About

Victoria Interrante is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, where she also serves as the Director of Graduate Studies for Cognitive Science. She joined the department in 1998 as an assistant professor and was promoted to full professor in 2015. Her research focuses on applying insights from visual perception and cognition to develop more effective virtual reality experiences and improve the communication of complex information through visual imagery. She has collaborated with colleagues across various fields, including architectural design, psychology, engineering, and medicine. Interrante holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an M.S. from UCLA, and a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts at Boston. Her professional background includes positions at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and the Institute for Computer Applications in Science and Engineering. She has received numerous honors, including the NSF CAREER Award, induction into the IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Academy, and the VGTC Virtual Reality Career Award. Her work has contributed significantly to the fields of immersive virtual environments, spatial perception, and human-centered computing.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer vision
• Psychology
• Theoretical computer science
• Human–computer interaction
• Computer graphics (images)
• Computational science
• Communication
• Geometry
• Physics
• Mathematics
• Pure mathematics
• Classical mechanics

Selected publications

• Designing a Collaborative Immersive Visualization System for Radiation Treatment Planning Teams

  IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics · 2026-01-01

  article

  We present a visualization design study of creating a collaborative virtual reality (VR) system for radiation treatment planning, with an emphasis on proton therapy. The goal is to support teams of dosimetrists, physicians, and medical physicists as they review and compare multiple possible patient-specific treatment plans, which requires analyzing complex 3D spatial relationships between a radiation dosage volume and anatomical structures. The approach is a novel combination and refinement of interactive visualization techniques including: networked multi-user immersive visualization, interactive volume rendering and slicing with 3D widgets and gestures, superimposed surface rendering with GPU-accelerated curvature-directed lines, smart cursors, teleporting, and avatars. These features are integrated within a workflow that supports three complementary modes of visual data comparison (juxtaposition, interchangeable, and explicit encoding). Results and feedback from multi-year iterative development with users and a summative field deployment in the form of a mock plan-review meeting reveal several advantages relative to current clinical practice and suggest directions for future work.

  PublisherDOI

• Where extended reality and AI may take us: Ethical issues of impersonation and AI fakes in social virtual reality

  PLoS ONE · 2026-04-02

  articleOpen access

  We describe a study based on a panel discussion that took place in social virtual reality (VR) at the conference IEEE VR 2025. Each panellist was embodied in a virtual body that looked like themselves. The VR scene was projected onto a screen in front of the audience in the main conference theatre. During the course of the panel two of the panellists swapped avatars, but tried to act as if they were the other person. Additionally, a large language model-controlled Alan Turing (AT) avatar participated. The study aimed to assess the audience's ability to detect the human identity swap and their perception of the AT panellist. We found that about 40 of 100 attendees who answered a post panel survey did not notice the body swap, highlighting a form of change blindness towards social identity in VR. While AT was seen as less realistic and somewhat distracting, its inclusion demonstrated the increasing capabilities of AI in natural language processing and interaction. The paper emphasises the critical need for ethical considerations, such as identity verification and guidelines for representing historical figures, as virtual reality platforms that can represent historical figures in combination with LLMs become more widespread.

  PublisherDOI

• Can AR Embedded Visualizations Foster Appropriate Reliance on AI in Spatial Decision-Making? A Comparative Study of AR X-Ray vs. 2D Minimap

  2026-04-13 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Artificial Intelligence (AI) and indoor sensing increasingly support decision-making in spatial environments. However, traditional visualization methods impose a substantial mental workload when viewers translate this digital information into real-world spaces, leading to inappropriate reliance on AI. Embedded visualizations in Augmented Reality (AR), by integrating information into physical environments, may reduce this workload and foster more appropriate reliance on AI. To assess this, we conducted an empirical study (N = 32) comparing an AR embedded visualization (X-ray) and 2D Minimap in AI-assisted, time-critical spatial target selection tasks. Surprisingly, evidence shows that the embedded visualization led to greater inappropriate reliance on AI, primarily as over-reliance, due to factors like perceptual challenges, visual proximity illusions, and highly realistic visual representations. Nonetheless, the embedded visualization showed benefits in spatial mapping. We conclude by discussing empirical insights, design implications, and directions for future research on human-AI collaborative decision in AR.

