Christiane Lange-Kuttner | Cognitive VR Research | Research Excellence Award

Prof. Christiane Lange-Kuttner | Cognitive VR Research | Research Excellence Award 

Universitat Bremen | Germany

Prof. Dr. Chris Lange-Küttner is an internationally recognised developmental and cognitive psychologist whose extensive academic career spans Germany, the United Kingdom, and Cyprus, with core expertise in children’s visual cognition, spatial development, drawing, memory, intelligence, uncertainty processing, and developmental differences such as ASD and ADHD. She currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Cognitive Development and previously held long-term editorial roles in major journals including Frontiers in Developmental Psychology, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, and International Journal of Developmental Science. She holds an H-index exceeding 90 across major citation platforms, reflecting her substantial research influence. Educated at the Technical University Berlin and Free University Berlin, she earned her Dr. phil. magna cum laude, published her early landmark work on children’s graphic competence, and later completed her habilitation at the University of Bremen on spatial systems in development and learning. Her academic appointments include W3 and W2 Professorships in Developmental Psychology (Greifswald, Konstanz), more than two decades as Senior Lecturer at London Metropolitan University, and adjunct faculty roles at the University of Nicosia. She has led major research projects such as INSIDE at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories and has contributed significantly to academic leadership as Chair of the TEAP Conference, Psychology Ethics Committee Chair, Erasmus Coordinator, and PhD viva examiner. Her honours include listings in Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century and Who’s Who, alongside multiple fellowships such as FHEA and Associate Fellow of the BPS. Prof. Lange-Küttner’s recent publications span influential topics including school transitions, ADHD–education links, visual search, spatial heuristics, relative age effects, longitudinal school performance, and academic-social profiles in autism. Her extensive earlier work includes foundational studies on drawing development, perceptual load, spatial binding, mental rotation, reaction time systems, bilingual speech preparation, object-based practice in Alzheimer’s disease, and cognitive mechanisms underlying children’s learning. She has supervised multiple doctoral and master’s students and mentored international interns whose work has led to published outcomes. Skilled in Python, R, SPSS, JMP, MPlus, AMOS, and experimental software, she integrates computational, statistical, and experimental methodologies to advance developmental science. Her career is marked by cross-disciplinary impact, global collaborations, and sustained contributions to understanding how children perceive, organise, and learn from the visual and spatial world.

Profiles: Scopus | Orcid

Featured Publications

Chris Lange-Kuttner, C. (2025). Spatial heuristics and random spatial exploration: Children, adults, and the machine coloring-in places in the grid game. Frontiers in Developmental Psychology.

Chris Lange-Kuttner, C. (2025). Visual search and domain-specific interests in children. International Journal of Developmental Science.

Chris Lange-Kuttner, C. (2025). The relative age effect in secondary schools. Cognitive Development.

Chris Lange-Kuttner, C. (2025). A 5-year longitudinal study about the effect of school change on grades. The Journal of Genetic Psychology.

Chris Lange-Kuttner, C. (2025). Academic and social profiles of adolescents with autism. Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling.

Chris Lange-Kuttner, C. (2024). Are school grades correlated with competencies in secondary school pupils with special needs? Frontiers in Education.

Chris Lange-Kuttner, C. (2024). Object-based practice effects recover the graphic object concept in Alzheimer’s dementia. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.

Chris Lange-Kuttner, C. (2024). COVID-stressed schools struggled to teach mathematics. Acta Psychologica.

Chris Lange-Kuttner, C. (2024). Visual and motor cognition in children and infants. Routledge.

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

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.