Jeremy Bailenson

Jeremy Bailenson earned a B.A. cum laude from the University of Michigan in 1994 and a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Northwestern University in 1999. After receiving his doctorate, he spent four years at the Research Center for Virtual Environments and Behavior at the University of California, Santa Barbara as a Post-Doctoral Fellow and then an Assistant Research Professor. He currently is the director of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab.

Bailenson's main area of interest is the phenomenon of digital human representation, especially in the context of immersive virtual reality. He explores the manner in which people are able to represent themselves when the physical constraints of body and veridically-rendered behaviors are removed. Furthermore, he designs and studies collaborative virtual reality systems that allow physically remote individuals to meet in virtual space, and explores the manner in which these systems change the nature of verbal and nonverbal interaction.

His work has been published in several academic journals, including Cognitive Psychology, Discourse Processes, Human Communication Research, Psychological Science, and PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, and his research is funded by the National Science Foundation, Stanford University, and by various Silicon Valley and international corporations.