Scholar Spotlight

Divine Maloney, PhD

Divine Maloney has become one of the world's foremost experts in Social Virtual Reality (VR). Born in Guyana, South America, Divine characterizes himself as an unconventional problem solver, a description that defines his groundbreaking extensive body of work.

How humans relate to one another in augmented reality scenarios is part of Divine's research to better understand its role in VR.

The Institute for Advanced Study (ITIAS) proudly funded Divine's research, Phenomenology of a virtual computing interface: Embodiment in Virtual Reality, at the MIT IT Civic Media/Harvard Berkman Klein Center. In addition, ITIAS provided partial funding for Embodied Immersive Avatars, part of Divine's ongoing research focused on implicit racial bias, stereotypes with avatars, and aggressive avatars.

Noted for his pioneering work in VR, Divine is in the top 1 percent of PhD Candidates in Computer Science and Human + Computing and a Microsoft Ada Lovelace PhD Fellow.

Awarded more than $320,000 in funding for his PhD fellowship, Divine is recognized as a leading scientist in Social VR and Youth in VR. Divine's PhD dissertation, A Youthful Metaverse: Towards Designing Safe, Equitable, and Emotionally Fulfilling Social Virtual Reality Spaces for Younger Users, covers research on non-verbal communication, privacy, self-disclosure, meaningful activities, self-presentation, and harassment present in VR communities.

He was awarded his PhD in December 2021 and plans to continue to forge new paths in understanding how humans interact with each other in VR.

Learn more about Divine Maloney's work on his website - DivineMaloney.com