Eelke Folmer — Computer Scientist

Professor · School of Computing, Electrical and Biomedical Engineering · University of Nevada, Reno

I study how to get around virtual worlds without walking into real walls or losing your lunch.

I am a computer scientist and professor in the School of Computing, Electrical and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno, and director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab.

My research has spanned software engineering, human-computer interaction, accessibility, assistive technology and augmented reality — and currently centers on virtual reality. I am especially interested in VR's virtual locomotion problem: how to navigate large virtual environments efficiently, with high presence and without motion sickness.

Outside academia I like crossfit, yoga, pilates, mountainbiking, hiking, snowboarding, standup paddleboarding, music, movies and anime.

Eelke Folmer smiling at an outdoor cafe table, thumbs up, iced matcha nearby

↳ me [at] my-first-name [dot] com

Updates

10.14.26Heading to ACM VRST 2026 in Sendai, Japan (Nov 16–18).
7.1.26Stepped down as department chair after eight years. Now back to focusing full-time on research.

Research

VR · LOCOMOTION

Virtual Locomotion

Moving through large virtual worlds while staying in a small physical space — teleportation, redirected walking, walking-in-place and hands-free navigation techniques.

VR · PERCEPTION

VR Sickness & Vision

Reducing cybersickness through field-of-view restriction and optic-flow manipulation, and understanding the perceptual mechanisms — like stationarity perception — behind it.

VR · EYE TRACKING

Eye Tracking in VR

Measuring and applying gaze in head-mounted displays: eye-tracker data quality, foveated rendering, and gaze-driven interaction.

HCI · ACCESSIBILITY

Accessibility & Assistive Tech

Games, navigation aids and exergames for people who are blind or visually impaired, using haptics, audio and sensory substitution.

▶ SELECTED PROJECT VIDEOS FROM THE LAB

Publications

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2025

Hudson Lynam, Sergiu Dascalu, Eelke Folmer. Augmented Reality Navigation: A Survey, International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 41(16), 10190–10206, 2025.

2024

Aniruddha Prithul, Hudson Lynam Eelke Folmer. Performance and Navigation Behavior of using Teleportation in VR First-Person Shooter Games, Accepted for ACM Games: Research and Practice

2023

Savannah J. Halow, Allie Hamilton, Eelke Folmer, Paul MacNeilage. Impaired stationarity perception is associated with increased virtual reality sickness, Journal of Vision 23 (14), 7-7

Melanie Schmidt-Wolf, Eelke Folmer, David Feil-Seifer. Comprehensive Feedback Module Comparison for Autonomous Vehicle-Pedestrian Communication in Virtual Reality, International Conference on Social Robotics, 410-423, 2023

Savannah J. Halow, Allie Hamilton, Eelke Folmer, Paul MacNeilage. Motor signals mediate stationarity perception, Multisensory Research, 36(7), 703-724.

Isayas Adhanom, Paul MacNeilage, and Eelke Folmer. Eye Tracking in Virtual Reality: a Broad Review of Applications and Challenges, Virtual Reality volume 27, pages 1481–1505 (2023)

2022

Hudson Lynam, Eelke Folmer, Sergiu Dascalu. HARIN: HoloLens Augmented Reality Indoor Navigation, Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Applied Computing & Information Technology (ACIT 2022), pages 30–35.

Aniruddha Prithul, Jiwan Bhandari, Walker Spurgeon, and Eelke Folmer. Evaluation of Hands-free Teleportation in VR, Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction (SUI 2022), Article:5, Pages 1--6.

Isayas Berhe Adhanom, Savannah Halow, Eelke Folmer, and Paul MacNeilage VR Sickness Adaptation With Ramped Optic Flow Transfers From Abstract To Realistic Environments, Frontiers in Virtual Reality, Volume:3.

2021

Aniruddha Prithul, Isayas Berhe Adhanom and Eelke Folmer, Teleportation in Virtual Reality; A Mini-Review, Frontiers in Virtual Reality.

Aniruddha Prithul and Eelke Folmer, Analysis of Positional Tracking Space Usage when using Teleportation, 2021 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW)

Aniruddha Prithul, Isayas Adhanom and Eelke Folmer, Embodied Third-Person Locomotion using a Single Depth Camera. Graphics Interface.

Isayas Adhanom, Majed Al-Zayer, Paul MacNeilage, Eelke Folmer, Field-of-View Restriction to Reduce VR Sickness Does not Impede Spatial Learning in Women. ACM Transactions on Applied Perception (TAP). May 2021 Article No.: 5 https://doi.org/10.1145/3448304

2020

Isayas Adhanom, Samantha Lee, Eelke Folmer and Paul MacNeilage, GazeMetrics: An Open-Source Tool for Measuring the Data Quality of HMD-based Eye Trackers. In Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications (ETRA'20), Article:19, Pages 1–5.

