Katja Zibrek and Eduard Zell recently presented our course on Perception of Virtual Characters at SIGGRAPH. The course was designed to introduce students, researchers, and digital artists to the recent results in perceptual research on virtual characters. It covered how both technical and artistic aspects that constitute the appearance of a virtual character influence human perception.

Tech workers, academics and international companies gathered at Microsoft in Dublin for an event focusing on the importance of women holding positions of influence in the tech industry. I was delighted to give a talk at the "Interactive Media and Gaming session", alongside Brenda Romero, and Bernadette Thalhammer.

Our "Virtual Human" experiment is running in the Science Gallery FAKE exhibition until June 2018. Our project is interested in measuring the co-operation of users towards a highly realistic virtual avatar in a game. It takes about 5 minutes to play the game, so if you are in the area, drop by to have a go!

Our "Virtual Empathy" experiment is running in the Science Gallery SEEING exhibition until September 2016. Our project is interested in measuring the level of empathy of users towards emotional virtual characters in highly immersive virtual reality. It takes about 5 minutes to do the experiment so if you are in the area, drop by to have a go!

Our "Virtual Empathy" experiment is being launched in the Science Gallery SEEING exhibition tonight. Our project is interested in measuring the level of empathy of users towards emotional virtual characters in highly immersive virtual reality. When we spacially co-exist with an avatar, as in virtual reality, do we have higher levels of empathy towards the character that is inhabited in our space than we do towards typical characters displayed on-screen in movies and games? Will high levels of visual realism affect our empathy levels?

I was recently featured on SFIs website as a tech research in Ireland.

Our EU project POPULATE will be showcased at the Game Developers Conference to be held in San Francisco, CA between the 14th and 18th of March 2016.

The ADAPT centre, which has received funding of 50 million from Science Foundation Ireland was launched today in the Science Gallery. I am a funded investigator on the project.

Nice article this week in the Irish Times on the Motion in Games conference that we held at Trinity College.

Set in the "Unseen University" of Terry Pratchett's Discworld, "The Duel" is a new animated short film being produced by the Animation Hub, a collaboration between staff and students of the Irish School of Animation (ISA) at Ballyfermot College of Further Education (BCFE), staff and students of Trinity College Dublin's Creative Technologies initiative and the Irish animation studio, Giant Creative. The aim of the collaboration is to combine the skills and talents of students from both institutions and have them work with Giant Creative to create a high quality animated short, giving the students the chance to experience working on a high-end project in a professional environment.

This year, I am hosting the ACM SIGGRAPH conference on Motion in Games at Trinity College Dublin in November.