ICXR Monthly Recap

March brought a lot of exciting events & in person meetups especially with GDC and everything happening around it. A lot of ICXR members ended up in the same spaces, so it felt like one long week of running into each other, building, and catching up.

GDC (Game Developers Conference)

GDC wrapped earlier this month and ICXR had a strong presence throughout the week.

We also hosted an ICXR meetup at Square Pie Guys in SOMA and ended up taking over two floors. It was a lot of fun and we had people from Riot, Schell Games, Snap, Amazon, and Applied Intuition show up, along with ICXR members and people from the immersive hackathon scene.

World Models Hackathon

Right after GDC, some members stayed for the World Models Hackathon.

It focused on AI + XR, with support from SenseAI and Pico. There was a lot of work around simulation and generative environments, and Pico also shared more about their upcoming headset.

Community Partnership

ICXR also became a community partner for the Pacific Portal XR Hackathon (PPXR), which will be happening May 7–9. It’s a 48-hour online hackathon focused on space and presence, with mentorship, tutorials, and global participation.

Link for registration below!

Event Highlights (also unsure who speakers were this month)

This month was lighter on speaker events, but we hosted a VR Hangout.

We also have ICXR Speaker Series #6 coming up on March 30th on 9 EDT, featuring Veena Somareddy, CEO and Founder of Neuro Rehab VR. She’ll be speaking about scaling a VR healthcare startup and her path into XR and healthcare. Register here, Meeting Link here

These have been a good way to stay connected, meet people, and share what everyone’s working on.

Community Spotlight - Vaishnavi Josyula (UT Dallas)

Vaishnavi’s journey kind of began during the pandemic, when she used to watch VTubers out of boredom, but was fascinated by avatars, how they track faces and map emotions, etc.

At the same time, she also started learning how to make video games, and later learned about VR when she was pitching a VTuber-related research project to a professor on campus.

Now, she works as a researcher at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Graphics, focusing on avatars, virtual agents, and the human factors behind these systems in Extended Reality (XR). She has collaborated with researchers across multiple universities, including UT Dallas, RMIT (Australia), University of South Australia, University of Adelaide, and IIIT Bangalore, with work spanning North America, Asia, and Oceania.

She is a 3x hackathon winner, building projects that explore immersive interaction and XR systems. She recently also received the Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award for her work in XR and avatars.

Virtual Streamer with Conversational and Tactile Interaction

One of her research projects, presented at IEEE VR 2024, explores an interactive virtual streamer in VR that combines conversational AI with haptic feedback. Users can speak with a virtual avatar and interact through gestures like handshakes or hugs, creating a more immersive and personalized experience.

Ecoverse

At a hackathon, she worked on Ecoverse, where her team explored how VR and virtual agents can help with sustainability in buildings through interactive and immersive environments.

ICXR Involvement

Vaishnavi is deeply involved in ICXR across both projects and community.

She currently serves as Co-President and Community Chair, and hosts the ICXR Speaker Series, helping bring in speakers and create space for conversations across XR in both industry and research.

XR News

Meta shifts direction on Horizon Worlds

Meta was planning to fully move away from Horizon Worlds in VR, but they’re now keeping existing worlds available for now. Still feels like a shift toward mobile and web overall.

Meta new input ideas for XR

Meta is investing in EMG wristbands that read muscle signals so you can control things without controllers.

Cloud gaming on headsets

NVIDIA pushed cloud streaming to 90 FPS on headsets like Quest and Vision Pro.

Godot XR updates

Godot released new XR updates and ran a game jam this month.

Opportunities

Jobs

Internships

Conferences

Register for AWE 2026 (Augmented World Expo): June 15–18, Long Beach Convention Center, CA
Immersive Tech Week 2026: June 23–25, Rotterdam, Netherlands

Hackathons

ImmerseGT: April 10th-April 12th, Georgia Tech
Pacific Portal XR Hackathon (PPXR): May 7–9, Online