Alexander Giovannelli successfully defended his dissertation on April 28th, 2026. The abstract for his dissertation follows:
As work becomes increasingly global, teams are often made up of people located in different parts of the world. While tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams allow people to communicate remotely, they do not fully recreate the experience of working together in the same space. Collaborative virtual environments offer a new approach by allowing people to meet and work together in shared virtual spaces. Using head-worn displays, individuals can enter these environments as avatars that reflect their movements and actions, making collaboration feel more natural and interactive. However, most existing systems are designed for people working together at the same time. In reality, teamwork often happens across different schedules and time zones. This dissertation explores how virtual environments can better support collaboration not only in real time, but also across time. To do this, it presents four research contributions: enhancing how people express themselves in virtual spaces using visual cues; designing interactive “guided tours” that help others understand and revisit past work; examining different ways people collaborate across time, including a new hybrid approach that blends live and recorded interactions; and exploring how conversational agents can assist users by answering questions when human collaborators are not available. Together, this work provides insights into how virtual environments can support more flexible, effective collaboration for distributed teams.
Congratulations, Dr. Giovannelli!