Patricia PONS TOMÁS

Patricia PONS holds a PhD in Computer Science from the UPV, and currently works as a researcher in Human Computer Interaction at Instituto Tecnológico de Informática (Valencia, Spain). Her research focuses on the design, development, and evaluation of Natural User Interfaces (NUIs) and immersive technologies (XR) to enhance the user experience. She received the 2019 Young Informatics Researchers award from SCIE and BBVA for her PhD thesis, and has participated in the Heidelberg Laureate Forum 2019, which brings together promising researchers with Turing Awards in Computer Science. With more than 30 publications, she has published both in national and international conferences and JCR journals, and has given talks at events such as TEDx, Ignite or Google Women Techmakers. Patricia is currently leading several national and international research projects focused on the use of mixed reality for the improvement of mental health and emotional regulation (ARCADIA, AWARE-XR, PrevED), supporting multiuser gamified therapeutic environments in mixed reality (CORE-MHC – CORTEX2 Open Call), as well as to improve user experience and robotic teleoperation in industrial environments (MANTRA – SpiritXR Open Call).