Professor Sylvia Xueni Pan

Xueni Pan is a Professor of Virtual Reality. Working in VR for almost 20 years she developed a unique interdisciplinary research profile with journal and conference publications in both VR technology and social neuroscience. Her work in training and education in VR has been featured multiple times in the media, including BBC Horizon and the New Scientist magazine. More info can be found on Xueni Pan's website.

Academic qualifications

• 2009 PhD in Virtual Reality, Computer Science Department, UCL
• 2005 MSc in Vision, Imaging, and Virtual Environments, Computer Science Department, UCL
• 2004 BEng in Computer Science, Beihang University, Beijing, China

Teaching

Before joining Goldsmiths in 2015, she worked as a research associate in Computer Science, UCL from 2009-2013, and in the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (ICN), UCL from 2013-2015, where she remains an honorary research fellow.

Modules she taught/is current teaching at Goldsmiths include:

• 3D Virtual Environments and Animation (previously Advanced Graphics and Animation)
• Data Visualisation
• Audio-Visual Computing
• Perception and Multimedia Computing

Areas of supervision

The use of Immersive Virtual Reality in: Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Interaction, Training, Education, and Psychotherapy.

VR technology: Character Animation (facial expression, motion capture), Photogrammetry built Virtual Environment.

Professional activities

Xueni Pan has participated in the following projects

Picking up ethical challenges within the humdrum of professional practice: can 3D avatars help? Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, HENCEL (Health Education North and Central London), and the Wellcome Trust. In Collaboration with UCL Laws and UCL Computer Science. More info can be found on the Virtual Realities and Professions page.

INTERACT: ERC funded project looking at how we subconsciously copy each other, using Virtual Reality. The project was based at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (ICN), UCL. More info can be found on INTERACT's webpage.

Moral Judgement and Virtual Reality: funded by the Leverhulme Trust to investigate how we make moral judgements - and more importantly whether our moral judgements are aligned with our moral action, in Virtual Reality. The project was based at the Department of Computer Science, UCL. More info can be found on UCL's project page.

Featured work

• Xueni Pan, Mel Slater, Alejandro Beacco, Xavi Navarro, Anna I. Bellido Rivas, David Swapp, Joanna Hale, Paul A. Forbes, Catrina Denvir, Antonia Hamilton, Sylvie Delacroix. The Responses of Medical General Practitioners to Unreasonable Patient Demand for Antibiotics-A Study of Medical Ethics Using Immersive Virtual Reality. PloS one 11, no. 2 (2016): e0146837. Responses of Medical General Practitioners YouTube.
• Xueni Pan, & Antonia Hamilton (2015): Automatic imitation in a rich social context with virtual characters. Frontiers in Psychology. 6, 790 Automatic imitation YouTube.
• Xueni Pan, Marco Gillies, & Mel Slater (2015). Virtual Character Personality Influences Participant Attitudes and Behavior - An Interview with a Virtual Human Character about Her Social Anxiety. Frontiers in Robotics and AI 2. Virtual Character Personality Influences YouTube.
• Pan, X., Gillies, M., Barker, C., Clark, D. M., & Slater, M. (2012). Socially anxious and confident men interact with a forward virtual woman: an experimental study. PloS one, 7(4), e32931.
• Pan, X., & Slater, M. (2011, July). Confronting a moral dilemma in virtual reality: a pilot study. In Proceedings of the 25th BCS Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 46-51). British Computer Society.

Research Interests

• Virtual Reality
• Social Neuroscience