2020 IEEE VR Diversity Scholarship

 

 

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2020 IEEE VR Diversity Scholarship

Marta Orduna, a PhD student at GTI received the 2020 IEEE VR Diversity Scholarship. The main objective of this Diversity Scholarship was to increase the diversity in the IEEE VR conference and VR Research, encouraging the participation of the underrepresented part of society that is essential in all successful research.

Due to the all-digital IEEE VR conference experience, Marta could attend on March 26th a digital luncheon for diversity scholarship recipients to network with each other. It was directed by Aleshia Hayes, John Quarles, and Mary Whitton.

The digital luncheon was a place to share experiments, points of view, and lines of research with other students and researchers in the area, enriching Marta’s thesis and giving her feedback to improve her research career. And also, why not, a place to play Bingo talking about so different topics from the favorite demo of the IEEEVR to the superpower that everyone would like to have.

marta1

marta2

Here, she wants to share 5 tips for increasing the diversity in research [*]:

5 – Replicate previous experiments but recruit underrepresented and untested populations.

4 – Collaborate more with researchers from diverse geographic locations.

3 – When reviewing papers, place more weight on population diversity.

2 – Actively recruit participants from pools outside of your university.

1 – Collect more data from your participants and report it.

[*] “diVRsify or die: Why a lack of diversity in study participants is killing VR research” - John Quarles 

Marta Orduna received the Bachelor of Engineering in Telecommunication Technologies and Services (intensification in Sound and Image) in 2016 and the Master in Telecommunication Engineering (accredited by ABET) in 2018, both from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Madrid, Spain. She has been a member of the Grupo de Tratamiento de Imágenes (Image Processing Group) at the UPM since 2016. Her current research is in the area of quality, presence, and emotions in virtual reality communications. She has been involved in several projects in collaboration with Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Bell-Labs.