HIT Lab NZ

01/09/2026

📢Fully Funded PhD Scholarship - Designing for Extremes: Immersive VR Simulation for Embodied Technology Design in Antarctic Fieldwork

Applications now open for a 3-year doctoral scholarship.

This PhD project will use immersive Virtual Reality to simulate the physical and sensory challenges of Antarctic fieldwork, such as restricted movement, reduced touch, and impaired depth perception.

The ideal candidate will have a background in Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Science, Design, Cognitive Science, or a related field, with strong programming skills (C #, ideally using Unity or Unreal Engine) for VR application development, a basic understanding of user-centred design methods, the ability to design, run, and analyse empirical user studies, and strong written and verbal communication skills.

📧Contact: [email protected]

👉Learn more and apply: https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/research/about-uc-research/research-specialities-and-projects/research-projects/designing-for-extremes--immersive-vr-simulation-for-embodied-tec

UC Engineering

Extreme environments, such as the Antarctic, place extraordinary demands on the human body.

01/09/2026

🌏 A wonderful morning at the HIT Lab NZ yesterday as we welcomed a distinguished delegation from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) with a tour of the lab. 🇲🇾 It was a pleasure to host our colleagues and explore shared opportunities in immersive technology, human-interface research, and international collaboration.

Today we are delighted to be hosting 20+ UTM students with program of demonstrations and plenary talks organised by Dr Kris Tong and Kieron Wall to showcase HIT Lab NZ’s research, strengthen UC’s institutional partnership with UTM, and inspire UTM students to pursue postgraduate studies at UC.

📸 Main photo from left to right: Sakinah Tuan Besar (UC International Partnerships Coordinator), Prof. Nurul Hazrina Idris (UTM Head of Division, Global Strategy & Engagement), Prof. Madya Dr. Ajune Wanis Binti Ismail (UTM), Prof. Ts. Dr. Intan Zaurah binti Mat Darus (UTM Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Academic and International), Prof. Heide Lukosch (UC HIT Lab NZ, Acting Director), and Chris Buyarski (UC HIT Lab NZ, Centre Manager)

University of Canterbury UC Engineering

31/08/2026

📣 USER STUDY VOLUNTEERS NEEDED!
Participate in our study exploring how people experience and interact with handheld mobile Augmented Reality (AR) in outdoor environments.
Who can participate?
✅ Aged 18 years or older
✅ Able to walk safely outdoors
✅ Have normal or corrected-to-normal vision and hearing
✅ Have sufficient English proficiency to understand the study instructions
✅ Comfortable using a handheld mobile device while walking outdoors
📍 Location: UC Central Library, University of Canterbury, Ilam Campus. The study will begin at the entrance of the library and end at HIT Lab NZ.
👉 Find out more and book a session: https://bookwhen.com/qinyangwu
📩 Contact: [email protected]
University of Canterbury UC Engineering

28/08/2026

🎉💐Congratulations to all HIT Lab NZ's Spring 2026 Graduates!

Attending this week's graduation ceremony:
🎓PhD graduates: Dr. Misha Mirza and Dr. Mac Greenslade.
🎓MHIT graduates: Saumya Chanana, Yuton Jin (Richie Kim), Shiyu (Angela) Lyu, and Gabrielle (Gabby) Rosemergy.
🎓Proud supervisors: Prof. Heide Lukosch, Prof. Stephan Lukosch, Assoc. Prof. Adrian Clark, Dr. Donald Degraen and Dr. Susanne Schmidt.

It was great to see some of our graduates return to the lab for a visit. We wish them all the best with their future endeavours!

25/08/2026

💡 Experience the future of immersive technology at HIT Lab NZ's annual Open House event.

Whether you're considering postgraduate study or are simply curious about the latest developments in virtual and augmented reality, AI, applied games design, and human-centred design, this free event offers a unique opportunity to explore our research, meet our team, and experience cutting-edge technology firsthand.

📅 When: Friday, 25 September 2025
🕐 Time: 1:00pm – 3:30pm
📍 Location: HIT Lab NZ, Level 2, John Britten Building, 69 Creyke Road, University of Canterbury

This FREE event is open to everyone. Whether you're a prospective student, industry professional, educator, alumnus, or simply interested in immersive technologies, we welcome you to join us.

