Graduate Assistant – VR Application Development

Graduate Assistant – VR Application Development

The Department of Informatics and Engineering Systems seeks a graduate assistant to support the development and research evaluation of virtual reality applications for visualizing abstract concepts in STEM. The position will begin with the TITANS2 research project, an immersive learning application designed to teach conditional probability and the law of total probability. The graduate assistant will review and understand the existing application and development environment, update the current version or rebuild it when necessary, and prepare a functional application for deployment and testing on Meta Quest 3 devices in an upcoming semester.

Responsibilities may also include improving interaction design, troubleshooting application performance, documenting the codebase and deployment process, user testing, and assisting with research materials, data collection, presentations, conference papers, reports, and manuscripts. After the initial application is prepared for classroom testing, assignments involving experimental design, development of new STEM learning applications, shared multi-user VR/AR learning environments, or extension of TITANS2 to additional topics will, where practical, be matched to the graduate assistant's experience and professional interests.

This is a mentored experience in immersive application development, educational technology, human-subjects research, and research publication.

Applicants should have strong problem-solving, organizational, written, and verbal communication skills and an interest in virtual reality, augmented reality, game development, educational technology, or STEM education research. Experience with Unity and C# is strongly preferred because the current TITANS2 application was developed in that environment. Applicants with comparable experience in another game engine, programming language, or immersive-development toolchain may also be considered if they can demonstrate the ability to recreate or convert the application and deploy it to a Meta Quest 3 device.

Experience with one or more of the following is preferred:
Unity XR, Meta Quest development, OpenXR, 3D interaction design, debugging, software documentation, networking or multiplayer development, user testing, statistical analysis, technical writing, or human-subjects research. The successful candidate must be able to learn new tools, work independently, regularly communicate progress, document technical decisions, and collaborate with faculty.

Must be a currently enrolled graduate student with six graduate credit hours per semester. Current graduate students are required to have a 3.0 GPA. Newly admitted graduate students must have an undergraduate 2.75 GPA. To maintain the position, graduate students must maintain a 3.0 GPA.