Be sure to keep an eye on this page for updates! New speakers and seminar details are being added frequently.

Presentations will be available via live-stream and playback on our YouTube channel.

• 2020 Seminar Series for Early Career Scientists
• 2022 Seminar Series

Professor, Iowa State University

Dr. Kelly received his Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of California Santa Barbara before working as a postdoc in psychology at Vanderbilt University. He has worked in the Department of Psychology at Iowa State University since 2009, and actively participates in the Human Computer Interaction graduate program. He currently serves as Director of Graduate Education in psychology. Dr. Kelly’s research explores space perception, spatial memory, and navigation. Much of this work is focused on applying spatial cognitive theory to improve user experience in virtual environments. Dr. Kelly has published over 50 journal articles, and his work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Army Research Lab. He serves as associate editor at ACM Transactions on Applied Perception and is a fellow of the Psychonomic Society and the Association for Psychological Science.

Navigating Through Virtual Environments

April 8, 2022 at 1:30PM CDT

The most natural way to explore a virtual environment is to walk and turn, but real walking is often not possible due to technological limitations and space limitations. Therefore, teleporting has become a popular interface, whereby the user aims a virtual laser pointer to the desired location in the virtual environment and is then instantly transported. However, teleporting lacks self-motion cues normally associated with walking, and these cues are known to be useful for staying spatially oriented. I will describe several experiments which evaluate the effects of teleporting on navigation and closely examine the importance of self-motion cues, environmental cues, and experience.