VAR at ISMAR 2026
The VAR Group organized two workshops, contributed to the workshop programs and presented posters at ISMAR 2026 in Bari.
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VAR at MICCAI 2026
The VAR Group was represented at MICCAI 2026 by Robin Urrutia and Dr. Alfredo Illanes, who presented two papers on vibroacoustic (VA) sensing as a new source of information during minimally invasive procedures. One contribution was selected for an oral presentation in addition to its poster; the other was presented as a poster. In “Where … Read more
VAR at XR Creator Con 2026
SurgAgentXR just won 2nd place in the AI × XR for Healthcare track at the XR Creator Con Hackathon 2026 finals in Berlin! Together with Ajay Alageshan from the Visualisation Group at the University of Magdeburg and Ana Sodia Santos (external), Katarzyna Olszyńska and Prakash Pandi took part in the XRCC Hackathon in Berlin. Everything … Read more
VAR at Medical Augmented Reality Summer School 2026 (MARSS)
Katarzyna Olszyńska and Robin Urrutia Escobar have been to the 6th Medical Augmented Reality Summer School (MARSS) on AI, Robotics and XR for Clinical Applications in Shenzhen & Hong Kong. This was a great opportunity to dive deeper into the topics they work on daily – robotics, AI, and XR in the medical field. Part … Read more
Successful PhD Defence
Wei Wei successfully defended his PhD thesis, titled “Towards a Liver Tumor Ablation Intervention System: Deep Learning-based Automatic Ultrasound-CT/MRI Registration” on June 5, 2026. The thesis committee included Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jana Dittmann (University of Magdeburg), Prof. Dr. Christian Hansen (University of Magdeburg), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sylvia Saalfeld (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Frank Gerrit Zöllner (Universitätsmedizin … Read more
VAR at the IEEE VR Conference in South Korea
IEEE VR 2026 took place in Daegu, South Korea, from 21 to 25 March 2026. As the world’s leading research conference on virtual, augmented and mixed reality, it brought together top international researchers to present peer-reviewed scientific breakthroughs for the XR technologies of the coming decade. Danny Schott, Florian Heinrich and Fabian Joeres were involved … Read more
Successful PhD Defence
On Monday, 15 December, Tonia Mielke successfully defended her doctoral thesis entitled ‘From Registration to Evaluation: Towards Efficient Human–Robot Interaction’. The work was carried out at the Research Campus STIMULATE and examines intuitive methods for controlling robotic arms using hand gestures and the support of these interactions through mixed reality. The doctoral colloquium and dissertation … Read more
Successful PhD Defence
On 11 December 2025, Oleksii Bashkanov from the Human–Machine Interaction research group at the Research Campus STIMULATE at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg successfully completed his doctoral colloquium. In his dissertation entitled ‘Multimodal Deep Learning for Enhanced Prostate Cancer Diagnosis and Grading,’ he focused on the development of AI-supported methods for improved prostate cancer diagnostics. … Read more
Winner at XR Hackathon
VAR group members Robert Klank and Katarzyna Olszyńska, working with Daniel Oquelis and Maria Tam, won first prize in the Meta-sponsored category “AI & Passthrough Camera Access” at the international XR Creator Con Hackathon (30 October–26 November 2025). Organised by the XR Ecosystem, the competition is considered the largest independent hackathon for extended reality worldwide. … Read more
Best Paper Honorable Mention at ISMAR
At the IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) in Daejeon, South Korea, Tonia Mielke, in collaboration with Mareen Allgaier, Christian Hansen, and Florian Heinrich, received a Best Paper Honorable Mention award for their work “Extended Reality Check: Evaluating XR Prototyping for Human-Robot Interaction in Contact-Intensive Tasks.” ISMAR is one of the leading … Read more