UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The 2020 "Thinking Within" symposium, sponsored by Penn State’s Center for Immersive Experiences and co-organized by Temple University and University of Pittsburgh, will take place March 28. Activities will begin at 8 a.m. in Pattee Library’s Collaboration Commons multipurpose room on the University Park campus.
The event is free to attend and will include a full day of presentations, discussions, networking, and lunch. For registration or more information, visit the Thinking Within symposium website. Attendee registration is required.
Thinking Within will bring together educators and researchers to address questions of how immersive technologies change approaches to research, teaching and learning. The symposium will feature two keynote speakers, Dr. Lorna Quandt and Dmitriy Babichenko.
Quandt is the director of the Action and Brain Lab at Gallaudet University and is an assistant professor in the Ph.D. in Educational Neuroscience Program (PEN) in Washington, D.C. Her keynote address, titled "Embodying Sign Language: Using Avatar, VR, and EEG to Design Novel Learning Tools," will focus on the development and testing of a new immersive American Sign Language (ASL) learning environment, which aims to teach non-signers basic ASL.
Babichenko is a clinical associate professor at the School of Computing and Information at the University of Pittsburgh. He will discuss the impact of augmented reality (AR) headsets and surgical AR navigation on cognitive load and spatial awareness during surgery in his keynote, titled "Developing an Augmented Reality Tool for Spinal Surgery Navigation."
In addition to the keynote speakers, Thinking Within will feature presentations from largely junior researchers featuring their work on all aspects of immersive technologies. Contributions are coming from across Penn State and other Pennsylvania universities.
The Center for Immersive Experiences provides cutting-edge immersive technologies, knowledge and skills to the Penn State community with the goal to create leadership in immersive experiences by advancing the underlying science and integrating it into the academic spectrum through research, education and outreach. For more information, visit the Center for Immersive Experiences website.