Institute for Creative Technologies

Project Leader

Jacquelyn Ford Morie currently leads the Coming Home project at ICT, which creates innovative healing modalities in online virtual worlds for veterans. She specializes in the fields of immersive worlds and social networking, as well as their connections to mobile technologies.

Prior to joining ICT, Morie spent six years in the animation and effects industry at Disney Feature Animation, Blue Sky|VIFX and the award winning Rhythm & Hues. From 1990 to 1994, she was a researcher at the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Simulation and Training doing pioneering work in affective virtual reality environments designed to evoke emotional responses from their participants.

She is co-founder of the game collective, Ludica, and has spoken at many international venues on the subject of games for experiential learning, virtual worlds and the effects of online identities. She is a long-standing ACM SIGGRAPH member and is a current director on its executive council. In addition she has held several key positions within the annual conferences over the last 25 years.

Morie is widely published with numerous papers on virtual worlds, virtual reality, games and their social impacts. She has contributed book chapters to Beyond Barbie and Mortal Combat (2007), Harry O’Neill’s Computer Games and Team and Individual Learning (2007), Systems in Health Care Using Agents and Virtual Reality (2010) and Affective Computing and Interaction: Psychological, Cognitive, and Neuroscientific Perspectives (2010).

She is also a member of the International Visual Effects Society, the Digital Games Research Association, Women and Games International, the Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback Society, and the International Society of Presence Research.

She holds an MFA and an M.S degree in computer science from the University of Florida. She earned her doctorate in computer information from the University of East London. Her dissertation focused on theories of space, embodiment and meaning in immersive virtual environments.