CIVS Senior Research Engineer Presents VR-FUTURES Project at NWI Child Trauma Summit

On February 28, CIVS Senior Research Engineer John “Jack” Moreland presented work on the VR-FUTURES project in a workshop at the NWI Child Trauma Summit at PNW’s Westville campus. The project title is short for “Virtual Reality For Understanding Trauma and Utilizing Regulation When Experiencing Stress” and provides a tool for clinicians to use when working with youth who have been affected by ACEs (adverse childhood experiences). The VR application is being developed to teach strategies for dealing with stressful situations and provide virtual scenarios to practice deploying those strategies when they’re encountered in daily life.

VR-FUTURES is being developed by a team made up of researchers from CIVS, PNW Psychology, collaborators and clinicians from the Shepherd Community Center in Indianapolis, the Institute for Creative Technologies at USC, and others. The project is led by PI, Professor Amanda Zelechoski of PNW Psychology, and Co-PI John Moreland of CIVS.

The summit was attended by clinicians and psychology professionals from Northwest Indiana and covered a variety of presentations and workshops covering implementation of various intervention models, strategies, and common challenges associated with working with children who have experienced trauma. The VR-FUTURES workshop included a live demonstration of the VR intervention followed by guided focus groups to gather insights on customizing the VR practice environments and situations for youth.