News & Announcements
July 02, 2008
ICT’s Intelligent Forces Project Featured in Popular Mechanices
A story in the May issue of Popular Mechanics titled, “10 Genius Inventions We’re Still Waiting For,” describes the goal of ICT’s Intelligent Forces project, which is to use artificial intelligence to “simulate the behavior…
June 30, 2008
ICT’s 3D Display Featured in Wired
The 3D display work of the ICT Graphics Lab is explained in a recent Wired.com blog which calls the technology a breakthrough that is “way more realistic” than any other 3D technology.
June 23, 2008
ICT’s 3D Display Featured in ESPN The Magazine
A story exploring what the future of sports will look like calls the ICT Graphics Lab’s 3D Display, “something as fantastic and futuristic as anything in Tinseltown.” Graphics Lab Director Paul Debevec says in the…
June 12, 2008
ICT’s Diane Piepol To Chair LA Chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH
Diane Piepol, project director at ICT’s Flatworld was elected chair of the Los Angeles chapter of ACM Siggraph for the 2008-2009 year. As a professional chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group…
May 28, 2008
ICT’s Paul Debevec in VFX World Magazine
The work of Paul Debevec and the ICT Graphics Lab is featured in this visual effects, 3D animation and computer graphics magazine. Under the headline, “Captain of the Light”, the article shines a spotlight on…
May 28, 2008
ICT’s PTSD Virtual Therapy Featured on NPR Programs
Skip Rizzo was interviewed on “Talk of the Nation” about his research.
Rizzo has led the development of Virtual Iraq, an immersion therapy video
game for psychologists treating veterans struggling with…
May 14, 2008
ICT’s Virtual Humans and Real Researchers Featured on NBC News
Reporter Patrick Healy of Los Angeles NBC station KNBC reports on our virtual human work. The story features Sgt. Star, the SASO-EN negotiation scenario and our virtual patient. Patrick Kenny, Diane Piepol, Skip Rizzo and…
May 12, 2008
ICT’s PTSD Treatment Featured in the New Yorker
This week’s New Yorker has a lengthy feature about ICT’s virtual reality PTSD treatment, with quotes and ancecdotes from ICT psychologist Skip Rizzo. The article also mentions ICT’s FlatWorld demo. Writer Sue Halpern visited ICT…
May 10, 2008
ICT’s PTSD Treatment in the Riverside Press-Enterprise
An article reported on the ongoing tests of ICT’s virtual reality PTSD treatment at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego. In the article, Naval Cmdr. Scott L. Johnston says nine out of 10 subjects…
May 07, 2008
ICT’s Jacquelyn Ford Morie to Chair ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community Committee
Dr. Jacquelyn Ford Morie was named Chair of the ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community Committee. She will lead SIGGRAPH’s new efforts to address the creative spirit and needs of all artists in the digital arts…
May 01, 2008
Researchers Nominated for Best Paper Award
The paper on ICT’s Smartbody research project is one of three papers nominated for best paper at the upcoming AAMAS conference (Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems), the premiere Agent conference in Portugal, May 12 -…
April 29, 2008
ICT Computer Scientist Honored for Bright Ideas
Abhijeet Ghosh, a computer scientist with the Graphics Lab at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, has been named the winner of the 2007 Alain Fournier Thesis Award. The prize recognizes the top Ph.D dissertation in…
April 24, 2008
ICT’s PTSD Treatment on KFI
ICT’s Virtual Iraq exposure therapy for treating PTSD was featured on Los Angeles newsradio station KF1 1070. Reporter Michael Linder visited ICT and interviewed Skip Rizzo for the story.
April 16, 2008
Executive Director Randall W. Hill Jr. Talks about ICT on Radio Legend Michael Jackson’s Program
Randall W. Hill, Jr spoke about ICT’s work in virtual reality and PTSD exposure therapy on a radio talk show about some of the difficulties soldiers face upon returning from Iraq. The program aired live…
April 14, 2008
ICT’s PTSD Therapy Wins Major European Virtual Reality Award
ICT’s virtual reality exposure therapy treatement for PTSD was honored with the Best Medical Application award at the 10th Virtual Reality International Conference in Laval, France.