Isayas Adhanom, Nathan Navarro Griffin, Paul MacNeilage, Eelke Folmer, The Effect of a Foveated field-of-view restrictor on VR Sickness. In Proceedings of the IEEE Virtual Reality Conference (IEEEVR'20), pages 645-652,

2019

Christian Sinnott, James Liu, Courtney Matera, Savannah Jo Halow, Ann Jones, Matthew Moroz, Jeffrey Mulligan, Michael Crognale, Eelke Folmer and Paul MacNeilage. Underwater virtual reality system for neutral buoyancy training: development and evaluation. In Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST'19), Article:29, Pages 1-9,

Nathan Navarro Griffin and Eelke Folmer. Out-of-body Locomotion: Vectionless Navigation with a Continuous Avatar Representation. In Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST'19), Article:29: pages 1-8,

Majed Al-Zayer, Isayas Adhanom, Paul MacNeilage and Eelke Folmer. The Effect of Field-of-View Restriction on Sex Bias in VR Sickness and Spatial Navigation Performance. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'19), Page 354,

Matthew Moroz, Isabelle Garzorz, Eelke Folmer and Paul MacNeilage. Sensitivity to visual speed modulation in head-mounted displays depends on fixation. In Displays: Special Issue: Visually Induced Motion Sensations, Volume 58, Pages 12-19.

2018

Majed Al-Zayer, Paul MacNeilage, and Eelke Folmer. Virtual Locomotion: a Survey. In IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

Nikesh Mishra and Eelke Folmer. Measuring physical exertion in virtual reality exercise games. In VRST '18: Proceedings of the 24th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology.

Nathan Navarro Griffin, James Liu, and Eelke Folmer. Evaluation of handsbusy vs handsfree virtual locomotion. In Proceedings of the 2018 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY ’18), pages 211–219,

James Liu, Hirav Parekh, Majed Al-Zayer and Eelke Folmer. Increasing walking in VR using redirected teleportation. In Proceedings of the 31st Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ’18), pages 521–529. [Talk]

Majed Al-Zayer and Eelke Folmer. StereoTrack: 180-degree Low-cost Acoustic Positional Tracking for Mobile VR Platforms. In Proceedings of the 2018 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, (CHI PLAY ’18)

Jiwan Bhandari, Paul MacNeilage, and Eelke Folmer. Teleportation without spatial disorientation using optical flow cues. In Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2018 (GI 2018), pages 162 – 167.

2017

Jiwan Bhandari, Sam Tregillus, Eelke Folmer, Legomotion: Scalable Walking-based Locomotion, Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST'17), 2017. [video]

William Grussenmeyer, Jesel Gardia, Eelke Folmer and Fang Jiang, Evaluating the Accessibility of the Job Search and Interview Process for People who are Blind and Visually Impaired, in Proceedings of the 2017 Web For All Conference (W4A), article:3

Sam Tregillus, Majed Al-Zayer, and Eelke Folmer, Handsfree Omnidirectional VR Navigation using Head Tilt, in Proceedings of the 2017 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'17), Pages 4063-4068, [talk]

William Grussenmeyer and Eelke Folmer, Accessible Touchscreen Technology for People with Visual Impairments: A Survey, ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing, Volume 9, Issue 2, Pages 31

2016

Majed Al-Zayer, Sam Tregillus and Eelke Folmer, PAWdio: Hand Input for Mobile VR using Acoustic Sensing. Proceedings of The ACM SIGCHI Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY'16), Pages 154--158, BEST NOTE.

Majed Al-Zayer, Sam Tregillus, Jiwan Bhandari, David Feil-Seifer and Eelke Folmer, Exploring the Use of a Drone to Guide Blind Runners, Proceedings of the 18th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS'16) Poster, Pages 154--158

Sam Tregillus and Eelke Folmer, VR-STEP: Walking-in-Place using Inertial Sensing for Hands Free Navigation in Mobile VR Environments, Proceedings of the 2016 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'16), Pages 1250-1255 [talk]

William Grussenmeyer and Eelke Folmer, AudioDraw: User Preferences in Non-Visual Diagram Drawing for Touchscreens, 2016 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility W4A [talk]

2015

Halim Cagri Ates, Ilias Apostolopoulos, and Eelke Folmer, Expanding the Vocabulary of Multitouch Input using Magnetic Fingerprints, ArXIV

Ilias Apostolopoulos, Dan Coming, and Eelke Folmer, Accuracy of Pedometry Using a Head-mounted Display, Proceedings of the 2015 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'15), Pages 2153-2156 [talk]

Halim Cagri Ates, Alexander Fiannaca, and Eelke Folmer, Immersive Simulation of Visual Impairments Using a Wearable See-through Display,Proceedings of Tangible Embodied Interaction (TEI'15), Pages 225--228, Stanford, January 2015. [Talk]

2014

Alexander Fiannaca, Ilias Apostolopoulous and Eelke Folmer. Headlock: a Wearable Navigation Aid that Helps Blind Cane Users Traverse Large Open Spaces. Proceedings of the International ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS'14), Pages 323-324, Rochester, October 2014.