  PublisherDOI

• Reaction Time as a Proxy for Presence in Mixed Reality with Distraction

  IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics · 2025-03-12 · 7 citations

  article

  Distractions in mixed reality (MR) environments can significantly influence user experience, affecting key factors such as presence, reaction time, cognitive load, and Break in Presence (BIP). Presence measures immersion, reaction time captures user responsiveness, cognitive load reflects mental effort, and BIP represents moments when attention shifts from the virtual to the real world, breaking immersion. While prior work has established that distractions impact these factors individually, the relationship between these constructs remains underexplored, particularly in MR environments where users engage with both real and virtual stimuli. To address this gap, we have presented a theoretical model to understand how congruent and incongruent distractions affect all these constructs. We conducted a within-subject study (N = 54) where participants performed image-sorting tasks under different distraction conditions. Our findings show that incongruent distractions significantly increase cognitive load, slow reaction times, and elevate BIP frequency, with presence mediating these effects.

  PublisherDOI

• Tap into Reality: Understanding the Impact of Interactions on Presence and Reaction Time in Mixed Reality

  IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics · 2025-03-12 · 2 citations

  article

  Enhancing presence in mixed reality (MR) relies on precise measurement and quantification. While presence has traditionally been measured through subjective questionnaires, recent research links presence with objective metrics like reaction time. Past studies examined this correlation with varying technical factors (object realism and behavior) and human conditioning, but the impact of interaction remains unclear. To answer this question, we conducted a within-subjects study (N = 50) to explore the correlation between presence and reaction time across two interaction scenarios (direct and symbolic) with two tasks (selection and manipulation). We found that presence scores and reaction times are correlated (correlation coefficient of -0.54), suggesting that the impact of interaction on reaction time correlates with its effect on presence.

  PublisherDOI

• Enhancing Foveated Rendering with Weighted Reservoir Sampling

  2025-11-28 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Spatiotemporal sensitivity to high frequency information declines with increased peripheral eccentricity. Foveated rendering exploits this by decreasing the spatial resolution of rendered images in peripheral vision, reducing the rendering cost by omitting high frequency details. As foveation levels increase, the rendering quality is reduced, and traditional foveated rendering systems tend not to preserve samples that were previously rendered at high spatial resolution in previous frames. Additionally, prior research has shown that saccade landing positions are distributed around a target location rather than landing at a single point, and that even during fixations, eyes perform small microsaccades around a fixation point. This creates an opportunity for sampling from temporally neighbouring frames with differing foveal locations to reduce the required rendered size of the foveal region while achieving a higher perceived image quality. We further observe that the temporal presentation of pixels frame-to-frame can be viewed as a data stream, presenting a random sampling problem. Following this intuition, we propose a Weighted Reservoir Sampling technique to efficiently maintain a reservoir of the perceptually relevant high quality pixel samples from previous frames and incorporate them into the computation of the current frame. This allows the renderer to render a smaller region of foveal pixels per frame by temporally reusing pixel samples that are still relevant to reconstruct a higher perceived image quality, while allowing for higher levels of foveation. Our method operates on the output of foveated rendering, and runs in under 1 ms at 4K resolution, making it highly efficient and integrable with real-time VR and AR foveated rendering systems.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Feasibility and Impact Investigation of Continuous Subjective Cybersickness Feedback Reporting

  2025-11-12 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This paper quantitatively investigates the feasibility of, and merit in, soliciting continuous subjective cybersickness ratings as participants passively engage in an immersive VR experience. The main research questions addressed are: (1) Feasibility: To what extent will participants successfully engage, unprompted, in continuous cybersickness reporting while engaging with a secondary task? and (2) Merit: To what extent do continuously reported subjective cybersickness ratings offer valuable insights beyond what can be obtained from less frequent querying?

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Visual assistance may impede sensorimotor learning during gamified rehabilitation exercises

