Simmons Lab update
Published: 17 June 2021
AVRA and the International Society Autism Research conference 2021
It has been a successful month for Dr David Simmons and his PhD students Elliot Millington and Sarune Savickaite at the International Society Autism Research 2021 conference.
At the start of the conference, the group was selected for the conference’s ‘Lab Spotlight’, highlighting the past success and future promise of autism research taking place in the University.
Sarune and Elliot then both received Research Student and Trainee Awards, promoting the potential of early career researchers. The lab was also well represented on the virtual conference floor with posters on using VR to investigate the effects of autistic and ADHD traits on visual processing, exploring the sensory sensitivities of people around the globe, and comparing how children and caregivers report the child’s sensory processing difficulties.
Sarune and Elliot are members of the organising committee of Applications of Virtual Reality in Autism (AVRA) - a group of early career researchers based at the University of Glasgow (Simmons Lab) and the University of Exeter/Bath.
The committee also includes our MSc student Emma Hayashibara and final year undergraduate student Rebecca Taylor.
They are primarily interested in research involving VR and experiences of Autism and have therefore organised a conference to attract researchers interested in the same area of study.
The group recently held their first conference to great success. The AVRA conference took place across three days in May 2021.
It provided the opportunity for VR and autism researchers to present their research, learn about other key research being conducted, and build networks with other researchers in the field of VR and autism.
Recordings of the talks are also available here.
As a result of the success of this conference, they will be setting up a monthly journal club and will be editing a special issue of Journal for Enabling Technologies (expected to come out next year).
A first pre-print of the work AVRA have been doing on VR + autism is now available here.
The group are also taking part at iLRN2021 conference on immersive teaching together with industrial partners Edify. Details of their presentation and a link to a recording can be found on the website.
First published: 17 June 2021