Burkay Sucu and Eelke Folmer. The Blind Driver Challenge: Steering using Haptic Cues. Proceedings of the International ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS'14), Pages 3-10, Rochester, October 2014.

Tony Morelli, John Foley, Lauren Liebermann and Eelke Folmer. An Exergame to Improve Balance in Children who are Blind. Foundations of Digital Interactive Games (FDG'14), April 2014.

Vinitha Khambadkar and Eelke Folmer. A Tactile-Proprioceptive Communication Aid for Users who are Deafblind. IEEE Haptics Symposium (Haptics'14), pages 239-245, Houston, February 2014.

Ilias Apostolopoulos, Navid Fallah, Eelke Folmer, Kostas Bekris. Integrated Online Localization and Navigation for People with Visual Impairments using Smart Phones, ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems 3:4, Pages 1-25.

Tony Morelli and Eelke Folmer. Real-time Sensory Substitution to Enable Players who are Blind to Play Video games using Whole Body Gestures, Entertainment Computing, 5(1), Pages 83 - 90, 2014.

2013

Vinitha Khambadkar and Eelke Folmer. GIST: A Gestural Interface for Remote Spatial Perception. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST'13), pages 301-310, St. Andrews, October 2013.

Miran Kim, Jeff Angermann, George Bebis and Eelke Folmer. ViziCal: Accurate Energy Expenditure Prediction for Playing Exergames. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST'13), pages 397-404, St. Andrews, October 2013.

Ilias Apostolopoulos, Eelke Folmer, George Bebis. Improving Accessibility of Virtual Worlds by Automatic Object Labeling, Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC'13), Pages 254-265.

Alexander Fiannaca, Tony Morelli and Eelke Folmer. Haptic Target Acquisition to Enable Spatial Gestures in Nonvisual Displays. Proceedings of Graphics Interface (GI'13), pages 213-219, Regina, May 2013.

Burkay Sucu and Eelke Folmer. Haptic Interface for Non-visual Steering. Proceeding of the International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI'13), pages 427-434, Santa Monica, March 2013.

Navid Fallah, Ilias Apostolopoulos, Kostas Bekris, Eelke Folmer, Indoor Human Navigation Systems; A survey, Interacting with Computers, Oxford Journals. 25:1 Pages 21-33, February 2013.

2012

Navid Fallah, Ilias Apostolopoulos, Kostas Bekris, Eelke Folmer, The User as a Sensor: Navigating Users with Visual Impairments in Indoor Spaces using Tactile Landmarks, Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'12), Pages 425-432, Austin, Texas, May 2012.

Ilias Apostolopoulos, Navid Fallah, Eelke Folmer, Kostas Bekris, Integrated Online Localization and Navigation for People with Visual Impairments using Smart Phones, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Pages 1322 -1329, Minnesota, MN, May, 2012.

Tony Morelli and Eelke Folmer, TWuiST: A Discrete Tactile-Proprioceptive Display for Eye and Ear Free Output on Mobile Devices, Proceedings of Haptics Symposium 2012, Pages 443-450, Vancouver, Canada, March 2012. [video]

Eelke Folmer and Tony Morelli. Spatial Gestures using a Tactile-Proprioceptive Display, In Proceedings of Tangible Embodied Interaction (TEI'12), Pages 139-143, Kingston, Canada, February 2012. [video]

2011

Tony Morelli, John Foley, Lauren Lieberman and Eelke Folmer, Improving the lives of youth with VI through exergames, INSIGHT: Research and Practice in Visual Impairment and Blindness , Volume 4:4, pages 160-170, Allen News, November 2011.

Eelke Folmer, Fangzhou Liu, Barrie Ellis. Navigating a 3D Avatar using a Single Switch, In Proceedings of Foundations of Digital Interactive Games (FDG'11). Pages 154-160, Bordeaux France, June 2011. [video]

Daniel Ramos, Eelke Folmer. Supplemental Sonification of a Bingo Game, In Proceedings of Foundations of Digital Interactive Games (FDG'11), Pages 168-173, Bordeaux France, June 2011. [video]

Tony Morelli, Eelke Folmer. Real-time Sensory Substitution to Enable Players who are Blind to Play Gesture based Videogames, In Proceedings of Foundations of Digital Interactive Games (FDG'11),Pages 147-153, Bordeaux France, June 2011. [video]

Bugra Oktay, Eelke Folmer. Syntherella: A Feedback Synthesizer for Efficient Exploration of Virtual Worlds using a Screen Reader, Proceedings of Graphics Interface (GI'11). Pages 65-70, St John, New Foundland, Canada, May 2011.

