Interested in joining the iSpace team?

Interested in con­tribut­ing to inno­v­a­tive research at the inter­sec­tion of Psychology/Cognitive Science, Informatics, Human Factors/HCI, and Virtual Reality in an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary team?

I’m always look­ing for bright and moti­vat­ed PhD/MSc stu­dents and postDocs 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) and at least one of our recent Projects.

• Human multi-modal spa­tial cog­ni­tion, spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion, spa­tial updating
• Enabling robust and effort­less spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion in vir­tu­al envi­ron­ments and telep­res­ence (e.g., con­fer­ence robots, drones) — e.g., through design­ing improved loco­mo­tion inter­faces and par­a­digms for 2D and 3D locomotion
• Self-motion per­cep­tion, illu­sions (“vec­tion”), and sim­u­la­tion; Multi-modal con­tri­bu­tions and interactions
• Overview effect and other piv­otal expe­ri­ences and how to elicit them in VR
• Theory, design guide­lines, and VR expe­ri­ences sup­port­ing pos­i­tive trans­for­ma­tive expe­ri­ences — from self-tran­scen­dent and awe-inspir­ing expe­ri­ences to VR4Good and address­ing Climate Change
• Brain-com­put­er inter­faces and biofeed­back (breath­ing, EEG…) for immer­sive, play­ful VR inter­ac­tion design to foster desire­able states (e.g., mind­ful­ness, relax­ation, overview effect, piv­otal experiences).
• Design and iter­a­tive eval­u­a­tion and improve­ment of per­cep­tu­al­ly ori­ent­ed, multi-modal human-com­put­er inter­faces and human-cen­tered, effec­tive vir­tu­al real­i­ty sim­u­la­tions and expe­ri­ences. This could include uncon­ven­tion­al VR inter­faces, immer­sive VR for med­i­ta­tion, and other novel ideas.

In par­tic­u­lar, I am look­ing for stu­dent to work on one of the fol­low­ing projects (some grant-sup­port­ed / some grants are cur­rent­ly under review/planning):

• Design & eval­u­ate user-pow­ered motion cueing inter­faces to enable more nat­ur­al and intu­itive loco­mo­tion through and spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion in VR, for both ground-based nav­i­ga­tion and espe­cial­ly for full 3D nav­i­ga­tion (both vir­tu­al flying and tele-pres­ence/tele-oper­a­tion appli­ca­tions like drones).
• Investigate ways to mitigate/reduce cyber­sick­ness in VR, and devel­op a tool­box for better assess­ing and reduc­ing cybersickness

Other poten­tial projects include

• Investigating how we can use immer­sive vir­tu­al real­i­ty, biosens­ing, and brain-com­put­er inter­faces to pro­vide users with pro­found and mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences such as the Overview effect
• Devising new gam­i­fied research (or researchi­fied gaming) par­a­digms for bring­ing togeth­er advan­tages from research and gaming
• Investigate and uti­lize multi-modal and higher-level syn­er­gis­tic ben­e­fits to enhance self-motion illu­sions (vec­tion) in VR, which con­tributed to fun­da­men­tal knowl­edge and can help to enable more com­pelling and effec­tive human-com­put­er inter­faces for immer­sive VR.
• Investigating the functional/behavioral sig­nif­i­cance of self-motion illu­sions (vec­tion): E.g., does vec­tion allow us to per­form tasks we could not oth­er­wise per­form as well? We have first evi­dence that vec­tion can facil­i­tate per­spec­tive switch­es, and sev­er­al exper­i­men­tal par­a­digms lined up to inves­ti­gate fur­ther behav­ioral mea­sures .

As the iSpace lab works at the inter­sec­tion of Informatics, Psychology/Cognitive Science, Human Factors/HCI/Immersive Interaction Design, 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. Note that MSc appli­ca­tions will only be con­sid­ered if they show a strong inter­est in research, schol­ar­ly dis­sem­i­na­tion, and poten­tial­ly get­ting a PhD. Note that theses in my lab are writ­ten as a cumu­la­tive thesis (i.e., based on schol­ar­ly papers).

Funding

Students: Funding is pro­vid­ed through a com­bi­na­tion of teach­ing assist­ant­ships, schol­ar­ships, fel­low­ships and research assist­ant­ships. Some stu­dents also take on addi­tion­al part-time jobs in indus­try (as the hourly rate is often higher). You will also receive finan­cial sup­port when pre­sent­ing your research in suit­able schol­ar­ly conferences.

