Jeremy Bailenson, Founding Director

Thomas More Storke Professor of Communication

bailenso@stanford.edu

Jeremy Bailenson is founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, Thomas More Storke Professor in the Department of Communication, Professor (by courtesy) of Education, Professor (by courtesy) Program in Symbolic Systems, a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, and a Faculty Leader at Stanford’s Center for Longevity. He earned a B.A. cum laude from the University of Michigan in 1994 and a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Northwestern University in 1999. He spent four years at the University of California, Santa Barbara as a Post-Doctoral Fellow and then an Assistant Research Professor.

Bailenson studies the psychology of Virtual and Augmented Reality, in particular how virtual experiences lead to changes in perceptions of self and others. His lab builds and studies systems that allow people to meet in virtual space, and explores the changes in the nature of social interaction. His most recent research focuses on how virtual experiences can transform education, environmental conservation, empathy, and health. He is the recipient of the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford.

Cyan DeVeaux, Ph.D. Student

cyanjd@stanford.edu

Eugy Han, Ph.D. Student

eugyoung@stanford.edu

Eugy earned her B.S. in Cognitive Science from Brown University in 2020. Her research interests are broadly about what cognitive processes (e.g., perception of self and social surroundings; making moral judgements) look like when we embody digital identities in virtual environments. She is interested in understanding how these findings can help shape virtual cultures and their laws. 

Hanseul Jun, Ph.D. Student

hanseul@stanford.edu
hanseuljun.com

Hanseul received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University. He is a Ph.D. student in communication, where he studies the social science and technology behind AR and VR. His current research topics include social interaction in AR and telepresence.

Mark Miller, Ph.D. Student

mrmillr@stanford.edu

Mark is a sixth-year Ph.D. student with the Department of Computer Science. His research interests include social interaction and interpersonal communication in augmented and virtual reality. His previous work tests whether people respond to virtual humans in AR the same way they do towards real people, and he has investigated how design teams work together in virtual environments. His current work is using VR to computationally measure of synchrony, the natural time-dependence of human interaction. He received his B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Reagan Ross, Ph.D. Candidate

reaganr@stanford.edu

Reagan is a Ph.D. candidate in Communication. She is interested in bystander intervention training and how VR might be used to train those who want to become better allies to racial minorities, particularly Black people. Her research involves the use of ethnographic methods to study how stakeholders in the VR field are approaching issues of race. Reagan obtained her BA in African and African American Studies and her MA in Communication from Stanford University.

Anna Carolina Muller Queiroz, Postdoctoral Scholar

acmq@stanford.edu

Anna is a postdoc at VHIL. Her research interests focus on cognitive and affective implications of new media and technology in learning, attitude and behavior change. She was a visiting PhD student at VHIL and received her PhD and M.S in Cognitive Psychology from University of Sao Paulo. She holds a Behavioral Medicine degree from Federal University of Sao Paulo and certificate in Education from Harvard University. She has been actively working in education since 2005, teaching at universities in Brazil. She has co-founded a non-profit organization focused on undergraduates’ education. She has received multiple awards for her academic performance and entrepreneurial achievements.

Walter Greenleaf, Affiliate

walterg@stanford.edu

Dr. Walter Greenleaf, PhD is a behavioral neuroscientist and a medical product developer. As a research scientist, Dr. Greenleaf’s focus has been on age-related changes in cognition, mood and behavior. He served as the Director for the Mind Division, Stanford Center on Longevity, where his focus was on age-related changes in cognition. As a medical product developer, Dr. Greenleaf’s focus has been on computer supported clinical products, with a specific focus on virtual reality and digital health technology to treat Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Anxiety Disorders, Traumatic Brain Injury and Stroke, Addictions, Autism, and other difficult problems in behavioral and physical medicine.

Erika Woolsey, Visiting Scholar

erikasw@stanford.edu

Dr. Erika Woolsey is a marine biologist, National Geographic Explorer, and CEO and co-founder of The Hydrous, a non-profit devoted to translating marine science into public understanding. As a Visiting Scholar at the Virtual Human Interaction Lab, she is Co-PI on an NSF-funded project entitled “Towards Universal Ocean Literacy: Advancing Science Learning through Immersive Virtual Environments.” For this work, Dr. Woolsey and the VHIL team are investigating the effects of virtual reality on ocean literacy, empathy, and self-efficacy, with special focus on gender, race, and income. She studied biology and art history at Duke University and conducted her Masters and Ph.D. research on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia with the University of Sydney and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University. She was recently a 2018-2019 Ocean Design Fellow at the Stanford d.school and the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions.

Brian Beams (he/him), Lab Manager

beams@stanford.edu

Brian Beams is the lab manager for VHIL. He received his Master of Fine Arts in Visualization in 2015, where he studied computer graphics and immersive media. After spending time in the video games and animation industry as a freelance 3D artist, Brian worked on the development of creative anatomy virtual reality applications, interactive performance art pieces, and research in the application of new technologies for art and education at the Soft Interaction Lab at Texas A&M University. Later he was the VR lab director and lecturer at Santa Clara University, where he developed curriculum for teaching VR development with a focus on sustainability and collaborated with faculty in digital humanities.