People

Lab Director

Bernhard E. Riecke

Bernhard E. Riecke

 Positions and Affiliations: Associate Professor at SFU-SIAT (School of Interactive Arts and Technology) Associate Member of SFU Cognitive Science Program Contact: ber1 at sfu dot ca SIAT home­page: www.sfu.ca/siat/people/faculty/bernhard-riecke.html Brief Biography I am a psycho-physicist and Cognitive Scientist who’s excited about study­ing how humans orient in vir­tual and r… Read more

Students

Allen Chen

Allen Chen

Allen joined the iSpace lab in Spring 2023 as a MSc stu­dent [more details coming soon]… Read more

Denise Quesnel

Denise Quesnel

Denise joined the iSpace team in Fall 2016 as a grad­u­ate stu­dent and has been involved in the immer­sive real­i­ties as a designer and researcher since 2009. Denise explores how con­tem­pla­tive prac­tices of com­pas­sion and pos­i­tive emo­tion cul­ti­va­tion like awe and wonder, com­bined with social sup­port, can be opti­mized into ther­a­peu­tic vir­tual real­ity (VR) expe­ri­ences for both clin­i­cal and non-clinica… Read more

Deniz Ural

Deniz Ural

Deniz joined the iSpace lab in 2024 as a MSc stu­dent [more details coming soon]… Read more

  • Position:
    • MSc stu­dent
  • Projects:
    • No projects to display.
Hyun Cho

Hyun Cho

Hyun joined the iSpace lab in 2024 as a PhD stu­dent [more details coming soon]… Read more

  • Position:
    • PhD stu­dent
  • Projects:
    • No projects to display.
Ivan Aguilar

Ivan Aguilar

Ivan joined the iSpace team in Fall 2017 as a PhD stu­dent. He has a Bachelor in Computer Science and Master’s in Media and Technology, both from the Sao Paulo State University (UNESP) in Brazil, where he researched in the areas of Augmented Reality, Pre-visualization for the Film Pipeline, Photogrammetry, and Computer Graphics. His cur­rent research focuses on using inter­dis­ci­pli­nary approaches … Read more

Jacob Sauer

Jacob Sauer

Jacob joined the iSpace lab in Fall 2023 as a MSc stu­dent. He holds a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Software Systems Engineering from the University of Regina. During his time at URegina, he also worked as an under­grad­u­ate researcher in the Department of Computer Science’s aRMADILo Lab; his research focus was inter­dis­ci­pli­nary appli­ca­tions for immer­sive vir­tual real­ity expe­ri­ences, specif… Read more

Katerina Stepanova, PhD

Katerina Stepanova, PhD

Dr. Katerina Stepanova grad­u­ated from the Cognitive Science pro­gram with hon­ours from SFU and con­tin­ued into a grad­u­ate pro­gram at iSpace lab where she com­pleted her MSc and PhD degrees. Her PhD thesis is titled “Intercorporeal Design: Staging Mediated Embodied Interactions to Dissolve Self-Other Boundary to Support Felt Connection” She strives to under­stand how the immer­sive powers of modern… Read more

Kenneth Karthik

Kenneth Karthik

Kenneth joined the iSpace lab in Fall 2021 as a Masters stu­dent. He has a back­ground in com­puter engi­neer­ing and [more details coming soon] … Read more

Noah Miller

Noah Miller

Noah joined the iSpace team in Fall 2018 as a PhD stu­dent. He has a Bachelor and Master’s in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota Duluth. In his Master’s, he researched the dif­fer­ence between inter­face affor­dances of real-world and vir­tual objects in vir­tual real­ity. During this time, he also worked in the inter­dis­ci­pli­nary MMAD Lab as a motion cap­ture tech­ni­cian and research assis… Read more

Roman Jahandideh

Roman Jahandideh

Roman joined the iSpace lab in 2024 as a PhD stu­dent [more details coming soon]… Read more

  • Position:
    • PhD stu­dent
  • Projects:
    • No projects to display.
Rose Rouhani

Rose Rouhani

Rose joined the iSpace lab in Spring 2022 as a MSc stu­dent. She obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at Amirkabir University of Technology. Her aca­d­e­mic jour­ney is marked by a deep inter­est in the inter­sec­tion of tech­nol­ogy and human expe­ri­ence, par­tic­u­larly within the realm of VR. Her research focuses on an explo­ration of VR sick­ness — a form of tra­di­tional motion sick­ness experie… Read more

