About the VRAC
Iowa State University’s Virtual Reality Applications Center (VRAC) is an interdisciplinary research center focused at the intersection of humans and technology, aimed broadly at enhancing the productivity and creativity of people. The VRAC’s world-class research infrastructure supports the research of faculty and students representing all seven of ISU’s colleges, as well as the interests of collaborators from several federal agencies and numerous industry partners. The VRAC research community spans a wide spectrum of disciplinary experts with particular strengths in state-of-the-art interaction technologies including virtual, augmented and mixed reality (VR/AR/MR) as well as mobile computing, developmental robotics, and haptics interaction. The VRAC community is also skilled at human centered design and user experience (UX) evaluation as well as assessing the effectiveness of new interaction modalities via formal user studies. To complement its research mission the VRAC established and now leads ISU’s interdepartmental graduate major in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). With more than 200 students currently enrolled, the HCI program is now the largest interdepartmental graduate major at ISU and offers PhD, MS and Professional Certificate degrees to resident and on-line student communities. A friendly, efficient, service-oriented staff supports the collaborative interdisciplinary culture at VRAC. Administrative support facilitates research proposal preparation and submission, grant administration, purchasing and student appointments, while technical staff provides hardware maintenance, system integration, vendor coordination and technical assistance to the research community. |
Experience VRAC public event scheduled for April 6thLearn more about VRAC and the HCI graduate program during a 1-hour public presentation in the the Howe Hall auditorium on Thursday April 6 from 11-noon. This student led presentation explains how virtual and augmented realities work and includes multiple 3D VR demonstrations. The event is free and open to the public, but we do ask that you RSVP since auditorium seating is limited. More details on upcoming events at VRAC can be found here. Continue reading →Smart and Connected CommunitiesVRAC hosted a workshop to develop STEM experiences for team from Storm Lake Community School District as part of an NSF pilot program to create Smart and Connected Communities. Continue reading →Andrew Deick: Outstanding senior in software engineeringHCI graduate student and VRAC researcher Andrew Deick was named Outstanding senior in software engineering by the College of Engineering! Continue reading →REU|2022 summaryREU|2022 summer program interns reflect on their experience in the following video. Visit http://reu.vrac.iastate.edu for information on the summer 2023 program. Continue reading →Experience VRACLearn more about VRAC and the HCI graduate program during a 1-hour public presentation in the the Howe Hall auditorium on October 13 from 11-noon. This student led presentation explains how virtual and augmented realities work and includes multiple 3D VR demonstrations. The event is free and open to the public, but we do ask that you RSVP since seating is limited. More details on upcoming events at VRAC can be found here. Continue reading → |