Tony Morelli, John Foley, Lauren Lieberman, Eelke Folmer. Pet-N-Punch: Upper Body Tactile/Audio Exergame to Engage Children with Visual Impairments into Physical Activity, in Proceedings of Graphics Interface (GI'11). Pages 223-230, St John, New Foundland, Canada, May 2011.

Bei Yuan, Eelke Folmer, Frederick C. Harris, Jr. Game Accessibility: a Survey, Universal Access in the Information Society, Volume 10, Number 1, pages 81-100, March 2011.

2010

Tony Morelli, John Foley, Eelke Folmer. VI Bowling: A Tactile Spatial Exergame for Individuals with Visual Impairments, In Proceedings of the 12th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS'10) Pages 179-186, Orlando, Florida, October 2010. [video]

Ilias Apostolopoulos, Navid Fallah, Eelke Folmer, Kostas Bekris. Feasibility of Interactive Localization and Navigation of People with Visual Impairments, Proceedings of 11th Intelligent Autonomous Systems Conference, Pages 22-32, Ottawa, Ontario, August 2010.

Tony Morelli, John Foley, Luis Columna, Lauren Lieberman, Eelke Folmer. VI-Tennis: a Vibrotactile/Audio Exergame for Players who are Visually Impaired, Proceedings of Foundations of Digital Interactive Games (FDG'10), Pages 147-154, Monterey, California, June 2010.

Bei Yuan, Manjari Sapre, Eelke Folmer. Seek-n-Tag: A Game for Labeling and Classifying Virtual World Objects, Proceedings of Graphics Interface (GI'10). Pages 201-208, Ottawa, Ontario, June 2010. [video]

Bugra Oktay, Eelke Folmer. TextSL: a screen reader accessible interface for Second Life, Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A'10) Raleigh, North Caroline, April 2010. [video]

Bugra Oktay, Eelke Folmer. Synthesizing meaningful feedback for exploring virtual worlds using a screen reader, Proceedings of the 28th of the International Conference extended abstracts on Human factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA'10) Atlanta, Georgia, April 2010. [video]

2009

Eelke Folmer, Bei Yuan, Dave Carr, Manjari Sapre. TextSL: A Command-Based Virtual World Interface for the Visually Impaired, In Proceedings of the 11th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS'09), Pages 59-66, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 2009. [video]

2008

Bei Yuan and Eelke Folmer. Blind hero: Enabling guitar hero for the visually impaired. In Proceedings of the 10th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS'08), pages 169-176, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, October 2008. [video]

Eelke Folmer and Jan Bosch. Experiences with Software Architecture analysis of Usability International Journal of Information Technology and Web Engineering Volume 3, Issue 4, Pages 1 - 29, December 2008.

2007

Eelke Folmer. Component Based Game Development In Proceedings 10th International ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE'07), pages 65-73, Medford, USA, July 2007.

Eelke Folmer and Jan Bosch. A Pattern Framework for Software Quality Assessment and Tradeoff Analysis tradeoffs International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering Volume 17, Issue 4 Pages 515-538, June 2007.

2006

Eelke Folmer. Usability Patterns in Games. In Proceedings of the Futureplay 2006 conference, London, Ontario, Canada, October 2006.

Eelke Folmer, Martijn van Welie and Jan Bosch. Bridging Patterns - an approach to bridge gaps between SE and HCI Journal of Information and Software Technology Volume 48, Issue 2, Pages 69-89, February 2006.

2005

Eelke Folmer, Jan Bosch, Case studies on Analyzing Software Architectures for Usability, Proceedings of the 31st EUROMICRO Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications, Porto, Portugal, September 2005.

Eelke Folmer and Jan Bosch. Cost Effective Development of Usable Systems; Gaps between HCI and Software Architecture Design In Proc. International Conference on Information Systems Development 2005, Karlstad August 2005

2004

Eelke Folmer, Jilles van Gurp and Jan Bosch. Scenario-Based Assessment of Software Architecture Usability The 9th IFIP Working Conference on Engineering for Human-Computer Interaction, Pages 321-339 Hamburg, Germany,July 2004

Eelke Folmer, Jan Bosch. Architecting for usability; a survey Journal of Systems and Software Volume 70, Issue 1. Pages 61-78. January 2004

2003

Eelke Folmer, Jilles van Gurp and Jan Bosch. A Framework for capturing the relationship between usability and software architecture Software Process: Improvement and Practice Volume 8, Issue 2. Pages 67-87. June 2003

Eelke Folmer, Jan Bosch, Usability patterns in Software Architecture,Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Volume I Pages 93-97, Crete, Greece, June 2003

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