Tabitha Peck

After completing my Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I then completed a post-doctoral research position at the University of Barcelona and was a visiting faculty member at Duke University. While at Davidson College, I have contributed to the creation of the Computer Science major, am the faculty liaison for NCWIT, and enjoy teaching both introductory programming and upper-level electives. 

As an educator, I focus on making computer science accessible to all students. Both my teaching practices and research focus on minimizing biases and stereotype threats that currently harm students of color and women in STEM disciplines.

Research

I received an NSF CAREER Award (2020-2025) and am the head of the Davidson Research in Virtual Environments (DRIVE) lab. My research focuses on two main areas: 1) how to enable people to naturally move around virtual environments, and 2) the psychological effects of having a self-avatar within virtual environments. My research with students has been published in numerous venues including IEEE VR, IEEE ISMAR, and ACM CHI.  Our research projects have received international recognition including a best poster award at IEEE VR 2019, and a nomination for a best paper award at IEEE VR 2020.

I am actively involved in the virtual reality research community and have served in numerous conference planning chair roles including conference paper program chair at IEEE VR 2020, journal paper program chair at IEEE VR 2021, and co-chair of HUCAPP 2021. I am a review editor for Frontiers in Virtual Reality, regularly serve on international program committees, and review for numerous conferences and journals.