PostDocs

Research Interns

Alumni

Abraham Hashemian

Abraham Hashemian

Abraham is a Ph.D. stu­dent in School of Interactive Arts & Technology (SIAT) at Simon Fraser University (SFU) with a back­ground in com­puter sci­ence. He is inter­ested in UX/UI research in vir­tual, aug­mented, and mixed real­i­ties. Moreover, he is inter­ested in immer­sive game design regard­ing his knowl­edge and prior expe­ri­ences. Background: After fin­ish­ing his M.Sc. in Artificial Intelligence (A… Read more

Alex Kitson

Alex Kitson

Alex became a research intern at the iSPACE lab in January 2013, started her Masters in Fall 2014, and artic­u­lated into the PhD pro­gram in Fall 2015. She has a BSc from the University of British Columbia in Cognitive Systems, a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary pro­gram that com­bines psy­chol­ogy, com­puter sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, and lin­guis­tics. Her research inter­ests involve using an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary approach to und… Read more

Alexander Bretin

Alexander Bretin

Alexander joined the iSpace Lab in Fall 2020 as a PhD stu­dent work­ing on a Locomotion Interface for Virtual Reality and Telepresence. He is fas­ci­nated by altered states of con­scious­ness and Human-Machine Interfaces. In his Bachelor in Cognitive Science from the University of Osnabrück, Germany he con­cen­trated on psy­chol­ogy, com­puter sci­ence, math, and phi­los­o­phy. His Master’s in the inter­disci… Read more

Andrew Milne

Andrew Milne

My work is about using edu­ca­tion and tech­nol­ogy to empower people. As a Master’s stu­dent, my research explores the DIY or ‘maker’ com­mu­nity. It stems from my inter­est in rapid pro­to­typ­ing tools, such as 3D print­ers and micro­con­troller boards, and the community’s inno­v­a­tive use of online tools for col­lab­o­ra­tion, includ­ing: open edu­ca­tion resources, open licens­ing on hard­war… Read more

Ashu Adhikari

Ashu Adhikari

Ashu Adhikari joined the iSpace team in Fall 2018 as a grad­u­ate stu­dent. His research focuses on cre­at­ing embod­ied loco­mo­tion inter­faces in vir­tual real­ity. He is a Professional Engineer with a bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering.… Read more

Daniel Feuereissen

Daniel Feuereissen

Daniel’s back­ground is in com­puter sci­ence and psy­chol­ogy. He was study­ing the effect of visual motion illu­sions (vec­tion) on spa­tial per­cep­tion in vir­tual real­ity.… Read more

Daniel Sproll

Daniel Sproll

While actu­ally still in his under­grad­u­ate pro­gram of Cognitive Science at the lovely University of Osnabrueck in Germany, Daniel came to the iSpace Lab to finally get his hands dirty with some real sci­en­tific work, gather new skills and get an impres­sion of the diverse work done at SIAT — and of course to learn how to cheat the mind and get away with it (all in the name of sci­ence, of course).… Read more

Elena Kneer

Elena Kneer

Elena is a Masters stu­dent at RWTH Aachen and cur­rently a vis­it­ing researcher in the iSpace lab doing her Master’s project in Cognitive Psychology in real and vir­tual envi­ron­ments.… Read more

Jacqueline Jordan

Jacqueline Jordan

Jacqueline joined the lab in Fall 2013 work­ing on self-motion per­cep­tion in VR… Read more

  • Position:
    • Alumnus (MSc Student in iSpace Lab)
  • Email:
    • jdjor­dan at sfu.ca
  • Projects:
    • No projects to display.
Jake Freiberg

Jake Freiberg

Jake is driven by a con­stant desire to under­stand how things work, be they mechan­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal, elec­tri­cal, con­cep­tual, etc. Following his grad­u­a­tion from Iowa State University with a B. Arch and a B.S. in Psychology, he plans to inte­grate this back­ground into a larger under­stand­ing of vir­tual design tools in the con­text of psy­cho­log­i­cal processes.… Read more

Jay Vidyarthi

Jay Vidyarthi

Jay Vidyarthi is simul­ta­ne­ously a per­form­ing musi­cian, human-computer inter­ac­tion designer and psy­cho­log­i­cal researcher.  His expe­ri­ence spans from indus­try to acad­e­mia, where he is presently pur­su­ing a Masters degree at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at SFU. Jay’s port­fo­lio includes a unique brand of psy­che­delic blues music, com­pre­hen­sive inter­face design spec­i­fi­ca­tions… Read more

Jim Silvester

Jim Silvester

Jim has a broad back­ground in Interactive Multimedia and Design. He has devel­oped a mul­ti­tude of soft­ware appli­ca­tions with numer­ous devel­op­ment envi­ron­ments, hard­ware devices, and oper­at­ing sys­tems such as: Unity, UDK, Processing, Xbox Kinect, Occulus Rift, HTML5, Android, and iOS. His pri­mary research inter­ests include cre­at­ing and eval­u­at­ing inno­v­a­tive new inter­faces for users to move and … Read more

