Dr. Jacquelyn Ford Morie has spent several decades researching and creating Virtual Reality (VR) to deliver meaningful, enriching personal experiences. Her work focuses on skillful combinations of multi-sensory, perceptual techniques for VR that predictably elicit emotional responses from participants. With her company All These Worlds , she has been active in social VR, creating mindfulness applications, storytelling, stress-relief experiences for veterans, soldiers, and future astronauts.

In 2016 she concluded a project for NASA called ANSIBLE, a full virtual world ecosystem designed to provide psychological benefits for future astronauts who will undertake extremely long isolated missions to Mars. ANSIBLE was tested in an analog facility called HISEAS in Hawaii, where a team of six scientists was sequestered for a full year to simulate the conditions of isolation on Mars, including long communications delays.

Morie is also active in the AR communities, developing not only courseware for a week-long intensive AR boot camp class at Upload in 2018, but also with a startup for AR Tourism she founded in 2013 call The Augmented Traveler.

Dr. Morie’s other research interests include use of personal avatars and how they affect our human selves. She has also invented a novel scent release device for VR called RemniScent, to aid in the evocative power of VR experiences. Dr Morie received her PhD on the topic of Meaningful Embodied Immersive Experiences in 2007 from SmartLab at the University of East London. That thesis, which also covers early female creators in VR can be downloaded at morie.org. She is currently a Member of the Board of Directors at the Virtual World Society, and served as a Senior Adviser to the XPRIZE Foundation and their ANA Avatar Competition for five years.

In the 1990s, she created the first Computer Animation Program at The Ringling School of Art and Design, followed by designing the first combined technical and artistic year-long training program for incoming computer animators at Walt Disney Feature Animation.  Between 1994-1997 she developed similar training for the visual effect industry at VIFX and Blue Sky as well as for the Oscar Award winning, Rhythm & Hues.

She is a frequent speaker on VR, AR and Virtual Worlds, covering such topics as the future of immersive media, as well as health, training and social applications of new media and online worlds. Dr Morie currently teaches a two-course sequence on Immersive Experience Design at the UCLA Extension Program. Her co-edited book, The Handbook of Research on the Global Impacts and Roles of Immersive Media, was published in 2020.  She is currently writing a book on the history of Virtual Reality.

In 2022 her immersive work When Pixels Were Precious, which documents her earliest computer graphics art in a virtual reality setting, was a festival selection for the FIVARS Immersive Festival.

Dr. Morie received the Accenture Lifetime Achievement Award for her VR work at the 6th Annual AIXR global awards ceremony in Rotterdam on December 1, 2022.

In June 2024 Dr. Morie was inducted into the XR Hall of Fame at the 11th Augmented World Expo Conference in Long Beach, CA. She was also awarded the Virtual World Society’s Nextant Legacy Award at a special closing ceremony at the AWE Conference that year.

Also in 2024 she was inducted into the ACM SIGGRAPH Academy For pioneering contributions to the fusion of art with virtual reality and immersive technologies, and for advancing digital arts within the SIGGRAPH community

In December 2024, the Visual Effects Society (VES) honored Dr. Morie as the  2025 recipient of their prestigious Georges Méliès award.

Last updated May 2025