A University of Toronto graduate student is seemingly the first to utilize virtual reality in helping to present research findings during a biochemistry research lecture.
PhD student Aidin Balo and his PhD supervisor Professor Oliver Ernst delivered a lecture to 200 people in 2016 at a conference in Berlin, which had the audience use cardboard-based tools in conjunction with their smartphones to immerse themselves in a VR experience.
That experience, which was assisted by Autodesk, helped the audience visualize, in real-time, changes to the eye’s pigment in response to light.
The lecture and VR experience were later presented to a larger audience at ShanghaiTech University.
Given the success of the lectures and its VR component, the researchers and a representative from Autodesk described their experience in the latest issue of the journal Nature Methods.
“Anybody can do it,” says Balo. “The software is public and you can make the glasses with cardboard and two pieces of convex glass. Then all you need is a desktop computer to prepare the content and a smartphone for each person.”