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2005 Student Conference Speakers & Panelists |
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Albert
"Skip" Rizzo, Ph.D.
Research Scientist
and
Research Assistant
Professor
Institute for Creative Technologies and School of Gerontology
University of Southern California,
13274 Fiji Way, Marina del Rey, CA. 90292; email: arizzo@usc.edu
Office: 310-301-5018 Cell: 213-610-4737 Fax: 310-574-5725
Albert
“Skip” Rizzo received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the State University
of New York at
Binghamton. He is a Research Scientist at the University of Southern California
Institute for Creative Technologies and has a faculty appointment with the USC
School of Gerontology. Dr. Rizzo conducts research on the design, development
and evaluation of Virtual Reality systems targeting the assessment and
training/rehabilitation of spatial abilities, attention, memory, executive
function and motor abilities. Additionally, he is conducting research on VR
applications that use 360 Degree Panoramic video for exposure therapy (social
phobia), role-playing applications (anger management, etc.), and recently has
used this technology to capture news scenes for future multimedia journalism
applications. He is also investigating the use of VR for pain distraction at LA
Children’s Hospital and is currently designing game-based physical
rehabilitation VR scenarios for the elderly and persons with CNS impariments.
His latest project has focused on the translation of the Xbox game, Full
Spectrum Warrior, into an exposure therapy application for combat-related PTSD
with Iraq War veterans. His research also involves designing and evaluating 3D
User Interface devices and interaction methods and he has created a graduate
level course at USC entitled, “Human Factors and Integrated Media Systems”. In
the area of Gerontology,
Dr.
Rizzo has served as the program director of the USC Alzheimer’s Disease Research
Center and is the creator of the Memory Enhancement Seminars for Seniors (MESS)
program at the USC School of Gerontology. The MESS program is an 8-week series
of seminars designed to assist older persons in learning the skills for memory
maintenance and enhancement.
He is
the associate editor of the journal, CyberPsychology and Behavior; Senior
Editor of the MIT Press journal, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual
Environments, is on a number of editorial boards for journals in the areas
of cognition and computer technology (Presence; Cognitive Technology; Journal
of Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds) and is the creator of the Virtual
Reality Mental Health Email Listserver (VRPSYCH). He has guest-edited a theme
issue of the MIT journal Presence:Teleoperators and Virtual Environments
on "Virtual Reality and Neuropsychology" that appeared in August 2001.
Previously, he guest edited a theme issue in CyberPsychology and Behavior
on Aging and Information Technology in December of 1999. In 2003, he served as
General Chair for the IEEE VR2003 conference in
Los
Angeles and co-chaired this conference in 2004. He is General Chair of the 4th
Annual Workshop on Virtual Rehabilitation in
Catalina Island,
Los Angeles in Sept. of 2005. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Rizzo is the
Vice President of Research for Digital MediaWorks, Inc. and has secured a
contract to develop virtual environments for psychometric evaluation with The
Psychological Corporation.
Back to Conference Main
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http://imsc.usc.edu/scouncil
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University of Southern California (USC) >> http://www.usc.edu
Maintained by Nakul Datar >> ndatar@usc.edu
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