Michael Crawford | VR in Healthcare | Lifetime Achievement in Virtual Reality Award

Published on by VR Research Awards

Prof. Michael Crawford | VR in Healthcare | Lifetime Achievement in Virtual Reality Award 

Imperial College, London | United Kingdom

Michael Angus Crawford, BSc (Edinburgh), PhD (London University), FRSB, FRSC, FRCPath, is a distinguished British scientist and academic specializing in brain chemistry, human nutrition, and clinical pathology. He is the founder of the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition and a founder trustee of both the William Little Foundation and the Mother and Child Foundation, reflecting his long-standing commitment to advancing medical research and public health. In addition, he serves as President of the McCarrison Society, promoting scientific inquiry in nutrition and health. Educated at Fort Augustus School in Inverness-shire, where he excelled in sports leadership as Captain of Cricket and Rugby, he earned his BSc in Chemistry from Edinburgh University in 1952, followed by a PhD in Chemical Pathology from the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith, University of London in 1960, including a Diploma in Clinical Pathology. His professional recognition includes Fellowships of the Institute of Biology (1988), the Royal College of Pathologists (1994), and the Royal Society of Chemistry (2020), along with certification in Good Clinical Practice (2019) at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, NHS. He holds an academic position at Imperial College London within the Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, Obstetrics and Gynecology, based at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Michael Crawford has a rich personal history, including two marriages—first to Sheilagh Inglis, with whom he had four children (two adopted), and later to Mandy Walton. He resides in Primrose Hill, London, and maintains active professional correspondence through his email and Imperial College profile, also listed on ORCID (0000-0002-8770-753X). Throughout his career, Crawford has combined scientific rigor with leadership in research, education, and public service, making significant contributions to the understanding of human nutrition, metabolism, and clinical pathology.

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Featured Publications

Hamraz Javaheri | VR in Healthcare | Women in VR Research Award

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Ms. Hamraz Javaheri | VR in Healthcare | Women in VR Research Award 

German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) | Germany

Hamraz Javaheri is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany, and a researcher at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), with a strong interdisciplinary background in computer science, electrical and computer engineering, and human-centered augmented reality systems. His research focuses on wearable and mixed reality, human–computer interaction, and AI-assisted systems, particularly in high-stakes domains such as surgery, medical training, education, and skill acquisition. He holds an M.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Technical University of Kaiserslautern and a B.Sc. in Electronic and Communication Engineering from Yildiz Technical University, and he gained international experience through the European Union Student Exchange Program at Aalto University, Finland. Since 2016, he has contributed to multiple research projects at DFKI and the Technical University of Kaiserslautern, spanning embedded intelligence, augmented vision, and educational technologies. His work has been recognized with several prestigious awards, including an Honorable Mention Paper Award at ACM Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) 2025, a Best Demo Award at UbiComp/ISWC 2024, and the Young Talent Award from the Saarland Association of Surgeons in 2025. He has published extensively in leading journals such as the International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery, JMIR XR and Spatial Computing, Annals of Surgery Open, Scientific Reports, and Surgical Endoscopy, as well as top-tier conferences including CHI, DIS, ISMAR, VRST, UbiComp, and ISWC, often emphasizing real-world deployment and clinical validation of augmented reality systems. His research has also received international media coverage from outlets such as DW News, ARD, and Saarbrücker Zeitung.

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Albert “Skip” Rizzo | VR Therapy & Mental Health | Lifetime Achievement in Virtual Reality Award

Published on by VR Research Awards

Prof. Albert “Skip” Rizzo | VR Therapy & Mental Health | Lifetime Achievement in Virtual Reality Award

USC-Institute for Creative Technologies | United States

Albert “Skip” Rizzo, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist who founded one of the world’s first Clinical Virtual Reality laboratories at USC in 1995 and currently serves as Director of Medical VR at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, where he has spent three decades designing, developing, and evaluating over 60 VR and Virtual Human systems for clinical diagnosis, treatment, and research across domains such as PTSD, anxiety, depression, autism, ADHD, stroke, traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy, and other health conditions; best known for his groundbreaking BRAVEMIND PTSD therapy used with veterans and trauma survivors, he has collaborated extensively with computer scientists, engineers, artists, and medical leaders to advance the field, earning widespread recognition including being named one of Polygon’s top 25 VR innovators, Ozy’s “Godfather of Virtual Reality,” recipient of the 2018 Michael Dell “Engine of Human Progress” award, the ISTSS Trauma Innovation Award, the International Society on Virtual Rehabilitation Distinguished Service Award, the Best Paper Award for his VR ADHD classroom study involving 700 children, and the 2023 IEEE VR Lifetime Achievement Award; his team also secured second place and $1M funding in the VA Mission Daybreak competition for the Battle Buddy suicide-prevention system, while his career research portfolio exceeds $60M in funding—$30M specifically in Virtual Humans—with major grants from the Department of Defense, DARPA, VA, Army Research Lab, and leading industry partners including HP, Nvidia, Google, Dell, Intel, Samsung, HTC/Valve, AMD, Magic Leap, and many others; with more than 350 peer-reviewed publications, 31 chapters, 10 books, over 1000 professional presentations, 41 awards, and over 1000 media appearances, Dr. Rizzo’s influential body of work continues to shape and expand the global impact of clinical VR in healthcare and rehabilitation.

Profiles:  Orcid | Google Scholar

Featured Publications

Rizzo, A. S. (2025). Relationships between parent ratings of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder behaviors and the Virtual Reality Attention Tracker in school-aged children: Cross-sectional study. Journal of Medical Internet Research.

Rizzo, A. S. (2025). Virtual reality exposure for treating PTSD due to military sexual trauma. Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Rizzo, A. S. (2025). Expert consensus best practices for the safe, ethical, and effective design and implementation of artificially intelligent conversational agent (i.e., chatbot/virtual human) systems in health care applications. Journal of Medical Extended Reality.

Rizzo, A. S. (2024). Reporting guidelines for the early-phase clinical evaluation of applications using extended reality (RATE-XR): Qualitative study guideline. Journal of Medical Internet Research.

Rizzo, A. S. (2024). Advances in the use of virtual reality to treat mental health conditions. Nature Reviews Psychology.

Rizzo, A. S. (2024). Reporting guidelines for the early-phase clinical evaluation of applications using extended reality (RATE-XR): Qualitative study guideline (Preprint). JMIR Preprints.

Rizzo, A. S. (2023). Reporting the early-stage clinical evaluation of virtual-reality-based intervention trials: RATE-VR. Nature Medicine.

Rizzo, A. S. (2022). Enhancing exposure therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder: A randomized clinical trial of virtual reality and imaginal exposure with a cognitive enhancer. Translational Psychiatry.