April 07, 2008
USC’s ICT and Cinematic Arts Photosharing Project in the New York Times
A recent story featured Viewfinder, a new photo-placing system developed by the USC School of Cinematic Arts’ Interactive Media Division and the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. The system, created with a grant from Google,…
April 03, 2008
ICT and USC Keck School Collaborate on Virtual Patient Project
ICT and USC’s Keck School of Medicine teamed up to apply ICT’s virtual human technology, orginally developed for Army training, to develop a program to enhance and elevate the quality of psychiatric education. Funded by…
March 31, 2008
ICT Featured in Law Enforcement Technology Magazine
A story about using games and simulations for supplementing real-life training featured ICT’s law enforcement incident command training program. ICT Project Director Todd Richmond was interviewed about the training, which aims to create a sympathetic…
March 24, 2008
ICT’s PTSD Virtual Therapy Featured on NPR
ICT’s Skip Rizzo was interviewed on NPR’s “News & Notes” about developing and using virtual reality exposure therapy to treat PTSD. “In order to treat PTSD effectively, we often rely on what’s called exposure therapy,…
March 19, 2008
Interactive Ethics Course Gets High Marks
An ICT collaboration with the USC Marshall School of Business leveraged ICT’s AXL application to bring issues of leadership and ethics to life for MBA students. The project is one of several ICT partnerships across…
March 03, 2008
ICT Research Scientist Earns Prestigious Nod
Louis-Philippe Morency is named one of “AI’s 10 to Watch” by IEEE Intelligent Systems, a leading artificial intelligence journal. The honor recognizes Morency’s multi-disciplinary work providing computers an understanding of gestures and movement.
February 11, 2008
ICT’s PTSD Virtual Therapy in the Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal’s online health blog features ICT’s virtual reality exposure therapy. The treatment was created here at ICT and is being tested and used nationwide to treat Iraq war veterans with post-traumatic stress…
February 05, 2008
ICT’s Virtual Patients in Psychology Today
The February 2008 issue of Psychology Today features ICT virtual characters Justin and Justina, two life-like patients being developed to help teach students at USC’s Keck School of Medicine to interview patients and diagnose their…
February 01, 2008
Jacquelyn Ford Morie Adds to ICT Duties with Posts at UK Univeristy
Dr. Jacquelyn Ford Morie was named Adjunct Faculty and Post-Doc Research Fellow with the University of East London’s SMARTLab Research Centre, London, UK. Her SMARTLab work focuses on online virtual communities and identity and performance…
January 24, 2008
ICT Computer Graphics Featured in Nova Documentary
Photorealistic imagery of the Parthenon created by Paul Debevec and his team at the ICT Graphics Lab can be seen in an upcoming Nova documentary, “Secrets of the Parthenon.”
The footage was built…
January 16, 2008
Coverage of ICT Technology at Camp Pendleton
ABC News, FOX News Channel and Wired all covered Camp Pendleton’s new Infantry Immersive Trainer, a high-tech training simulation that leveraged ICT’s expertise designing and developing immersive mixed-reality systems. The project incorporates ICT’s digital projection…
December 13, 2007
Army Office of Video Games
The U.S. military has been using games for decades to train its troops. Now, for the first time, the Army has set up a project office, just for building and deploying games.
December 01, 2007
ICT Paper Wins Award
A paper authored by ICT researchers was honored with a best paper award for the Emerging Concepts and Innovative Technologies subcommittee and nominated for best paper overall at the Interservice/Industry Training,Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC)…
November 12, 2007
ICT Researcher Named to Leadership Post
Jonathan Gratch has been named president-elect of the newly-formed Human-Machine Interaction Network on Emotion (HUMAINE) Association. The group, founded in June 2007, is a professional, world-wide association for researchers in emotion-oriented/affective computing. Gratch is associate…
October 24, 2007
Army’s Newest Recruit: A Fully Interactive Virtual Human
Sgt. Star never sleeps. He doesn’t stop to eat or drink either. It is not just that the strapping 6-foot-tall soldier is devoted to his job - traveling the country with Army recruiters answering questions…
October 02, 2007
ABC 7 Features ICT’s PTSD Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy
ABC 7’s John North interviews ICT’s Skip Rizzo and experiences our innovative PTSD therapy firsthand.
