The Virtual Embodiment Lab was recently featured in the Cornell Chronicle for its publication, “The Effects of Companionship From Strangers and Companions on Pain Thresholds in Immersive Virtual Reality: A Randomized Controlled Trial.” The study, led by VEL Lab Manager Isabelle McLeod Daphnis and anchored by VEL Director Professor Andrea Stevenson Won, explores how social interaction in VR can influence pain perception.

Co-authors include Mehrnaz Sabet, M.S. ’23, doctoral student in Information Science; Angel Hsing-Chi Hwang, Ph.D. ’23, assistant professor of Communication at the University of Southern California; Hal Rives ’21, current medical student at Temple University; Qinyue Yu ’23; and Ke Wu ’23.

Read the full article on the Cornell Chronicle: “Pain tolerance increases during social interaction in VR.”

This past summer, the Virtual Embodiment Lab at Cornell University welcomed two undergraduate Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) students—Shayla Reid (’27, Mechanical Engineering) and Nalini Agnirothi (’28, Computer Science and Astronomy)—under the mentorship of Ph.D. student Kevin Martinez. Together, they spent ten weeks investigating how people connect through motion and speech in immersive virtual environments.

Left to right: Nalini Agnihotri, Shayla Reid, and Kevin Martinez pose in the VEL.

Their project, called the social leading study, examined communication between two people in a networked virtual setting. Each pair of participants engaged in a brief debate while connected through VR.

Reid and Agnirothi were deeply involved in designing and running the experiment. “Nalini and I were the coders,” Reid said. “We were modifying the Unity virtual environment that the participants would be in.” They added features such as a color wheel “to make the experience more personable and customizable.” Beyond coding, they recruited participants across campus, helped them get set up in headsets, and later analyzed their movement data. A paper describing the experiment is currently under review, and both Reid and Agnirothi are authors on that paper.

One of the most memorable experiences for both Reid and Agnirothi was attending the XR Access Symposium at Cornell Tech as volunteers. “We got to see other people in the VR accessibility field, try out different equipment, and learn more about how VR can be applied to accessibility. We even got to test a prototype for the virtual conferencing tool to make it more interactive,” said Reid. 

Agnirothi described the unique experiences they had at the conference. “It was really cool learning about new projects like Meta’s ARIA glasses, which are designed for people with low vision. They showed how someone could finally navigate a grocery store independently. Seeing technology aimed at accessibility made me realize how broad this field really is.”

Shayla Reid (first row, center) and Nalini Agnihotri (bottom row, far right) snap a pic with the other XR Access conference volunteers.

For Reid, the REU experience offered a new perspective on design and accessibility. “In one of my mechanical design classes, we talked about human-centered design—how what we build needs to be accessible for everybody,” she said. “Working with VR headsets and controllers helped me see how something that feels intuitive to me might not be for someone else. It changed how I think about designing interfaces.”

“As a mechanical engineer, we usually just sit behind the desk building things,” she said. “So it was nice to actually go out and talk to people.” She also appreciated the creative space the lab provided: “I liked how Professor Won and the grad students gave us room to explore what we liked. It made me feel like an actual researcher, not just an assistant.”

For Agnirothi, the summer marked her first deep dive into research. “I was hoping to get experience with something related to my field and to learn how research is conducted,” Agnirothi said. “Coming into the lab, I was just hoping for experience, but it was actually incredible. I got to see so many different parts of research.” She described the experience as “essentially like interning to be a Ph.D. student,” since she and Reid worked closely with Ph.D. student Kevin Martinez every day. 

Both students agreed that the mentorship and lab culture shaped their experience. “The lab culture is so welcoming and supportive,” Agnirothi said. “Everyone—from Professor Won to the grad students—was kind, understanding, and always willing to help. It made research feel exciting instead of intimidating.”

Thank you to our PhD candidates, graduate researchers, and undergraduate RAs who collaborated on various VR programs and projects this semester. At our final all-hands meeting, we enjoyed eating pizza and pupusas and chatting with Dr. Jessica Szczuka from the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, about her research on VR in sexual and interpersonal relationships. 

Pictured above: Dr. Andrea Stevenson Won and Dr. Jessica Szczuka

The Immersive Media in Medicine Symposium took place December 12-13, 2024, and was co-hosted by co-directors Dr. JoAnn Difede and Dr. Andrea Stevenson Won. We look forward to engaging with all our attendees and showcasing our innovators.

The Virtual Embodiment Lab hosted a sweet sendoff for our postdoc, Miki Matsumuro, with homemade tart cherry pie and passionfruit bars. Miki has worked at the VEL since November of 2023 assisting on our teamwork research through development on VR projects such as MazeWorld and investigations on synchrony. Thank you, Miki, for your contributions to the team, and good luck at your new job at Honda!

