Andreia Lima | XR Rehabilitation | Research Excellence Award

Prof. Dr. Andreia Lima | XR Rehabilitation | Research Excellence Award 

Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo | Portugal

Andreia Lima is a Portuguese nursing scholar and healthcare professional with extensive experience in clinical practice, teaching, and research across the fields of Rehabilitation Nursing, Mental Health, Clinical Supervision, and Health Sciences. She completed a Post-Doctorate at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto in 2024, following a PhD in Nursing Sciences in 2022 at the University of Porto (ICBAS), where her doctoral research focused on autonomy in older adults and rehabilitation interventions. Her academic background also includes a Master’s in Rehabilitation Nursing, post-graduate specializations in Mental Health and Psychiatry Nursing, Clinical Supervision, Nursing Services Management, Health Psychology, and a Licentiate degree in Nursing from the Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo. Professionally, she is an Adjunct Professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo and currently coordinates the Nursing Discipline Group, having previously served as Assistant Professor at Universidade Fernando Pessoa and worked for nearly two decades as a nurse in Portuguese healthcare institutions. Her academic output includes 39 scientific articles, 10 book chapters, four books, and participation in 86 scientific events, along with supervising seven master’s dissertations and co-supervising three. She has received four awards or professional distinctions and contributes actively to several research projects, including work on adolescent sexual health, health behaviours, rehabilitation, and technology-mediated interventions. Her scientific interests span virtual reality applications in healthcare, escape rooms and serious games in nursing education, innovative rehabilitation strategies for older adults, and the study of health behaviours such as alcohol consumption, tobacco use, and physical activity. She works primarily within Medical and Health Sciences, focusing on improving quality of life, functional capacity, and health outcomes across different populations.

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Featured Publications

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.