This workshop brings together researchers and practitioners in the mixed reality community to brainstorm how sensing the brain can be useful for VR/AR/XR applications. A moderated panel discussion by invited panelists will seed ideas around how brain sensing can be used in VR (e.g., cybersickness, presence, cognitive load), what are the challenges in doing this type of sensing in VR/AR/XR (e.g., hardware constraints, movement, real-time analysis), how to do it responsibly (neurorights, privacy, anonymization, open datasets). A poster session will allow participants to share their research and/or perspectives. The goal of this workshop will be to create a research vision to inspire the community and to catalyze the exploration of a new scientific frontier.
The half-day workshop will have a combination of invited talks, moderated discussion, and breakout sessions. Workshop organizers invite submission of one page abstracts on previously published work, emerging results or opinion/positions including, but not limited to, the following topics:
● Sensing the brain while moving, in real-time, with commodity devices, and for mixed reality applications.
● Methods, methodologies, theoretical constructs that could apply to brain sensing in XR
● Lessons learned from other contexts that apply to XR
● Novel opportunities created in the context of XR that are different from other contexts
● Privacy and security risks created by large scale personal and enterprise use of XR devices equipped with brain sensing technology
Position papers should be one to two pages in the IEEE VR poster submission format. Submissions should be emailed to ejain@ufl.edu with the subject line “VR 2027 Brain Sensing Workshop submission”.
● Dates
○ Abstract deadline (if applicable): N/A
○ Submission deadline: Jan 15th 2027
○ Notification deadline: Jan 29th 2027
Organizers
Dr. Eakta Jain is an Associate Professor of Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the University of Florida. She received her PhD and MS degrees in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University and her B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur. She has industry experience at Texas Instruments R&D labs, Disney Research Pittsburgh, and the Walt Disney Animation Studios. Dr. Jain is interested in the safety, privacy and security of data gathered for user modeling, particularly eye tracking data. Her research has been nominated for multiple best paper awards and been funded through faculty research awards from Meta and Google, federal funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Mental Health, US Department of Transportation, and Florida Department of Transportation. She served as the Technical Program Chair for ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research (2020) and Applications and ACM/Eurographics Symposium on Applied Perception (2021). She served on the ACM SAP Steering Committee (2022-2024) and as a Director on the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee (2022-2025). Dr. Jain is an ACM Senior Member.
Dr. Evan Center is a postdoc in the Center for Machine Vision and Signal Analysis and part of the Hybrid Intelligence program at the University of Oulu. He is interested in perception in immersive environments and best practices in research methods and statistics. Ongoing projects include developing EEG measures for quantifying presence and cybersickness, probing how peripheral visual information and environmental affordances impact perception in VR, and leveraging computational approaches to better understand neural representations. He obtained his PhD from UIUC in 2020, where he used EEG, fMRI, TMS, and psychophysics to study visual perception and awareness. He has received support from NSF IGERT to complete the neuroengineering program at UIUC, and the Beckman Institute Fellowship to examine the relationship between attention and scene perception using ERPs. From 2020-2025, he was a postdoc in the Perception Engineering Lab working under the ERC funded Illusive project (Prof. Steve LaValle) at the University of Oulu where he established the ITEE Neuroscience lab space and conducted its first combined EEG-VR experiments.
Dr. Bruce Thomas is currently Emeritus Professor at Adelaide University. His current research interests include the following: user interfaces, augmented reality, virtual reality, visualisation, wearable computers, CSCW, tabletop display interfaces, and the use of cognitive psychology in virtual environments research. He has served in many roles for the IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, IEEE Virtual Reality, and IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers, including program chair, general chair and on the steering committee. He also founded the ACM Interactive Surfaces and Spaces Conference (formerly IEEE Tabletop). He is a member of the IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Academy, awarded 2025 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) Career Impact Award and the ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC) 20-Year Impact Award. Prof. Thomas' academic qualifications include the following: a BA in Physics from George Washington University, an MS in Computer Science from the University of Virginia, and a PhD in Computer Science from Flinders University. Prof. Thomas has over 350 publications and has been cited over 14000 times.
Panelists and Speakers (Coming Soon)
For questions, please contact:
Eakta Jain, University of Florida ejain@ufl.edu
Evan Center, University of Oulu Evan.Center@oulu.fi
Bruce Thomas, Adelaide University bruce.thomas@adelaide.edu.au