BY: CLARA AUCLAIR

Here in the Digitization Lab, we have been working on a collection of medieval and early modern manuscripts belonging to Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation at the River Campus Libraries. This collection is overseen by Anna Siebach-Larsen, director of the Rossell Hope Robbins Library. Many of the manuscripts have seals that validated the written text of the document.

One of the most interesting parts of working in digitization at a large institution is the opportunity to interact with a wide variety of materials from different eras. My day to day work typically sees me digitizing a fair amount of manuscripts and correspondence with some photographs and 3D objects interspersed.

“Image” is everything in the $20 billion market for AR/VR glasses. Consumers are looking for glasses that are compact and easy to wear, delivering high-quality imagery with socially acceptable optics that don’t look like “bug eyes.”

Although many humanists have embraced technologies in their research, immersive technologies are largely new territory for humanities and humanistic social sciences faculty and students. The technology is expensive, has a steep learning curve, and often comes off as a novelty rather than a viable research tool. However, as we progress into the future, it is important to recognize the benefits that immersive technologies could offer these disciplines.

For the past month, I’ve been working on an exciting project… a Blender workshop for Studio X, which took place on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2020! This came about as a collaborative effort between Studio X and Tinkerspace to create introductory programming on immersive technologies for the UR community.

QuHarrison Terry is the featured speaker for Studio X’s 2023 reading group on the metaverse. He is a co-author of this year’s text, The Metaverse Handbook.

Anurag Kumar is a research scientist and technical research lead at Meta Reality Labs Research. His primary research interests are in machine learning for audio and speech processing and audio-visual learning. 

Lieutenant Colonel Stephanie I. Raffo is currently the Director of Innovation at the Headquarters Space Operations Command, Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado. Colonel Raffo leads the Innovation Directorate, delivering software and hardware solutions for Space Force operational missions and fostering the innovative culture across the Command. Prior to her current assignment, Colonel Raffo led a 6-member team as an Operations Officers in technical analysis and development of weapon systems and authored well over 100 technical reports at the Munitions Directorate, Eglin Air Force Base, FL.

Dr. Suarez-Jimenez is an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Rochester. His research program in the ZVR lab aims to use virtual reality (VR), multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and machine learning to elucidate the psychological and neural signatures of PTSD and anxiety disorders. Particularly, to delineate the contextual aspect of threat and reward learning, discrimination, and monitoring.