Sanghani Center Student Spotlight: Kylie Davidson

Focused on using virtual/augmented reality for day-to-day productivity tasks, Kylie Davidson is investigating how immersive technologies can be used during sensemaking. 

“The goal is to add computational analytics to our software prototype to assist the user in real-time while they complete a sensemaking task,” she said.

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in computer science from James Madison University, Davidson chose a Ph.D. program at Virginia Tech where she could conduct cutting-edge computer science research with real-world impact.”

“At the Sanghani Center,” she said, “I get to work with a community of researchers who are solving real-world problems every day.”  

Davidson is co-advised by Chris North at the Sanghani Center and Doug Bowman, director of the Center for Human-Computer Interaction. She said that while she has always had an interest in virtual and augmented reality, her advisors were instrumental in helping her find a way to research the use of these technologies for real-world tasks.

North and Bowman were among her collaborators on the paper, “Sensemaking Strategies with Immersive Space to Think,” presented at the 2021 IEEE Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces conference.

She and North also collaborated with other researchers on “Traces of Time through Space: Advantages of Creating Complex Canvases in Collaborative Meetings,” published in proceedings of the ACM on Human Computer Interaction, November 2021.

Davidson is also part of the New Horizons Graduate Scholars community at Virginia Tech, a collaborative research network of ambitious engineering graduate students who are nominated by their departments and provided with resources and opportunities that can strengthen their academic career while at Virginia Tech as well as prepare for a successful future.

Her projected graduation date is Spring 2024.