University of Canterbury UC Engineering

25/08/2026

💐🎉 CONGRATULATIONS, ANNA! 🎉💐

We couldn't be prouder! The HIT Lab NZ was thrilled to support our brilliant doctoral student Anna Treffer at Whakāturanga Rangahau | Research Student Showcase 2026, where she took to the stage for the live finals of the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition on 19 August 2026.

And she absolutely shone ✨ — Anna won the People's Choice Award 🏆 AND placed second overall for her fantastic 3MT talk, "Dance Training with Augmented Reality" 💃

In just three minutes, Anna shared her cutting-edge research and wowed the audience with her exceptional communication skills. Congratulations, Anna — this is so well deserved! 👏

13/08/2026

📣 USER STUDY VOLUNTEERS NEEDED!
Participate in our study exploring how people interact with a virtual office environment under different environmental conditions.

📍 Location: HIT Lab NZ, Level 2, John Britten Building, 69 Creyke Road, University of Canterbury
👉 Find out more and book a session: https://bookwhen.com/bohan
📩 Contact: [email protected]

Who can participate?
✅ Aged 18 years or older
✅ Be comfortable using a VR headset
✅ Have normal or corrected-to-normal vision
✅ Have sufficient English proficiency to understand the study instructions and tutorial

University of Canterbury UC Engineering UC Product Design

11/08/2026

📣 USER STUDY VOLUNTEERS NEEDED!
Participate in our study exploring how people engage with multiple historical perspectives using immersive VR.

Who can participate?
✅ Aged 18 years or older
✅ Able to understand and communicate in English
✅ No history of severe motion sickness or photosensitive epilepsy
✅ Able to comfortably use a VR headset

📍 Location: HIT Lab NZ, Level 2, John Britten Building, 69 Creyke Road, University of Canterbury
👉 Find out more and book a session: https://bookwhen.com/v3qqg
📩 Contact: [email protected]

University of Canterbury UC Engineering UC Product Design

06/08/2026

🏆Congratulations to Team PatchIQ on a fantastic result!

It's wonderful to see HIT Lab NZ's MHIT students Asha Veach, Anya Krupp, and Quinton Buckley among the winning team. A great example of how human-interface technology skills can be applied to real-world challenges.

Over two days last weekend they competed at the UCE Future of Health Disrupt Challenge to explore complex problems, challenge assumptions, collaborate across disciplines, and develop bold, impactful ideas.

This challenge reinforced an important lesson: entrepreneurship is not just about pitching a solution. It's about deeply understanding the problem, embracing systems thinking and human-centred design, and creating solutions that can generate real social and societal impact.

As part of PatchIQ (Team 9) they came 1st Equal with a pitch for smart wound monitoring to facilitate earlier intervention and fewer home visits.

04/08/2026

💥NEW PUBLICATION💥

F. Faruqi, A. Sulaiman, J. Yin, D. Degraen and M. Nisser, "Vis2Touch: Perceptually Grounded 3D Printing of Visual Art With AI-Driven Depth and Texture Estimation," in IEEE Transactions on Haptics, doi: 10.1109/TOH.2026.3717908.

👉 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11627676

Visual art offers a rich expression of its subject's color and form, but lacks the haptic cues of depth and texture central to understanding its physical characteristics. We present Vis2Touch, a system that transforms color images into textured 2.5D models for 3D printing by combining depth and surface texture while preserving the original color appearance. Vis2Touch composes 2.5D objects by combining a monocular depth estimator to reconstruct macroscale depth and a fine-tuned diffusion model to generate microscale textures from semantically segmented image regions. These two heightfields are superimposed to produce composite colored 3D models that reflect both the structure and feel of the source image. Through psychophysical experiments informed by a gallery exhibition, we investigate how tactile expectations vary with depth and show that perceptual accuracy improves when texture is modulated as a power-law function of distance in the image. Our results demonstrate new possibilities for physicalizing visual art by conveying spatial scale through 3D-printed haptic artifacts.

University of Canterbury UC Engineering