Here’s a glance back to the first VEL meeting of the semester, where our team of PhD candidates, graduate researchers, and undergraduate RAs came together over pizza to bond and discuss goals for the semester. Postdoctoral candidate Miki Matsumoru also demonstrated her VR project, “MazeWorld” (preview here).

As part of our teamwork project, the Virtual Embodiment Lab and the Group and Interpersonal Communication Research Laboratory spend time playing team strategy and bonding games.

Here, the groups get together over some pizza and a fun game of One Night Ultimate Werewolf.

In the video here, the groups communicate and strategize through a game called “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.”

The Virtual Embodiment Lab recently welcomed four faculty from the VinUniversity College of Arts & Sciences to discuss the usage of XR technologies in communication. Visitors included Prof. Myles Lynch (Faculty and Senior Lecturer in the OASIS Program), Daniel Ruelle (Program Director of English & Communications, Director of Learning & Teaching Excellence Center), Stephen Lindhorst (Senior Academic English Lecturer) and Nhu Dinh Ngoc Anh (Andy) (Senior Lecturer in English). The Cornell-VinUniversity Project is a six-year initiative between Cornell University and Vingroup (a Vietnamese conglomerate) to establish the first private world-class university in Vietnam – VinUniversity.

This past June and July I visited the Virtual Embodiment lab as a visiting scholar. I worked on a project that aimed to raise awareness about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder through a Virtual Reality video game experience. The theory behind the video game is that we can simulate the experience of OCD by putting the player through negative interactions that mimic the symptoms of OCD. I researched the different components that make up a lucid experience and hope that by going through similar obstacles to people with OCD, the player could increase their empathy.

For this experiment, I chose to disregard the more abstract aspects of OCD, like intrusive thoughts, and focused on the ritualistic compulsions of the disorder. To make a realistic narrative, I used testimony from the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Association of Spain:

“In the mornings, it took me no one knew how long to leave the house to go to school. My brain told me “Ana, every morning before you leave the house, you have to make sure all your shoes are perfectly aligned in the wardrobe”. For almost a year, I spent at least an hour a day trying to get my shoes in the
wardrobe “right” so I could leave for school. Until it didn’t feel “right”, I couldn’t stop.”

I worked with two undergraduate research assistants, Kevin Kim and Ishan Juneja, to build the program in Unity 3D. During the experience, the player finds themself in the protagonist’s bedroom.

After a brief introduction that includes the testimony of the main character, they must perfectly align their shoes. Meanwhile, a countdown timer indicates the time remaining before they have to go to school. However, the shoes will never appear perfectly aligned, leading to a “Game Over” screen and the end of the game.

Thus, the aim is to develop a “ludonarrative of awareness.” In other words, this project intersects ways of transmitting emotions and information between individuals and groups of people using the game narrative.

As a next step I will present the current version of the game to the Grupo de Investigación en Investigación y Tratamiento de Obsesiones y Compulsiones (I’TOC) at University of Valencia for feedback and modify it accordingly.

About the Author

On October 24th and 25th, the Cornell campuses came together for a cross-campus Immersive Media in Medicine Symposium. Meeting at the Belfer Research Building in NYC, approximately 175 people registered to attend the conference in person, with 25 joining remotely from the Ithaca campus.

The symposium, co-chaired by Dr. Andrea Stevenson Won and Dr. JoAnn Difede, focusing on translational research in immersive media (augmented and virtual reality) for use in medicine and healthcare education, offered talks, panel discussions, workshops, and a poster session.

The symposium included talks on Embodiment in Immersive Media, Accessibility in Immersive Media, Immersive Media and Entrepreneurship, and more. There were also panel discussions highlighting topics such as Immersive Media in Medical Education and Immersive Media in Psychiatry, as well as hands on workshops.

Dr. Andrea Stevenson Won giving her talk on Embodiment in Immersive Media

PhD candidate Swati Pandita led a panel discussion highlighting VR for beginners, and VEL research assistants Hal Rives, Jessie Yee, and Josh Zhu, also participated.

Graduate student Swati Pandita leading a panel discussion on VR for beginners. Panel members L-R: Mariel Emrich, Joshua Zhu, Hal Rives, Harrison Resnick, Jessie Yee.

The results of our first study in collaboration with the Cornell Physics Education Research Lab (C-PERL) were recently featured in the Cornell Chronicle:

Thanks to Linda Glaser for her great article, which points out the importance of distinguishing between enthusiasm for VR and actual learning gains. VEL is currently  preparing to launch the second study in this series this semester.