Scholar
Mar Gonzalez-Franco
Google Scholar ID: fqhP7dcAAAAJ
Google
Citations & Impact
Citations
5,101
H-index
37
i10-index
65
Publications
20
Co-authors
69
list available
Publications
Resume (English only)
Academic Achievements
- Released multiple tools and open-source libraries, including Microsoft Rocketbox avatars, MoveBox, or HeadBox toolkits; The release of Avatars in Teams was awarded Times invention of the year in 2022; Delivered keynotes at IEEE ISMAR 2021, ACM Spatial User Interfaces 2020, and other conferences.
Research Experience
- 2022-Present: Research Manager at Google, creating new immersive technology; 2016-2022: Principal Researcher in the EPIC team at Microsoft Research, worked on projects such as Avatars and Together mode in Microsoft Teams; 2015-2016: Senior Research Scientist at Traity; 2014-2015: Created and led the Immersive Technologies lab in the UK for researching AR, VR, HMDs, and Mixed Reality in aeronautic manufacturing; 2014: Postdoctorate at the Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics group, University College London, supported by an UK ESRC grant.
Education
- 2010-2014: PhD in Immersive Virtual Reality and Clinical Psychology from Universitat de Barcelona, supervised by Prof. Mel Slater, affiliated as a visiting student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MediaLab; 2008-2010: MSc in Biomedical Engineering, focused on signal processing, completed Master Thesis at Tsinghua University; 2004-2008: BSc double Major in Computer Science and Multimedia Engineering from La Salle - Universitat Ramon Llull, graduated top class with Best Academic Curricula Award, GPA 9.22/10.
Background
- Computer Scientist + Neuroscientist. A Research Manager at Google creating a new generation of Immersive tech. Leads the Blended Intelligence Research and Devices (BIRD) lab inside Google AR & VR, aiming to augment humans by blending human innate intelligence with artificial intelligence in naturalistic settings via immersive experiences.
Miscellany
- Explores multi-modal futures with a focus on AI/ML symbiosis to create novel experiences; During her PhD, she produced anarchic hand experiences into healthy humans and stabbed their virtual hands to explore how our brain perceives our body and search the underlying mechanisms that determine what is real and what is not; Participated in various VR-related projects, including the reproduction of a Virtual Milgram experiment.
