This is funding to support participation by approximately 8 graduate students (6 domestic and 2 international) along with 4 senior members of the community (faculty and industry researchers) in a Doctoral Consortium (workshop) to be held in conjunction with and immediately preceding IEEE Virtual Reality 2013, which will take place March 18-20, in Orlando, Florida, immediately following the IEEE Symposium on 3D User Interfaces and preceding the ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games. Virtual reality (VR) is a multidisciplinary field involving human-centered computer simulations that seek to imitate or augment real world senses (usually sight, sound, and touch) and experiences. VR research includes developing and assessing methods and systems, and facilitating and understanding user perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors. First organized by the IEEE Computer Society in 1993, IEEE Virtual Reality is the premier international conference and exhibition in this field and includes prestigious technical paper presentations, workshops, tutorials, research demonstrations, and exhibits from industry. Based on prior year numbers, IEEE VR 2013 expects over 300 registrants, 20 exhibitors, and 30 student volunteers. More information about the conference may be found online at www.ieeevr.org/2013.
Inspired by broad student interest and successful events at past CHI and ISMAR conferences, this will be the first Doctoral Consortium associated with IEEE Virtual Reality. The schedule includes a pre-event dinner where the students can meet and encourage each other socially, followed by a day-long private workshop where they each present their work to a panel of senior VR researchers and receive specific constructive feedback. Each student will prepare a poster on his/her research, (which will also be on display during the conference as part of the poster presentations), and will have a total of 50 minutes for a presentation during the workshop, of which approximately 20 minutes is reserved for an extensive discussion with the other graduate student participants and the senior researchers. Discussions will be run freely but will be facilitated by the DC co-chairs and mentors, who will address the strengths of the work, challenges and issues that may arise, and implications of the results. Talk titles and abstracts, along with the procedures followed, will be archived in an IEEE VR 2013 binder as a reference for the following year's conference.
Broader Impacts: The goal of the Doctoral Consortium is to provide an interactive and supportive mentoring opportunity for mid-level graduate students in virtual reality, to afford these students a valuable opportunity to get independent perspectives on their research from senior individuals with a wide collective breadth and depth of knowledge, and to build a cohort of young researchers within the VR community. The organizers will take steps to achieve diversity among the students with respect to research topics, disciplinary backgrounds, methodological approaches, and home institutions (no more than one graduate student will be accepted from any one institution). Factors such as gender and ethnicity will also be taken into account, with an emphasis on including underrepresented groups.
The main goals of this project were to hold a doctoral consortium for mid-level PhD students doing work in the fiedl of virtual reality. The doctorlal consortium was held during the IEEE VIrtual Reality 2013. IEEE Virtual Reality is the premiere international conference in virtual reality research. The motivation for the consortium is two fold, 1) to provide feedback from VR senior researchers to phd students still in the early to mid stages of their dissertation work, 2) to develop a community and connection between juior VR researchers as to help grow the field. The doctoral consortium was successful held during the IEEE Virtual Reality conference. Upon the announcement of the consortium, applications for participation were solicited. Applicants were selected based on their application materials (that included a report on their dissertation work and planned work), the potential for benefit from mentorship, and a goal for diversity amongst the participants including background, research area, and location (international and US students were encouraged). Upon selection of the participants, the students were paired with a senior VR research mentor. Before the conference and consortium, a dinner was held that brought together the students and researchers to begin developing relationships amongst the participants. The next day, the daylong consortium was held during tutorials and workshop portion of the main conference (before the paper presentations). Each participant presented their work to a panel of 4 VR reseachers. The reseachers provided feedback on the proposed work and advice on how to successfully develop their work and transition into a career into virtual reality.
