Opening: admitting new PhD/MSc students

Interested in con­tribut­ing to world-class research at the inter­sec­tion of Informatics, Psychology/Cognitive Science, Human Factors/HCI, and Virtual Reality in an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary multi-national team? We’re cur­rently look­ing for bright and moti­vated PhD/MSc stu­dents to join the iSpace lab at the School of Interactive Arts & Technology (SIAT), Simon Fraser University in the greater Vancouver region in beau­ti­ful British Columbia, Canada.

Criteria

Applicants should be highly moti­vated and have a strong inter­est in inter­dis­ci­pli­nary sci­en­tific research aligned with the over­all goals and vision of the iSpace lab (see iSpaceLab.com/vision).

• Human multi-modal spa­tial cog­ni­tion, spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion, spa­tial updating
• Enabling robust and effort­less spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion in vir­tual environments
• Self-motion per­cep­tion, illu­sions (“vec­tion”), and sim­u­la­tion; Multi-modal con­tri­bu­tions and interactions
• Design and iter­a­tive eval­u­a­tion and improve­ment of per­cep­tu­ally ori­ented, multi-modal human-computer inter­faces and human-centered, effec­tive vir­tual real­ity simulations

As the iSpace lab works at the inter­sec­tion of Informatics, Psychology/Cognitive Science, Human Factors/HCI, and Virtual Reality, you should bring a strong back­ground in at least one of these areas and be excited to expand into the other areas.  PhD and MSc appli­ca­tions must also meet the reg­u­lar admis­sion cri­te­ria and will undergo the reg­u­lar admis­sions processes.

Funding

Students: Funding is pro­vided through a com­bi­na­tion of teach­ing assist­ant­ships, schol­ar­ships, fel­low­ships and research assistantships.

PostDocs: Funding is pro­vided at stan­dard Canadian (NSERC) rates includ­ing vaca­tion pay and ben­e­fits. Additional top-up is nego­tiable if you con­tribute sub­stan­tially to the writ­ing of research grants.

Application

If you are inter­ested in join­ing our team, please start by send­ing me an infor­mal email () and attach your CV and any other information/documents/links you might find suit­able. I’d be happy to arrange tele­phone or skype inter­views. I look for­ward to receiv­ing your appli­ca­tion! Review of mate­ri­als will begin on February 1^st, 2012 and will con­tinue until all posi­tions are filled.

Grad stu­dents: Please check SIAT’s grad admis­sion pro­ce­dures and make sure to con­tact me before sub­mit­ting your application.

Below is a sum­mary of my main research agenda so you can assess if and how you might best fit into our team. There’s also a sketch of some of the skills, expe­ri­ence, and char­ac­ter­is­tics that we value  highly and will be useful for iSpace members.

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iSpace Research Agenda & Vision in a Nutshell

GOAL: To inves­ti­gate what con­sti­tutes effec­tive, robust, and intu­itive human spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion and behav­iour. This fun­da­men­tal knowl­edge will be applied to design novel, more effec­tive human-computer inter­faces and inter­ac­tion par­a­digms that enable sim­i­lar processes in computer-mediated envi­ron­ments like vir­tual real­ity (VR) and multi-media.

MOTIVATION: While modern VR sim­u­la­tions can have stun­ning pho­to­re­al­ism, they are typ­i­cally unable to pro­vide a life-like and com­pelling sen­sa­tion of moving through the sim­u­lated world, thus lim­it­ing per­ceived real­ism, behav­ioural effec­tive­ness, user accep­tance, and com­mer­cial success.

APPROACH: I pro­pose that inves­ti­gat­ing and exploit­ing self-motion illu­sions might be a lean and ele­gant way to over­come such short­com­ings and pro­vide a truly “moving expe­ri­ence” in computer-mediated envi­ron­ments. Multi-modal, nat­u­ral­is­tic and immer­sive VR pro­vides a unique oppor­tu­nity to study human per­cep­tion and behav­iour in repro­ducible, clearly defined and con­trol­lable exper­i­men­tal con­di­tions in a closed action-perception loop.

SHORT/MID-TERM GOALS: To per­form exper­i­ments with naïve human par­tic­i­pants in VR to inves­ti­gate and opti­mize multi-modal and higher-level con­tri­bu­tions and inter­ac­tions for spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion and self-motion per­cep­tion, while min­i­miz­ing ref­er­ence frame conflicts.

LONG-TERM GOALS: To inves­ti­gate how we can best employ self-motion illu­sion in VR to enable life-like, robust and effort­less spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion and behav­iour in VR.

