Dr. Jacquelyn Ford Morie

Dr. Jacquelyn Ford Morie

Dr. Jacquelyn Ford Morie

Founder & Chief Executive Officer, All These Worlds LLC
Founder & Chief Technology Officer, The Augmented Traveler Corp

“When I am in a virtual world as my avatar, I really want that entity to know how I behave in a situation, to understand the experiences I’ve had as that avatar.”

Dr. Jacquelyn Ford Morie is widely known for using technology such as Virtual Reality (VR) to deliver meaningful experiences that enrich people’s lives. From 1990 to 1994, Morie worked as an artist, researcher and educator at the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Simulation and Training. While there, she developed multi-sensory techniques for VR that predictably elicit emotional responses from participants, using psychology and art to create environments that ranged from disquieting to nostalgic.

In 1999, she helped establish the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, an Army-funded research lab finding connections between entertainment and military needs. She spent 14 years there as a Senior Research Scientist, expanding her work in emotionally evocative VR, including patenting a scent collar to deliver evocative odors to participants within immersive experiences.

Previous to ICT, she spent six years in the animation and effects industry at Walt Disney Feature Animation, Blue Sky|VIFX and the award winning Rhythm & Hues, creating specialized training programs for both traditional and digital aspects of production.

In 2013 Morie started All These Worlds, LLC to promote virtual environments and technology for healing. She is active in online 3D virtual worlds (social VR) has applied her techniques to these worlds for Mindfulness applications, storytelling and healing for veterans and soldiers. Her Coming Home project, started in 2009, created a center in the online world Second Life, where those in need could find stress relief and rehabilitation activities. She often incorporates intelligent avatar agents in virtual worlds to aid humans in their healing, training or artistic activities in the virtual spaces.

Along with SIFT (Smart Information Flow Technologies), she has recently created a virtual world ecosystem called ANSIBLE for NASA designed to provide psychological benefits for future astronauts who will undertake extremely long missions to Mars. ANSIBLE is currently being tested in an analog facility called HISEAS in Hawaii, where a team of six scientists is sequestered for a full year to simulate the conditions of isolation on Mars, including communications delays.

Morie is an active member of the serious games community, and was part of the core team that designed ElectroAdventure (1992-1994) a training game for Navy recruits that had an AI base to adapt lessons to the learner’s style. She serves as a juror for IndieCade, a festival that promotes independent games of all types from young designers. She is a member of ACM and ACM SIGGRAPH, and currently serves as Director at Large on the Executive Council for this international group. She also initiated the ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Committee, with the mission to expand and enhance SIGGRAPH’s arts community presence.

Dr. Morie’s other research interests include how space, identity and play in virtual worlds can positively affect our human nature, and she has presented this work at conferences worldwide. Her newest startup, The Augmented Traveler, is focused on bringing an augmented reality product to market that will enhance the way people experience travel to all corners of the world.

For More Info

Twitter

LinkedIn

Dr. Jacki Ford Morie talks Virtual Reality with Gigaom

A Q&A with Virtual Reality Pioneer Jacki Morie

How do you like your reality – virtual or augmented?

The ultimate selfie: what we leave behind in a digital world