Dear AoIR Colleagues, The University of Houston Hewlett Packard Enterprise Data Institute is hosting a webinar about Emerging Areas for Data Research in Augmented and Virtual Reality. Dr. Tony Liao, associate professor in the Information and Logistics Technology department at the University of Houston will be giving the online seminar. It is scheduled for May 5, 2022, from 11:00am-12:00pm CST. Registration is free here at this link. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/worlds-created-by-and-covered-in-data-tickets-3... <https://www.eventbrite.com/e/worlds-created-by-and-covered-in-data-tickets-331990371137> About the Event While the development of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies were originally computer science topics, in the past decade their public availability and adoption is beginning to raise issues that intersect with data science, human computer interaction, psychology, media studies, artificial intelligence, communication and data ethics. Mark Zuckerberg recently demonstrated a tool called ‘Builder Bot,’ where a whole VR environment could be generated using AI through simple voice commands. This talk will cover some recent academic and commercial work being done in the AR/VR domain, and identify places where those questions will touch on several interrelated computing and data fields. Through these examples, the talk will highlight important research and data questions that still need to be answered and hopefully open up areas for collaboration. About the Speaker Tony Liao (Ph.D., Cornell University) is an Associate Professor in the University of Houston Department of Information Logistics and Technology and the Founding Director of the CougAR lab, which explores how augmented and virtual reality technologies could affect society now and in the future. His research has been published in academic outlets such as Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, New Media & Society, Information, Communication, & Society, Social Media & Society, Science, Technology, & Human Values, Mobile Media & Communication, Information and Organization, Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, Communication Studies, the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (SIGCHI), Ethics and Information Technology, Journal of Communication Pedagogy, and First Monday. His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Cornell’s Institute for the Social Sciences, and the Taft Foundation at the University of Cincinnati. -- Elizabeth Rodwell, Ph.D. Director, UH User Experience Lab : https://uh.edu/tech/ux-lab/ <https://uh.edu/tech/ux-lab/> Assistant Professor Department of Information & Logistics Technology Comparative Cultural Studies Affiliate 13850 University Blvd. Ste 307 • Sugar Land, TX 77479-4295 • 713-743-3046 Ph: 71 ============================== University of Houston A Carnegie-designated Tier One public research university ==============================