Student Researcher

Selected through the competitive Research Experience Scheme (RES), I am actively involved in the GENESIS Project — a European-funded, interdisciplinary research initiative investigating how brain-computer interfaces (BCI) and electroencephalogram (EEG) data can enhance immersive experiences and mitigate motion sickness in Virtual Reality (VR) environments.

This project integrates neuroscience, immersive technology, and artificial intelligence to identify brain patterns associated with discomfort in VR and develop predictive models for enhancing user experience.

🔬 Research Objectives & Focus Areas:
Investigate EEG signatures associated with VR-induced motion sickness, particularly during vection-heavy (illusory self-motion) experiences.

Develop VR environments in Unity that induce motion sickness in a controlled manner for experimental purposes.

Design and run experiments involving EEG signal acquisition during immersive VR tasks.

Apply machine learning techniques to EEG data to predict user discomfort in real-time and inform future adaptive VR systems.

🛠️ Technologies & Tools:
Unity 3D – Development of interactive VR scenarios using C# scripting.

EEG Recording Systems – Integration of hardware (e.g., OpenBCI/g.tec) for real-time brain signal acquisition.

Python, MATLAB – Signal preprocessing, feature extraction, and time-series analysis.

Machine Learning – Using scikit-learn and TensorFlow to develop predictive models for motion sickness detection.

VR Hardware – Experience with Oculus Rift/HTC Vive and XR Interaction Toolkit for immersive testing.

👩‍🔬 My Contributions Include:
Assisting in the technical setup of EEG and VR synchronization, ensuring accurate alignment of brain activity with in-experience triggers.

Collaborating on the experiment pipeline, from literature review and VR scenario design to data collection and preprocessing.

Supporting feature engineering from EEG data and contributing to the development of ML classification models that identify motion sickness onset.

Documenting and maintaining the project structure, codebase, and experiment protocols for future research and open-source contribution.

👥 Supervisors & Mentorship:
Dr. Sebastian Halder (Neuroscience)

Dr. Katerina Bourazeri (Human-Computer Interaction)

Dr. Ramy Hammady (AI & Data Science)

Dr. Reinhold Scherer (BCI & Neurotechnology)

📈 Ongoing Impact:
Gaining practical experience at the intersection of AI, neuroscience, and immersive technology.

Contributing to a scalable research platform that aims to quantify and predict motion sickness, with potential real-world applications in healthcare, gaming, and simulation training.

Strengthening interdisciplinary skills in research design, signal processing, machine learning, and immersive system development.