Laura Arns is the Associate Director and a Research Scientist for the Envision Center at Purdue University . She also holds a courtesy Assistant Professor appointment with the Purdue Department of Computer Graphics Technology, where she teaches a graduate course on virtual environments and an undergraduate course on computer graphics programming. Dr. Arns received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Iowa State University in 2002, and also holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Iowa State University and a B.A. in Computer Science and Mathematics from Wartburg College . Prior to joining Purdue, Dr. Arns was a postdoctoral researcher with the Virtual Reality Applications Center at Iowa State University , where she worked on a number of virtual reality projects ranging from multivariate statistical data visualization to oil field exploration. Her research interests are in the areas of applied virtual environments, human factors in virtual reality, and virtual reality usability. Current research projects include: the use of portable, inexpensive VR technology for teaching and understanding convection flow in the Earth's mantle; and AGJuggler, a toolkit for shared virtual environments via the Access Grid.