Keynote: Rabindra Ratan - Toward Professor Hiro Protagonist: Insights from Teaching in VR and Research on Virtual Meetings
VWBPE 2025 Keynote
Presented: April 5, 2025
SL: Rabidth Rote
Rabindra (Robby) Ratan (SL: Robby (Rabidth Rote)) is an Associate Professor and AT&T Endowed Chair at Michigan State University’s (MSU) Department of Media and Information. He is also the Director of the Social and Psychological Approaches to Research on Technology-Interaction Effects (SPARTIE) Lab. He is an affiliated faculty member of the MSU Department of Psychology, the MSU College of Education’s program in Educational Psychology and Educational Technology, and the MSU Center for Gender in a Global Context. Dr. Ratan conducts social and psychological research on the effects of human-technology interaction, focusing on how media technologies (e.g., XR/VR/AR/MR, avatars, video games, agents/AI) influence meaningful outcomes (e.g., equity, well-being, motivation) across societal contexts (e.g., education, health, industry). He is particularly interested in the Proteus effect (i.e., avatar characteristics influencing user behaviors), human-AI interaction, gender stereotypes in gaming, and virtual meetings. In addition to conducting research on these phenomena, he has also been teaching all of his MSU classes in virtual reality since 2022.
