Social Interaction in the Era of Virtual Reality | Sylvia Xueni Pan | TEDxGoodenoughCollege

Sylvia talks about how VR can be used as a way to redefine social interactions through creating an alternative technology for online conferencing. She also explains that VR enables us to experiment with social interaction in ways which physical interaction does not allow. Dr. Sylvia Xueni Pan 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 as a medium for real-time social interaction, in particular in the application areas of training and therapy. Dr Pan has developed a unique interdisciplinary research profile, with journal and conference publications on both VR technology and social neuroscience. Her work has been featured on the BBC, in New Scientist magazine and the Wall Street Journal. Her 2017 Coursera VR specialisation attracted over 100,000 registered learners globally. She co-leads the Goldsmiths Social, Empathic, and Embodied VR lab (SeeVR Lab) and the MA/MSc in Virtual and Augmented Reality programme at Goldsmiths Computing. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx