Biography
Lab website: https://sciences.ucf.edu/psychology/vaail/
Dr. Martin Kocur is an Assistant Professor in the Human Factors and Cognitive Psychology Ph.D. program at the University of Central Florida’s Department of Psychology. He holds a B.A. in Media Informatics and Information Science and an M.Sc. of Media Informatics from the University of Regensburg in Germany. Before coming to the University of Central Florida, he did his PhD in Media Informatics also at University of Regensburg and worked as an Assistant Professor in the Department Digital Media at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria in Austria, where he focused on game design and immersive applications. The goal of his research is to better understand how changing the self-perception using virtual avatars can be leveraged to positively influence users’ performance and experience while interacting with immersive virtual worlds. Dr. Kocur’s lab utilizes motion capture technology to create embodied experiences and induce body ownership illusions to study the effects of avatars using different methodological approaches including physical and cognitive tasks, physiological measures such as heart rate and skin temperature, and behavioral outcomes.
Sample of Publications
Michael Lankes, Günter Wallner, and Martin Kocur. 2025. Pathways of Desire: Enhancing Navigation and Sense of Community Through Player-Generated Desire Paths. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 462, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713191
Martin Kocur, Melanie Kloss, Christoph Schaufler, Valentin Schwind, and Niels Henze. 2025. Investigating the Impact of Customized Avatars and the Proteus Effect during Physical Exercise in Virtual Reality. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 1221, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713203
Bogon, J., Högerl, J., Kocur, M., Wolff, C., Henze, N., & Riemer, M. Validating virtual reality for time perception research: Virtual reality changes expectations about the duration of physical processes, but not the sense of time. Behav Res 56, 4553–4562 (2024). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-023-02201-6
Lisa Reichl and Martin Kocur. 2024. Investigating the Impact of Odors and Visual Congruence on Motion Sickness in Virtual Reality. In Proceedings of the 30th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 25, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3641825.3687731
Martin Kocur, Lukas Jackermeier, Valentin Schwind, and Niels Henze. 2023. The Effects of Avatar and Environment on Thermal Perception and Skin Temperature in Virtual Reality. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 231, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580668
Alexander Kalus, Martin Kocur, Johannes Klein, Manuel Mayer, and Niels Henze. 2023. PumpVR: Rendering the Weight of Objects and Avatars through Liquid Mass Transfer in Virtual Reality. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 263, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581172