Jerald Thomas

Assistant Professor, Computer Science

Dr. Thomas' research involves making immersive technologies (virtual and augmented reality) better for users. This has involved research in immersive collaboration and maximizing the use of physical spaces for natural locomotion. He is also interested in VR-assisted therapy and rehabilitation. Outside of the lab he can be found playing board games, rock climbing, programming, making, and playing fetch with his dog.

Education

BS, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Minnesota - Duluth, 2015
MS, Computer Science, University of Southern California, 2018
PhD, Computer Science, University of Minnesota, 2021

Research Interests

Natural locomotion in virtual environments
3D user interactions
VR-assisted therapy
Immersive collaboration

Publications

Google Scholar link

Jerald Thomas, and Evan Suma Rosenberg. "A general reactive algorithm for redirected walking using artificial potential functions." 2019 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR). IEEE, 2019.
Jerald Thomas, Courtney Hutton Pospick, and Evan Suma Rosenberg. "Towards physically interactive virtual environments: Reactive alignment with redirected walking." Proceedings of the 26th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology. 2020.
Jerald Thomas, Seraphina Yong, and Evan Suma Rosenberg. "Inverse Kinematics Assistance for the Creation of Redirected Walking Paths." 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR). IEEE, 2022.
Christopher You, Brett Bendad, Evan Suma Rosenberg, Eric Ragan, Benjamin Lok, and Jerald Thomas. "Strafing Gain: Redirecting Users One Diagonal Step at a Time." 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR). IEEE, 2022.
Mahdi Azmandian, Rhys Yahata, Timofey Grechkin, Jerald Thomas, and Evan Suma Rosenberg. "Validating simulation-based evaluation of redirected walking systems." IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 28.5 (2022): 2288-2298.
Jerald Thomas, and Evan Suma Rosenberg. "Reactive alignment of virtual and physical environments using redirected walking." 2020 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW). IEEE, 2020.
Fei Wu, Jerald Thomas, Shreyas Chinnola, and Evan Suma Rosenberg. "Exploring communication modalities to support collaborative guidance in virtual reality." 2020 IEEE conference on virtual reality and 3d user interfaces abstracts and workshops (VRW). IEEE, 2020.
Timofey Grechkin, Jerald Thomas, Mahdi Azmandian, Mark Bolas, and Evan Suma Rosenberg. "Revisiting detection thresholds for redirected walking: Combining translation and curvature gains." Proceedings of the ACM symposium on applied perception. 2016.
Jerald Thomas, Sang Won-Lee, Alexander Giovannelli, Logan Lane, and Doug Bowman. "A Communication-Focused Framework for Understanding Immersive Collaboration Experience". 2023 IEEE conference on virtual reality and 3d user interfaces abstracts and workshops (VRW). IEEE, 2023.
Kimberly A. Pollard, Ashley H. Oiknine, Benjamin T. Files, Anne M. Sinatra, Debbie Patton, Mark Ericson, Jerald Thomas, Peter Khooshabeh. "Level of immersion affects spatial learning in virtual environments: results of a three-condition within-subjects study with long intersession intervals." Virtual Reality 24.4 (2020): 783-796.
Theron T. Trout, Stephen Russell, Andre Harrison, Mark Dennison, Ryan Spicer, Evan Suma Rosenberg, Jerald Thomas. "Collaborative mixed reality (MxR) and networked decision making." Next-Generation Analyst VI. Vol. 10653. SPIE, 2018.

Community Involvement

IEEE Member
ACM Member
Regular member of the IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VR) organizing committee
Regular member of the IEEE VR, IEEE ISMAR, and ACM VRST program committees
Frontiers in Virtual Reality guest editor
Organizer of 2023 IEEE VR satellite event in Blacksburg, VA