John Desnoyers-Stewart, PhD

John Desnoyers-Stewart, PhD

Dr. John Desnoyers-Stewart is an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary artist-researcher who cre­ates immer­sive instal­la­tions and per­for­mances to con­nect people and evoke new per­spec­tives on our shared real­ity. He received his PhD in Interactive Arts and Technology work­ing with Dr. Bernhard Riecke and the iSpace lab at Simon Fraser University. He real­izes new pos­si­bil­i­ties work­ing across dis­ci­plines through exten­sive … Read more

Lisa Donaldson

Lisa Donaldson

interim stu­dent in Fall 2012 — Spring 2013, work­ing on the influ­ence of con­trast on human self-motion per­cep­tion in Virtual Reality.… Read more

Lonnie Hastings

Lonnie Hastings

Lonnie’s has a back­ground in com­puter sci­ence and psy­chol­ogy. She com­pleted her under­grad­u­ate degree at the University of British Columbia with a BSc in Cognitive Systems, a pro­gram that com­bined psy­chol­ogy, com­puter sci­ence, lin­guis­tics, and phi­los­o­phy. While at UBC she worked as an RA and man­ager of the Visual Cognition Lab with Dr. Ron Rensink, where her pri­mary focus was a study on visua… Read more

  • Affiliations:

    • SIAT, SFU, UBC Visual Cognition Lab, The Boeing Company

  • Position:
    • Alumnus (MSc Student, defended in 2013)
  • Email:
    • bhasting@sfu.ca
  • Projects:
Matin Lotfaliei

Matin Lotfaliei

Matin joined the iSpace team in Fall 2017 as a grad­u­ate stu­dent. He is an expe­ri­enced pro­gram­mer, with a back­ground in com­puter sci­ence. He started fol­low­ing his fields of inter­ests in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual Reality (VR) during his B.Sc in Computer Software Engineering. After fin­ish­ing his B.Sc at 2015, he worked at an indus­trial video conf… Read more

Mirjana Prpa

Mirjana Prpa

Mirjana Prpa is an archi­tect, a vir­tual real­ity utopian and a grad­u­ate stu­dent ­ researcher at iSpace lab for Virtual Reality at School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Vancouver, Canada. She received a Master Degree in archi­tec­ture from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia, and has worked mainly on ephemeral designs for per­for­mance art projects includ­ing projects for the­aters and open public sp… Read more

Pinyao Liu

Pinyao Liu

Pinyao became a research intern at the iSpace lab in July 2019 and started his Masters in Fall 2020. He has a back­ground in Engineering and is always fas­ci­nated by the inter­sec­tion of design and emerg­ing tech­nol­ogy. His cur­rent research inter­ests involve inter­ac­tion design in XR and employ­ing tech­nol­ogy as a medium to create mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences.… Read more

Salvar Sigurdarson

Salvar Sigurdarson

Salvar is a project-oriented viking who cannot turn down a chal­lenge. With a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Iceland, his expe­ri­ence includes report­ing for the largest news­pa­per in Iceland and pro­gram­ming safety-critical soft­ware used in air traf­fic con­trol. Salvar’s latest project involved sell­ing all his belong­ings and moving to Vancouver to study Virtual Reality, and i… Read more

Sumin Kim

Sumin Kim

Sumin joined the iSpace lab in Fall 2021 as a PhD stu­dent, but then had to take care of her own startup com­pany so inter­rupted her PhD.… Read more

  • Position:
    • PhD stu­dent
  • Email:
    • sumin_kim at sfu.ca
  • Projects:
    • No projects to display.
Thinh (Ted) Nguyen-Vo

Thinh (Ted) Nguyen-Vo

Thinh (Ted) has a BSc in Computer Science from HCMC University of Science. He stared an MSc at School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT), Simon Fraser University in Fall 2016, and joined the iSPACE research lab, where he started his stud­ies on VR tech­nol­ogy and human spa­tial per­cep­tion in immer­sive vir­tual envi­ron­ments. His research inter­ests involve using tech­nolo­gies such as arti­fi­cial in… Read more

Timofey Grechkin

Timofey Grechkin

Timofey joined iSpace Lab from 2012 — 2014 after receiv­ing his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Iowa. … Read more

Yaying Zhang

Yaying Zhang

… Read more

  • Position:
    • Alumnus (MSc Student, defended in 2018)
  • Email:
    • yayingz@sfu.ca
  • Projects:
    • No projects to display.

