The weekly luncheon learns that the REU organizes are a super incredible opportunity, and I’m so thankful that the team has organized them for us! Besides the free food (!!!) the luncheon learns are a great way to have some time carved out to see how this whole HCI field can play out over different stages of someone’s career.

Last week, Jack Miller came to share his experiences in HCI in grad school, and about his new job exploring XR use cases for surgical situations at the Mayo Clinic. It was so amazing to hear about how this sort of technology is actually being used to help people, rather than use cases normally portrayed (gaming, military, etc.). Jack seemed super down to earth, and I really enjoyed hearing about his thoughts surrounding the difficulties of bridging the gap between academic research and implementing the findings into practice.

Today, we heard from Jim Oliver who is currently the director of SICTR here at ISU (SICTR is basically a super big makerspace open to any student and I wish so badly that my university had something like it). Listening to Jim detail his journey between academia and industry was really interesting to hear about, because although I’m sure I want a master’s degree, I’m not really sure what I want after that.