PostDocs: there are cur­rent­ly no fully funded postDoc posi­tions in the iSpace lab unfor­tu­nate­ly, although I can pro­vide some inter­im fund­ing and am open to suit­able postDocs that bring their own fund­ing (at least until we find addi­tion­al funds). I’d be happy to assist in apply­ing for exter­nal fund­ing — there are mul­ti­ple options includ­ing Banting, Mitacs, NSERC/SSHRC…. 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 the iSpace team, please read on, then send me an email () and include the fol­low­ing (else you likely won’t get a reply).

• your cur­ricu­lum vitae includ­ing your pub­li­ca­tion record,
• your research inter­ests and how they relate to our ongo­ing projects (you do not need a con­crete research pro­pos­al — it’s typ­i­cal­ly best devel­oped together)
• unof­fi­cial tran­script, and any other information/documents/links you might find suitable.

Please indi­cate how you might see your­self fit in (this is essen­tial — please under­stand that I won’t respond to gener­ic or mass-emails (I get many of them). You don’t need to have a spe­cif­ic research project in mind to apply, though, as long as you are open and excit­ed about the kind of research we do).

Please also indi­cate if you have any expe­ri­ence in pro­gram­ming in gen­er­al, VR-spe­cif­ic pro­gram­ming (espe­cial­ly in Unity), VR setups, 3D, and statistics/experimental design/data analy­sis. I don’t require exper­tize in all these areas, but it’s useful to under­stand where your back­ground and strengths are and how you’d fit into the team. Feel free to add any other skills (aca­d­e­m­ic or non-aca­d­e­m­ic) that I should be aware of or that could be useful.

Positions are highly com­pet­i­tive, with appli­ca­tions due around Janurary for a September start.

I’d be happy to arrange tele­phone or zoom/skype inter­views if there seems to be a good fit. Review of mate­ri­als is ongo­ing and will con­tin­ue until all posi­tions are filled.

I look for­ward to receiv­ing your application!

Bernhard

Prospective grad stu­dents: ALL grad­u­ate stu­dents at SIAT are rec­om­mend­ed for admis­sion by the Graduate Admission Committee and then admit­ted by the Dean of Graduate Studies at SFU. Therefore you MUST sat­is­fy all the require­ments set up by SIAT and SFU. Please check SIAT’s grad admis­sion pro­ce­dures and make sure to con­tact me before sub­mit­ting your appli­ca­tion. Off-cycle admis­sion is pos­si­ble for excel­lent candidates.

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 an out­line of some of the skills, expe­ri­ence, and char­ac­ter­is­tics that we value  highly and will be useful for iSpace mem­bers. The appli­ca­tion process is com­pet­i­tive, and apart from your GPA the main admis­sion cri­te­ria are how well you’d fit into the iSpace team and can con­tribute to the over­all research agenda and vision (see below for details). I only super­vise MSc and PhD stu­dents with a strong research orientation.

If you have already research ideas when apply­ing, great! If not, and you are just really excit­ed about con­tribut­ing to our research agenda and vision (and are capa­ble in doing so), that also fine, and we should dis­cuss ideas before you write your “letter of intent” to make sure it will be a good mutual match. In either case, please check the iSpace research agenda and vision and our recent projects and pub­li­ca­tions and talks/demos to get a better idea of our research scope and approach­es (although I’m always inter­est­ed in expand­ing into new excit­ing research areas).

 

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Do you fit in?

Below is a draft of some of the skills, expe­ri­ence, and char­ac­ter­is­tics that we value highly and will be useful for iSpace mem­bers. As the iSpace lab works at the inter­sec­tion of Informatics, Psychology/Cognitive Science, Human Factors/HCI/Interaction Design/UX, and Virtual Reality, you should bring a strong back­ground in at least one of these areas. Of course, I don’t expect you to have mas­tery in all of these skills when join­ing the team — but you should be excit­ed to expand in these areas. Note that all join­ing mem­bers should have at least some back­ground in pro­gram­ming and be eager to do research.

Programming / computational literacy

Experience in pro­gram­ming, espe­cial­ly in the con­text of VR or Computer graph­ics is quite valu­able. We cur­rent­ly use mostly the pop­u­lar game/VR engine Unity3D which Bernhard also uses in his teach­ing of the immer­sive envi­ron­ments course IAT445 and the Semester in Alternate Realities. We occa­sion­al­ly still use Vizard from Worldviz, a python-based pro­gram­ming library for the real-time VR sim­u­la­tions. One 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. [Bernhard cur­rent­ly teach­es this also in the quan­ti­ta­tive research meth­ods and design course IAT 802. We typ­i­cal­ly use JMP and SPSS for sta­tis­ti­cal analysis.