Collaborators

(incom­plete list — still under construction)

Alexander Stahn

Alexander Stahn

Alexander C. Stahn is an Assistant Professor in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He obtained his under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate degrees from Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, after which her worked as a Research Assistant at the University of Stellenbosch, Cape Town,  from 2003 to 2005. In 2008 he obtained his doc­toral degree at Charité – Un… Read more

Beth Payne, PhD

Beth Payne, PhD

Dr. Beth Payne is the Project Manager for Digital Health Research at BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute (BCCHR) and the Women’s Health Research Institute (WHRI) and a Research Associate in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia.… Read more

  • Affiliations:

    • BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute (BCCHR) and the Women’s Health Research Institute (WHRI); University of British Columbia

  • Position:
    • Project Manager for Digital Health Research at BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute (BCCHR) and the Women’s Health Research Institute (WHRI) and a Research Associate in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia
  • Website:
  • Projects:
Bobby Bodenheimer

Bobby Bodenheimer

… Read more

Daniel Zielasko

Daniel Zielasko

… Read more

David Clement

David Clement

… Read more

Dr. Dzung Vo

Dr. Dzung Vo

Dzung X. Vo, MD (pro­nouns: he/him; how to pro­nounce) is a pedi­a­tri­cian spe­cial­iz­ing in Adolescent Medicine, found­ing Director of the BC Children’s Hospital Centre for Mindfulness, and a Clinical Associate Professor and Division Head for the Division of Adolescent Health and Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, at BC Children’s Hospital and the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine … Read more

Dr. Faranak Farzan

Dr. Faranak Farzan

Neuromodulation and Brain stim­u­la­tion tech­nolo­gies, and Youth depres­sion and addic­tion. She researches Neuromodulation and Brain stim­u­la­tion tech­nolo­gies, and Youth depres­sion and addic­tion.… Read more

  • Affiliations:

    • Simon Fraser University

  • Position:
    • Associate Professor, School of Mechatronic Systems Engineering; Chair in Technology Innovations for Youth Addiction Recovery and Mental Health
  • Website:
  • Projects:
Ernst Kruijff

Ernst Kruijff

… Read more

Jennifer Wilson

Jennifer Wilson

Jennifer is the Executive Director of Cassie and Friends: A Society for Children with Juvenile Arthritis and other rheumatic dis­eases.… Read more

John Rieser

John Rieser

… Read more

Katarina Tabi, Ph.D

Katarina Tabi, Ph.D

Katarina Tabi, Ph.D. (she/her), is a researcher and mind­ful­ness prac­ti­tioner. She has pub­lished in mind­ful­ness, mental health, and dig­i­tal health. Some of her research inter­ests include inter­per­sonal mind­ful­ness, mind­ful­ness for par­ents and chil­dren, peri­na­tal mental health, and early child devel­op­ment. Dr. Tabi trained at the Centre for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical Schoo… Read more

  • Affiliations:

    • BC Children’s Centre for Mindfulness and the BC Reproductive Mental Health Program, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia

  • Position:
    • Mindfulness Practitioner, Research Fellow
  • Website:
  • Projects:
Klaus Gramann

Klaus Gramann

Collaborating Researcher… Read more

Markus von der Heyde

Markus von der Heyde

col­lab­o­ra­tor on var­i­ous projects.… Read more

Patrick Pennefather

Patrick Pennefather

Colleague, co-instructor of Semester in Alternate Realities course, and col­lab­o­ra­tor on var­i­ous projects.… Read more

Petra Jansen

Petra Jansen

… Read more

Siamak Arzanpour

Siamak Arzanpour

Collaborator on exoskele­ton project.… Read more

Stephen Palmisano

Stephen Palmisano

… Read more

Steve DiPaola, PhD

Steve DiPaola, PhD

Steve DiPaola, active as an artist and sci­en­tist, former direc­tor of the Cognitive Science Program at Simon Fraser University, and leads the iVi­zLab (ivizlab.sfu.ca), a research lab that strives to make com­pu­ta­tional sys­tems bend more to the human expe­ri­ence by incor­po­rat­ing bio­log­i­cal, cog­ni­tive and behav­ior knowl­edge models.… Read more

Sylvain Moreno, PhD

Sylvain Moreno, PhD

Dr. Moreno is a spe­cial­ist in neu­ro­sci­en­tific tech­nolo­gies related to dig­i­tal media, reha­bil­i­ta­tion and brain fit­ness solu­tions. Over the past decade, he has devel­oped a pro­gram of research and edu­ca­tion focus­ing on inter­ac­tive media and neu­ro­science, includ­ing the devel­op­ment of inter­ac­tive computer-based sys­tems that improve cog­ni­tive func­tion by way of induced neu­ro­plas­tic­ity. Dr. Moreno has b… Read more

Timothy McNamara

Timothy McNamara

… Read more