SIGNIFICANCE: This research will lead to a deeper under­stand­ing of human per­cep­tion and behav­ior that enables us to design more effec­tive human-computer inter­faces and inter­ac­tion par­a­digms. In par­tic­u­lar, applied research will iden­tify the essen­tial para­me­ters of perception/action and pin-point the “blind spots” that will enable us to trick the brain when sim­u­lat­ing VR. This will enable the cre­ation of better, cost-effective, vir­tual solu­tions for numer­ous appli­ca­tions, such as driving/flight sim­u­la­tion, space explo­ration, edu­ca­tion, gaming, engi­neer­ing, recre­ation, emer­gency train­ing, video con­fer­enc­ing, min­i­mally inva­sive surgery, and telemedicine.

More infos about the iSpace Lab

Below is a draft of some of the skills, expe­ri­ence, and char­ac­ter­is­tics that we value highly and will be useful for iSpace members:

Programming / computational literacy

Experience in pro­gram­ming, espe­cially in the con­text of VR or Computer graph­ics is quite valu­able. We cur­rently use Vizard from Worldviz, a python-based pro­gram­ming library for the real-time VR sim­u­la­tions. On of the tools we use for cre­at­ing nat­u­ral­is­tic 3D con­tent is the pro­ce­dural mod­el­ing mod­el­ing tool CityEngine.  

Experimental design and statistics:

Experience in clev­erly design­ing, con­duct­ing and ana­lyz­ing mixed-methods exper­i­ments with human observers

Writing and presentation skills:

Publishing and pre­sent­ing research is not only the cur­rency in aca­d­e­mics, but also a way to give back to the com­mu­nity, both pro­fes­sional and gen­eral public. Thus, we highly value good writ­ing, pre­sen­ta­tion, and gen­eral social/networking skills.

Technical & building skills:

Technical skills in build­ing, con­struc­tion, main­te­nance, and other geeky and MacGyver-ly skill (from elec­tron­ics to set­ting up com­put­ers to build­ing phys­i­cal struc­tures in the lab) can also be valu­able (but aren’t a pre-requisite for being an iSpacer). Experience with VR equip­ment is cer­tainly a plus. We’re cur­rently using a custom-designed 2-axis cir­cu­lar tread­mill, sev­eral visu­al­iza­tion setups includ­ing a wide-FOV HMD (NVIS SX 111 with a pol­he­mus track­ing system), a large-screen pas­sive stereo pro­jec­tion setup, and a custom-designed high-resolution, large-FOV Wheatstone Stereoscope. We’re cur­rently work­ing on improv­ing our real-time spa­tial­ized sound ren­der­ing (HRTF con­vo­lu­tion, and have the equip­ment for bin­au­ral record­ings. We’re also using an pimped Gyroxus gaming motion chair with addi­tional shaker for vibra­tion rendering.

Proactivity, enthusiasm, and team/interpersonal skills:

Working in an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary team can have it’s chal­lenges, but it is also incred­i­bly reward­ing, espe­cially for people with high proac­tiv­ity & enthu­si­asm, and good com­mu­ni­ca­tion and team/interpersonal skills.

Conferences

TEDactive

IEEE VR Conference

VRVis Conference Calendar

SIGCHI

APGV (Applied Perception in Graphics & Visualization

IMRF (International Multimodal Research forum)

Spatial Cognition Conference

spa­tial cog­ni­tion 2012 meet­ing

SILC list of spa­tial cog­ni­tion con­fer­ences

Psychonomics

VSS Vision Sciences Society annual meeting

CogSci

Networking & Links

[Under Construction]

• SFU
• my SFU web­site

 

Contact Info

School of Interactive Arts + Technology (SIAT)
Simon Fraser University Surrey
250 –13450 102 Avenue Surrey, BC V3T 0A3 CANADA

iSpace Lab: SUR 3800 (3^rd floor)
my office: SUR 2830 (2^nd floor)

Directions by Skytrain: take the expo line direc­tion King George, exit at Surrey Central, walk across the park­ing lot to the tall office tower (with the SFU sign above the Blenz), take the wide stairs/escalator up to the Mezzanine (=2^nd) floor.
Take a right for my office (2830), or walk up to the 3^rd floor and take a right for the iSpace lab (room 3800).

Note that the ele­va­tor won’t let you exit on the 2^nd or 3^rd floor.

phone: +1 778.782.8432 (Riecke office)
phone: +1 778.782.3111 (3800 lab)
fax: +1 778.782.7488

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