Writing, presentation, and communication 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 schol­ar­ly writ­ing, pre­sen­ta­tion, and gen­er­al social/networking/communication skills.

Proactivity, enthusiasm, perseverance/grit 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 & per­se­ver­ance, and good com­mu­ni­ca­tion and team/interpersonal skills — and a good sense of humour.

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 sev­er­al wide-FOV HMDs (e.g., Oculus Quest, Valve Index, HTC Vive, HTC Vive Pro Eye, Oculus Rift, and for­mer­ly the NVIS SX 111), a large-screen pas­sive stereo pro­jec­tion setup, and a custom-designed high-res­o­lu­tion, large-FOV Wheatstone Stereoscope, and start­ed inte­grat­ing var­i­ous sen­sors includ­ing the Leap motion con­troller as well as EEG sys­tems from Emotiv (EPOC & Insight) and Interaxon (Muse 2) inte­grat­ed with a real-time 3D game engine (Unity3D) that we also use in our teach­ing. We’re cur­rent­ly work­ing on improv­ing our real-time spa­tial­ized sound ren­der­ing (HRTF con­vo­lu­tion, and have the equip­ment for bin­au­r­al record­ings. We’re devel­op­ing our own user-pow­ered motion cueing inter­faces, in par­tic­u­lar, lean and ele­gant lean­ing-based loco­mo­tion inter­faces such as the NaviChair and NaviBoard or ear­li­er a pimped Gyroxus gaming motion chair with addi­tion­al shaker for vibra­tion rendering.

What is SIAT & SFU?

Check out our SIAT webiste or watch the or check out SIAT’s YouTube chan­nel. Below is an overview video (focused mainly on our under­grad edu­ca­tion, but still a good overview on that aspect of SIAT).

Simon Fraser University (SFU) ranks con­sis­tent­ly as one of the top uni­ver­si­ties in Canada. Bernhard Riecke’s lab is part of SIAT, a young, vibrant and inter­dis­ci­pli­nary depart­ment at SFU with research in HCI, inter­ac­tion design, media arts and many other areas. It is locat­ed at the SFU Surrey campus (direct­ly on the sky­train tran­sit line) in Greater Vancouver. Greater Vancouver lies along the west coast of Canada where the Pacific Ocean meets the Coast Mountain range. With a pop­u­la­tion of over 2 mil­lion, Greater Vancouver is known as one of the most eth­ni­cal­ly diverse areas in Canada and has been ranked as one of the most liv­able cities in the world. Moreover, Vancouver is a great des­ti­na­tion for those who love the out­doors and nature (e.g., skiing, hiking, water sports) and the indoors (e.g., muse­ums, art, the­atre, diverse ethnic food, coffee, and of course hockey).

Conferences we like to attend and publish in

(incom­plete list, see pub­li­ca­tions page for details)

• SIG CHI (Special Interest Group on Computer–Human Interaction)
• IEEE VR Conference (alter­na­tive link to IEEEVR.org)
• TEDactive, TEDxSFU, TEDxEastVan, & TEDSummit
• ACM VRST (Virtual Reality Software and Technology)
• VRVis Conference Calendar
• ACM Symposium on Applied Perception (SAP) (for­mer­ly: Applied Perception in Graphics & Visualization)
• ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS)
• IMRF (International Multimodal Research forum)
• and many other venues

Spatial Cognition

• Spatial Cognition Conference
  
• spa­tial cog­ni­tion 2012 meeting
  
• International Conference on Spatial Cognition
  
• European Workshop on Imagery and Cognition
• SILC list of spa­tial cog­ni­tion conferences
  

Psychology & Cognitive Science

• Psychonomics
  
• VSS Vision Sciences Society annual meeting
• EVCP European Conference on Visual Perception
• CogSci
• Mindfulness conference

Networking & Links

[Under Construction]

• SFU
• my SFU web­site
• (pre­vi­ous net­work) GRAND NCE (Graphics, Animation, and New Media Network of Centres of Excellence)

 

Contact Info

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

iSpace Lab (aka Alternate Realities Lab): SUR 3800 (3^rd floor)
my office: SUR 2770 (2^nd floor)

Campus Guide & Maps & SIAT Contacts/Infos & SIAT direc­tions

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 (2759) which is in the SIAT cor­ri­dor, 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: we don’t have office phones any more
phone: +1 778.782.3111 (3800 lab)
fax: +1 778.782.7488

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Simon Fraser University
250 ‑13450 102 Avenue
Surrey, BC V3T 0A3 CANADA 

 

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