  Frontiers in Virtual Reality · 2025-05-22

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Regular exercise is critical to post-stroke recovery, but can be frustrating and difficult for patients with limited motor capabilities. Robotic assistance devices are being used to support this process, but due to cost and accessibility concerns some researchers have drawn inspiration from virtual reality and proposed the use of what we call “visual-only assistance”, in which a patient’s physical movements are mapped into game-oriented visual feedback modified towards greater success in the gameplay objectives. Our concern is that the motivational benefits it provides may come at the cost of reduced sensorimotor learning, which could ultimately be counterproductive to the recovery process. To explore these concerns, we conducted a between-subjects study with 24 participants to examine how two types of visual-only assistance affect short-term proprioceptive skill learning in a motor training game involving airplane steering with wrist rotation. One group experienced “attractor assistance”, in which the airplane was continuously displaced toward an ideal position and orientation. The other experienced “tunnel assistance”, in which direct user control was maintained unless straying too far, triggering an invisible barrier. We hypothesized that motor learning would be more impeded with attractor assistance due to the constant mapping variation between physical movements and visual feedback, but our experiment found that motor learning did not materialize in either condition, suggesting that substituting intermittent visual assistance for constant visual assistance is insufficient to guarantee superior motor learning outcomes and that, pending further investigation, the use of visual assistance for proprioceptive training should continue to be regarded with caution.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Peripheral Teleportation: A Rest Frame Design to Mitigate Cybersickness During Virtual Locomotion

  IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics · 2025-03-10 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access

  Mitigating cybersickness can improve the usability of virtual reality (VR) and increase its adoption. The most widely used technique, dynamic field-of-view (FOV) restriction, mitigates cybersickness by blacking out the peripheral region of the user's FOV. However, this approach reduces the visibility of the virtual environment. We propose peripheral teleportation, a novel technique that creates a rest frame (RF) in the user's peripheral vision using content rendered from the current virtual environment. Specifically, the peripheral region is rendered by a pair of RF cameras whose transforms are updated by the user's physical motion. We apply alternating teleportations during translations, or snap turns during rotations, to the RF cameras to keep them close to the current viewpoint transformation. Consequently, the optical flow generated by RF cameras matches the user's physical motion, creating a stable peripheral view. In a between-subjects study (N=90), we compared peripheral teleportation with a traditional black FOV restrictor and an unrestricted control condition. The results showed that peripheral teleportation significantly reduced discomfort and enabled participants to stay immersed in the virtual environment for a longer duration of time. Overall, these findings suggest that peripheral teleportation is a promising technique that VR practitioners may consider adding to their cybersickness mitigation toolset.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Enhancing Well-Being Through Positive Technology: VR Forest Bathing

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2024-11-09

  preprintOpen access

  The growing demand for accessible therapeutic options has led to the exploration of Virtual Reality (VR) as a platform for forest bathing, which aims to reduce stress and improve cognitive functions. This paper brings together findings from three studies by the authors. The first study compared environments with and without plant life to examine how biomass influences stress reduction. The second study focused on the differences between low-fidelity and high-fidelity VR environments, while the third explored whether the benefits of VR forest bathing come from being immersed in realistic environments or simply from viewing something beautiful. The results showed no significant differences between environments with and without biomass, but highlighted the positive effects of high-fidelity VR environments and realistic nature over abstract art. The paper also covers how VR nature experiences may boost executive functioning and well-being in older adults and discusses the potential of generative AI to create customized VR environments. It concludes with a call for further collaborative research to refine VR forest bathing for stress relief and cognitive enhancement.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research in Immersive Design Environments

  NSF · $379k · 2003–2008

• II-NEW: Virtual Reality Infrastructure and Technology Development to Support Architectural Education and Basic Research in Immersive Design, Embodied Interaction, Spatial Cognition

  NSF · $164k · 2013–2016

• NRT-UtB: Graduate Training Program in Sensory Science: Optimizing the Information Available for Mind and Brain

  NSF · $3.0M · 2017–2023

• IIS: Effectively Harnessing Virtual Environments Technology for Visualization and Design

  NSF · $462k · 2007–2012

• CHS: Small: Transforming the Architectural Design Review Process through Collaborative Embodiment in HMD-Based Immersive Virtual Environments

  NSF · $499k · 2015–2020

Frequent coauthors

• Benjamin Lok

  University of Florida

  62 shared

• Kiyoshi Kiyokawa

  Kennesaw State University

  62 shared

• James H. Swan

  Mississippi State University

  53 shared

• Mary C. Whitton

  52 shared

• Mark Billinghurst

  University of South Australia

  52 shared

• Anthony Steed

  University College London

  51 shared

• Gudrun Klinker

  Technical University of Munich

  51 shared

• Brian Ries

  University of Minnesota

  23 shared

Labs

• Victoria InterrantePI

Education

• PhD, Computer Science

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  1996

Awards & honors

• Inducted into IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Academy (2022)
• VGTC Virtual Reality Career Award (2020)
• McKnight Land-Grant Professorship (2001)
• National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development…
• National Science Foundation Presidential Early Career Awards…