). Her research interest is the use of virtual reality (VR) as a medium for real-time social interaction, in particular in the application areas of training and therapy.