About the Project

We are looking for outstanding PhD student candidates to join a collaborative research project with Google on next-generation text entry in immersive environments.

The research focuses on investigating how humans type in virtual and augmented reality, with the goal of developing novel interaction techniques that are both fast and accurate. Candidates will design and implement experimental paradigms in XR; explore multimodal input combinations (e.g. gaze, hand tracking, speech); and evaluate user performance and experience using psychophysics and computational modelling.

The project will be supervised by Dr Max Di Luca (School of Psychology and School of Computer Science), Prof Eyal Ofek (School of Computer Science), Dr Daniele Giunchi (School of Computer Science). It will be run in the Virtual Reality Lab (https://virtualrealitylab.netlify.app), and it is part of the BhamXR initiative (https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/centres-institutes/bhamxr).

Requirements:

A Master’s degree in psychology, computer science, human-computer interaction, neuroscience, engineering, or a closely related field.

Experience in experimental methods, VR/AR development (e.g. Unity), programming (e.g. Python, C#), and quantitative data analysis.

Strong candidates will be passionate about usability, embodiment, and human performance, and have a strong interest in industry-academic collaboration.

References

Arpit Bhatia, Moaaz Hudhud Mughrabi, Diar Abdlkarim, Massimiliano Di Luca, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Karan Ahuja, and Hasti Seifi. 2025. Text Entry for XR Trove (TEXT): Collecting and Analyzing Techniques for Text Input in XR. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 1223, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713382