People

I am a Professor in the Psychology department with an adjunct appointment in the School of Computing. I like thinking about how and whether emotional, physiological, and physical states of the body can influence how we see, think about, and navigate our environments. I ask these research questions by testing these variables in the real world or in mixed realities (virtual/augmented). When I’m not working, I do a lot of traveling, cross-country skiing, reading, yoga/pilates, and baking sourdough recipes.

Jeanine's GOOGLE SCHOLAR PROFILE      Jeanine's PROFILE PAGE

I am a PhD student in the Cognition and Neural Science program and member of the VAAST Lab. My research interest focuses on the relationship between context and action capabilities in human spatial navigation and wayfinding as well as their application. I am also curious about the dynamic relation of the agent-environment coupling and behavior, especially how people control their vision during navigation depending on the affordance of a certain space. I want to address these questions by doing experiments in VR and AR and using statistical modeling

I am a PhD student co-advised in cognition & neural science and quantitative psychology. I study how perceptual and affective processes unfold and interact over time and how to best measure and model these dynamics. I have a particular interest in pain perception, as pain is an inherently affective perceptual process. My work investigates how pain interacts with other perceptual, cognitive, and affective processes, especially within chronic pain conditions like fibromyalgia. My quantitative work focuses on developing and implementing statistical tools to model these dynamic processes with an emphasis on methods that accommodate smaller sample sizes, longitudinal/time series methods, and Bayesian statistics. When not working on these projects, I enjoy spending time outside, baking, gardening, and snuggling with my cats. 

Mirinda's GOOGLE SCHOLAR PROFILE  Mirinda'S PROFILE PAGE

I’ve been a part of the VAAST lab since 2020 pursuing my PhD in Computing! I am interested in exploring extended reality as a methodology as well as its effects on perception and action. I am in between coding, teaching, and research I spend time climbing, skiing, video gaming, dirt bike riding, and keeping my Borzoi, Atlas, nearby!

Hunter's GOOGLE SCHOLAR PROFILE Hunter's Website

I’m a PhD student studying navigation in complex virtual environments. I’m specifically interested in the different strategies people use to navigate and how these strategies change from early childhood into adulthood. I’m also interested in different methods of cueing in navigation using AR and VR. In my free time I like to hang out with my dog, play video games, and ski.

Emily'S GOOGLE SCHOLAR PROFILE 

I am a PhD student studying navigation in Virtual environments. I am interested in how people navigate in an environment and what visual cues and strategies are efficient for wayfinding. I am also interested in how people perceive augmented and virtual stimuli and the characteristics of graphics that make objects appear more or less perceptually real. You can find me camping, hiking, or skiing in the mountains in my free time. I also love hanging out with my two cats, trying all the new coffee shops in Salt Lake, and playing board games. 

ASHLEY'S GOOGLE SCHOLAR PROFILE 

I am a PhD student in the Cognitive & Neural Science program. In my research, I am interested in how people integrate sensory information when performing spatial cognition tasks, such as navigation, static distance perception, and motion perception. I am also involved in our research examining how multisensory integration changes when people experience sensory impairment. When not in the lab, you can find me in the mountains trail running, cross-country skiing, or baking sourdough bread. 

Maggie's GOOGLE SCHOLAR PROFILE 

I am a PhD student in the cognition & neural science program and my program of research focuses on how negative affect (namely stress and anxiety) influence strategy and accuracy in navigational tasks. I am also interested in using immersive VR tasks to simulate threats during navigational tasks as well as expanding my research methods to include electrophysiological measures of stress. Last, I am involved on a project examining how radiologists 2D perceptual gist skills for anomalies transfer to 3D technologies used for screening images as well as a project on how humans’ time and distance perception are related. Outside of the lab you can catch me reading, playing with my three cats, enjoying a walk, playing video games, or learning some kind of new craft. 

I am a PhD student in the VAAST lab. I am interested in why people use one navigational strategy over another especially when experiencing emotion. I am also interested in how people's perceptions change with emotions. Other research I am doing includes using digital phenotyping to predict mental health incidents before they happen. When outside the lab, I enjoy reading, hiking, baking, and crocheting.