Our criminal justice has an extremely high rate of recidivism, i.e. the rate at which those who are released re-enter prison (more than half within one year, more than three-quarters within five years). The prison system is a harsh environment, ineffective at rehabilitating inmates for release in several aspects, including education and mental health care. Virtual reality (VR) is an immersive technology with multifarious applications. Inmates at a local prison sought to utilize this technology to solve issues in prison. The inmates, along with UW students and the Reality Lab, collaboratively identified three application domains in which virtual reality is potentially an effective solution. These applications areas are (A) hands-on education and vocational training; (B) exposure to day-to-day experiences; and (C) mental health skills/ relaxation.We have currently developed prototypes for applications (B) and (C), and are in the process of designing a method to measure their efficacy. We hope that this will provide a foundation for the development of future applications and facilitate deployment in a local prison. 

Manipulating airflow over aerodynamic surfaces with plasma, compressed air jets and textured surfaces has become an area of intense aeronautical research and international competition in the last few years. Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) thrusters or plasma actuators have been demonstrated as remarkable devices for separation control and lift enhancement. The application of EHD thrusters to an aerial vehicle can drastically reduce the power consumption, weight and response time of mechanical controls. The focus of the present work is to determine the performance of a full-scale aircraft wing with an integrated corona discharge driven EHD thruster numerically. The numerical model is carried out by coupling the interactions between fluid mechanics and electrostatics. The study has been conducted on an augmented NACA 0012 airfoil with trailing edge flaps at a Reynolds number of 160,000 (10m/s). The EHD induced jet delays separation while lengthening and flattening the separation region. Preliminary results show that the actuator has increased the moment on the airfoil by 50% which helps in better maneuverability. The numerical results are compared with the experimental wind tunnel results. These findings can favor a strong design of a new generation energy-efficient aircrafts

Medical imaging techniques such as X-ray, provide clinicians intensive information on the disease/condition of patients. However, clinicians have to look away from the subject to refer to medical images, thereby losing track of their work. Thus, clinicians usually study the images prior to surgery and limit reference time to images during surgery. Furthermore, unlike X-ray, novel imaging methods (such as optical ultrasound) are not taught in medical schools, so untrained clinicians face challenges in interpreting the images. These two limitations restrict the clinicians’ ability to fully utilize and adopt advanced medical imaging techniques. In this work, we explore the possibility of using Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) in the context of medical imaging. Prior applications of AR/VR technology in medicine have been limited to AR-aided training for medical students, telepresence for interaction, as well as remote therapy. We aim to use AR as a real-time diagnostic and therapeutic tool by augmenting the clinicians’ live view with various imaging modalities (such as X-ray, optical ultrasound, near-infrared). We hypothesize that providing these images in-context, and in some cases aligned with the subject, will improve the interpretation of images resulting in better guidance for diagnosis or surgery. To test this, we are creating an AR-based medical imaging/analysis application that uses techniques such as volumetric rendering and real-time image registration to augment the clinicians' view. Furthermore, clinicians can interact with the images by filtering, slicing, and reducing dimensionality, in order to better understand the images and thereby the underlying disease/condition.