Cross-faculty Collaboration
Dr. Eva Peisachovich – Principal Investigator
Dr. Peisachovich is an Associate Professor at the School of Nursing at York University. Her program of research involves exploring, developing and implementing pedagogies associated with simulation-based environments including simulated persons (SPs), Virtual Reality (VR), serious games, and eLearning to promote professional competence among students with in higher education milieus and their transition to the workplace. She is founder and director of the Simulated Persons Methodology Lab a pan-university initiative at York University that provides learners, including teachers and students, with the tools to apply simulation effectively across the curriculum and within an array of courses and programs, and affords an inexpensive opportunity to provide high-quality experiential learning to undergraduates. In 2019 she has been selected from an international pool of educators in post-secondary institutions for redefining the learning experience of students through innovative practices and has received the D2L Innovation Award in Teaching and Learning by the Society in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.
Dr. Lora Appel – Principal Investigator
Dr. Appel is an Assistant Professor in the School of Health Policy & Management at York University and a Research Scientist at University Health Network’s Open Lab. She leads Prescribing Virtual Reality (VRx) a collection of studies that introduce and evaluate AR/VR/MR interventions for patients, caregivers, and healthcare providers. She received several grants from the Centre for Aging in Brain Health innovation to pursue this work in aging and dementia care. Lora received her PhD from the school of communication and information at Rutgers University and was awarded the Gerald Miller Outstanding Dissertation award in 2017 for her work defining clinician anonymity and designing “Face-2-Name” a tool to improve interprofessional communication in clinical settings. Lora has published in premier journals like the American Journal of Medicine and the International Journal of Medical Informatics, she has given talks at Harvard medical school and the Royal College of Physicians in London, and her work with VR has resulted in several national media appearances. Lora’s expertise is in applying design thinking and science methodologies to healthcare innovation; she is passionate about designing new technological interventions that provide care in the pursuit of a cure.
Dr. Don Sinclair – Co-Investigator
Professor Sinclair has taught new media in the Faculty of Fine Arts at York since 1990. He was the primary designer of the Faculty’s new media courses and was instrumental in the development of York University’s inter-Faculty Specialized Honours BA Program in Digital Media in conjunction with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and Department of Communication Studies.