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Conferences

AS IF is picked up for the CHI Student Game Competition

By | Conferences

AS IF, a project realized by our graduate students, Weina Jin, Servet Ulas and Xin Tong has been chosen to compete at the CHI Student Game Competition. AS IF aims to foster empathy towards patients who suffer from Chronic Pain by putting the user in the shoes of a patient and simulating the physical hindrances Chronic Pain causes. The participant is asked to complete simple motor tasks which involve touching shapes in a given order to reveal a shape. The tasks and the interactions are tied together with a narrative from the Chronic Pain patients perspective. Our team will be demoing and presenting AS IF at CHI in May 2016, see you there!

We were at SPIE 2016

By | Conferences

Dr. Gromala, Dr. Shaw and our new member PhD. candidate Servet Ulas was at SPIE 2016, presenting. The paper presented in the panel chaired by Ian McDowall was Mobius Floe: an Immersive Virtual Reality Game for Pain Distraction. After a brief overview of our work and what Chronic Pain is and how Pain Distraction works explained by the attention capacity theory, Servet explained the game mechanics and the design decisions involved in the creation of Mobius Floe, how the metaphors employed in the conception of the gameworld may help with the explanation of a complex affliction that can only be managed with a biopsychosocial approach.

Pain Studies Lab at SPIE VR 2015 Conference

By | Conferences

Prof. Gromala, Prof Shaw, and Xin Tong showcased the Pain Studies Labs latest VR project and presented a research paper at this year’s SPIE VR conference in San Francisco. The conference is one of the important Virtual Reality conferences for scientists and artists.

Mobius Floe, a Virtual Reality game designed for pain distraction, was demonstrated in the exhibition session, attracting long lines of participants. In the paper presentation session, Xin presented the collaborative paper about Body Image Body Schema (BIBS) and Virtual Reality. In the paper, Pain Lab researchers Tong, Gromala, Williamson, Shaw and Ischen discussed the relationship between BIBS and VR, and its design implications for VR researchers.

[Paper Published]
Xin Tong, Diane Gromala, Owen Williamson, Chris Shaw, Ozgun Eylul Iscen (2015). Theory Review and Interaction Design Space of Body Image and Body Schema (BIBS) for Embodied Cognition in Virtual Reality,” in IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging 2015: The Engineering Reality of Virtual Reality. Vol. Number: 9013. Expected Date of Publication: 1 March 2015. (12 pages)

Pain Studies Lab students scored Best Game and the Microsoft Surface Award at the UNITE Conference in Seattle

By | Conferences

Graduate students Amber Choo and Xin Tong, along with FCATs Undergraduate Research Fellow Cheryl Yu, won two awards at the Unite 2014 Conference in Seattle. Their two-dimensional boardgame – Aztec Treasures – was voted Best Game in the Unity & Windows Training and Porting Lab. Microsofts Surface devices were part of the award. Choo, Tong and Yu, who are Research Assistants in the Pain Studies Lab at Simon Fraser University in Canada, also snagged the Microsoft Surface Award for successfully porting three Virtual Reality (VR) games and one 2D boardgame to Windows phone online application store. Each received a Microsoft Nokia Lumia 1520 cell phone. According to the Pain Studies Lab founder and director, Dr. Diane Gromala, the immersive VR games were developed for patients who live with neuropathic or chronic pain to potentially help them manage this disease, as their early research results indicate. The board game was originally designed in SIATs graduate class in video game design. The UNITE conference attracted well over 1,000 attendees.

Expressive/Computational Aesthetics 2014

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Both Xin Tong and Chao Feng who are graduate students in Pain Studies Lab presented two posters at co-located venues SIGGRAPH/Expressive/Computational Aesthetics 2014. Xins poster presented her new pain expression visualization design and pain patients activity data visualization. Chaos poster presented part of his thesis research affective space visualizations. The posters represented the latest studies conducted at the Pain Studies Lab about pain visualizations and personal pain data analytics.

SIGGRAPH is one the most prestigious venues for showcasing breakthroughs in practices and production in Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. Computational Aesthetics is one of SIGGRAPHs co-located venues that bridges the analytic and synthetic by integrating aspects of computer science, philosophy, psychology, and the fine, applied & performing arts.

Pain Lab Presented in EVA 2014

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Xin Tong, Dr. Diane Gromala, Dr. Chris Shaw and Patrick Clarkes paper got accepted in Electronic Visualisation and the Arts Conference (EVA) 2014 and Dr. Shaw presented their paper Transformation between Electronic Arts and Chronic Pain: Long-term Body Activity Data Visualization and Pain Animation Expression in EVA.

Pain Studies Lab Attended GRAND 2014 Annual Conference

By | Conferences

Dr. Gromala and Dr. Shaw along with the Pain Studies Lab’s graduate students Mehdi Karamnejad, Xin Tong and Chao Feng attended GRAND 2014 in Ottawa. In Phase Two, CHRONIC project Leaders, NIs and HQPs coordinated meetings to discuss current progress within each sub-project and future research approaches and directions. The conference also facilitated networking sessions in order to assist project leaders and graduate students find potential collaborators. Additionally, graduate students Mehdi Karamnejad and  Xin Tong presented posters about their new research and study.  Chao Feng demoed his thesis research in various tracks.

Pain labs undergraduate students at FCAT conference

By | Conferences

The Pain Labs undergraduate research group presented their capstone project at the FCAT Undegrad Research Conference Saturday March 9th alongside other recognized projects in the program. The annual conference gives students the opportunity to share their essays, performances, films, art pieces,  and projects with the rest of the faculty while celebrating the diversity of the programs.

Sensorium was demoed to much success, seeing nearly twenty 15 minute demos over the day along with a research presentation delivered by the group. They are looking forward to starting their user studies at the end of March.

Follow their progress at  http://sensoriumresearch.wordpress.com

Towards Science of Consciousness 2013 Conference (TSC)

By | Conferences

The 20th annual international conference Toward a Science of Consciousness will take place March 3-9, 2013 at the Dayalbagh Educational Institute (DEI) in Agra, India, home of the famed Taj Mahal. DEI is a high-level educational system, part of a spiritual community and farm housing 4000 people on an idyllic 1300 acres on the Yamuna River within the city of Agra. DEI research includes neuroscience, cognitive science, medicine, philosophy, nanoscience, quantum physics and consciousness. DEIs Dr. Vishal Sahni, author of many papers and several books on quantum computing, is the primary conference organizer.

Toward a Science of Consciousness is an international interdisciplinary conference entailing rigorous approaches to the understanding of conscious awareness, and our place in the universe. Since 1994, TSC conferences have been held in even-numbered years in Tucson, Arizona, sponsored and organized by the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. In odd-numbered years TSC conferences have been held at various locations around the world (1995 Naples, Italy; 1997 Elsinore, Denmark; 1999 Tokyo, Japan; 2001, Skovde, Sweden; 2003 Prague, Czech Republic; 2005 Copenhagen, Denmark; 2007 Budapest, Hungary; 2009 Hong Kong, China; 2011 Stockholm, Sweden. for more information please visit this link

Audition: The Game named best paper at VS-Games 2012

By | Conference Papers, Conferences

Audition, The Game: Exploring the role of video games in treating and studying speech impediments, a paper by Pain Lab researchers Terry Lavender and Diane Gromala, was named one of the best papers at the 4th International Conference on Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications (VS-Games 2012) conference in Genova, Italy, October 30, 2012. The paper describes a video game created to help analyze and treat people suffering from speech disorders, such as stuttering.