Jacquelyn Ford Morie

Dr Morie’s 30 years of researching & creating meaningful VR/AR experiences, combines multi-sensory, perceptual techniques that predictably elicit emotional responses from participants. Her company All These Worlds, LLC is active in social AR/VR, Mindfulness, storytelling & stress relief applications. In 2016 she concluded a project for NASA called ANSIBLE, a full virtual world ecosystem designed to provide psychological benefits for future astronauts taking extremely long isolated missions to Mars. She also investigates the use of avatars—both digital and robotic—for how they affect our human selves.

Morie received two degrees from the University of Florida – a Masters of Fine Art (1984) and a Masters of Computer Science (1988). She then went on to earn a PhD in Computer and Information Science from the prestigious Smartlab Program at the University of East London (2007).

Morie’s career also spans exceptional accomplishments in education, from her starting of the first computer animation program at the Ringling College of Art and Design, as well as the University of Central Florida, to being invited to establish computer training for animators at The Walt Disney Animation Studios in the 1990s. She went on to create similar programs for the Visual Effects industries, at companies such as VIFX, Blue Sky and Rhythm and Hues. During her time as Senior Researcher at the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California (which she helped found), she mentored numerous interns who have since gone on to become luminaries in immersive media.

She is currently both a sought-after educator in immersive media and serves as senior advisor to the XPRIZE’s ANA Avatar Prize, which challenges teams to create a robotic avatar people can inhabit from a distance. Her new 22-chapter book, co-edited with Kate McCallum, The Handbook of Research on the Global Impacts and Roles of Immersive Media, was published in early 2020.