September 04, 2007
NY Times Looks at PTSD Treatment
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a growing problem, especially with the increasing number of veterans returning from duty in the Middle East. Traditional treatments have varying sucess rates, and often require extended personal therapy…
August 15, 2007
ICT Research Wins Award at Siggraph ‘07
Computer graphics have transformed many aspects of life. But while a great deal of imagery is modeled and rendered in 3D, almost all of it is shown on a 2D display such as a computer…
June 16, 2007
PTSD Treatment Features
Earlier this week, a reporter was escorted down an Iraqi street during the morning call to prayer. There was a marketplace to the right, nondescript buildings down the road and a few pedestrians milling about.…
April 09, 2007
Keeping Virtual Real
For someone who lives only in a computer, Sgt. John Blackwell sure gets around.
Blackwell is the walking, talking showcase for virtual human research at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies. He has not…
April 05, 2007
Marine Corps Using ICT Flatworld Technologies
Chief of Naval Research Rear Admiral William E. Landay III has announced the funding of a $1.3-million "Tech Solutions" project to deliver advanced infantry immersive training to Marines. This project will field two systems by…
March 19, 2007
ICT Featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education
This article in the Chronicle of Higher Education discusses research work at the ICT designed to "create the next generation of training technology." The piece includes rather extensive overviews of Flatword (a marriage of digital…
February 13, 2007
New ICT Creative Director
Marina del Rey, CA (January 29, 2007) – Today Randall Hill, Executive Director of the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), announced that it was furthering its already strong relationship with the…
February 09, 2007
Virtual War, Real Healing
Los Angeles Times front page article covering ICT research on using virtual environments for treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
December 20, 2006
Award Winning Papers
Researchers from the ICT attended the International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment (TIDSE’06). Mark Riedl demoed Automated Story Director and presented two papers on the Automated Story Director project.…
November 30, 2006
C3IT in Forbes
Forbes.com has an article featuring ICT’s Cultural & Cognitive Combat Immersive Trainer (C3IT). The system was demonstrated at this weeks Army Science Conference.
November 22, 2006
The Latest Sgt. Blackwell Trailer
Sgt. Blackwell is a manifestation of ICT’s work in the area of virtual humans. You can take a look at the latest trailer showing some of the capabilities of the systems.
November 02, 2006
Paper on Interactive Comics Wins Award
ICT Researcher Andrew Gordon’s paper entitled: "Fourth Frame Forums: Interactive Comics for Collaborative Learning" was awarded "Best Technical Short Paper" at the 14th International ACM Conference on Multimedia, Oct 23-27 2006, in Santa Barbara, CA.…
October 13, 2006
New ICT Executive Director
Marina del Rey, California—October 9, 2006—The USC Provost announced the selection of a distinguished artificial intelligence researcher and former U.S. Army officer to lead Institute for Creative Technologies.
Randall W. Hill, Jr. has…
October 06, 2006
NBC 4 overview of ICT
NBC 4 news visits ICT with highlights on Flatworld and SLIM ES3.
September 02, 2006
Summer Intern Program
15 students from Francisco Bravo High School in Los Angeles are part of the very first Army-funded, two-week internship for high school students at the Institute for Creative Technologies in Marina del Rey designed to…
August 25, 2006
Treating Trauma with Games
For soldiers struggling with memories of their combat time in Iraq, USC Centers for Creative Technologies psychologist Skip Rizzo has concoctged an unusual prescription: a video game. Since last year, Rizzo has been developing a…
July 25, 2006
The Smell of War
I’m Army, Special Operations. My mission: to sneak up on a rebel training camp. If the intelligence is right—if the place is being operated by the enemy Tiger Brigade—then I’m supposed to plant a radio…
July 25, 2006
Apollo tours Sill
Actor/producer Carl Weathers, best known for his portrayal of boxer Apollo Creed in the first four "Rocky" movies, toured the Joint Fires and Effects Trainer System at Fort Sill along with other USC ICT creative…
June 22, 2006
Serious Games
Saving the world—one game at a time.
Some may scoff at the notion, but while gaming news in recent weeks has been bombarded with talk of legislation or hearings on violence against the…