[4eyes] Skip Rizzo talk on Friday

[Tobias Hollerer]

When?  Friday, October 3, 2pm
Where? 1132 Harold Frank Hall



                            Albert "Skip"Rizzo
                            Research Scientist
                        Co-Director - VRPSYCH Lab:
             Virtual Reality, Psychology and Social Neuroscience


Explorations in Virtual Reality Simulation technology from Panoramic 
Video to PTSD treatment to Virtual Patients

This presentation will primarily focus on our exploratory work looking 
for applications that make sense using Panoramic Video. I will discuss 
Panoramic applications for therapy, historical documentation, journalism 
and art and entertainment. Time permitting I will then give a brief 
summary of the status of our work developing and applying a Virtual Iraq 
application for exposure therapy with Iraq War vets with PTSD. I will 
then close with a 5 minute "teaser" on our emerging work developing 
Virtual Human patients that may become an option for clinical training 
in the future! Three completely different application areas, but all aim 
to explore how we can use the virtual world as a vehicle for improving 
life in the real world!


Bio:
Albert “Skip” Rizzo received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the 
State University of New York at Binghamton. He is a Research Scientist 
at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative 
Technologies and has Research Professor appointments with the USC Dept. 
of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and at the USC School of 
Gerontology. Dr. Rizzo conducts research on the design, development and 
evaluation of Virtual Reality systems targeting the areas of clinical 
assessment, treatment and rehabilitation. This work spans the domains of 
psychological, cognitive and motor functioning in both healthy and 
clinical populations. In the psychological domain, his latest project 
has focused on the translation of the graphic assets from the Xbox game, 
Full Spectrum Warrior, into an exposure therapy application for 
combat-related PTSD with Iraq War veterans. Additionally, he is 
conducting research on VR applications that use 360 Degree Panoramic 
video for exposure therapy (social phobia), role-playing applications 
(anger management, etc.), and recently has used this technology to 
capture news scenes for future multimedia journalism applications. He is 
also working with a team that is creating artificially intelligent 
virtual patients that clinicians can use to practice skills required for 
challenging clinical interviews and diagnostic assessments (sexual 
assault, resistant patients, suicide lethality, etc.). His cognitive 
work has addressed the use of VR applications to test and train 
attention, memory, visuospatial abilities and executive function. In the 
motor domain, he has developed VR Game systems to address physical 
rehabilitation post stroke and Traumatic Brain Injury and for prosthetic 
use training. He is also investigating the use of VR for pain 
distraction at LA Children’s Hospital and is currently designing 
game-based VR scenarios to address issues of concern with children 
having autistic spectrum disorder. His research also involves designing 
and evaluating 3D User Interface devices and interaction methods and he 
has created a graduate level Industrial and Systems Engineering course 
at USC entitled, “Human Factors and Integrated Media Systems”. In the 
area of Gerontology, Dr. Rizzo has served as the program director of the 
USC Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and is currently conducting a VR 
study of visuospatial and wayfinding ability with persons with Alzheimer’s.
	
http://vrpsych.ict.usc.edu/people/rizzo.html


-- 
Tobias Hollerer
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science
University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-5110

holl at cs.ucsb.edu, Office: (805)893-8759,  Fax: (805)893-8553