Luminaries - Talking to the Brightest Minds in Tech

Creating Unlimited Educational Opportunities...with VR

Episode Summary

How does a dancer become a pioneer of virtual reality technology? On this week's episode, we higlight the extraordinary life of Dr Carolina Neira-Cruz, Interim Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Executive Director of Emerging Analytics Center at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. As one of the inventors of the CAVE (cave automatic virtual environment) she is able to transport a room of people virtually to any place in the world as part of a collaborative learning environment. Hear more from Dr Cruz-Neira about the exciting applications of this technology.

Episode Notes

Listen In To Learn

Virtual Reality (VR) Isn't Just For The Video Game Industry
VR opens up an amazing array of possibilities for the arts, sales, exhibits and more. For educational training, it allows for field training in areas we never imagined. Instead of engineering students creating bridge models out of toothpicks, why not build a model in VR and let it truly come to life.

In this podcast, Dr. Carolina Cruz-Neira scholar and faculty member at the University of Arkansas dives into VR opportunities for education. She takes us behind the curtain into her career progression, starting as a dancer, and her climb to develop CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment), an immersive VR system: think of it as a version of a holodeck (yes, like in Star Trek). Listen now to dive into the opportunities and challenges VR can bring.