The University of Kentucky College of Communication and Information CoLab is a collaborative laboratory dedicated to innovative technology research through an ongoing collaboration between staff, faculty, and students at the University of Kentucky. The goal of our laboratory is to improve the lives of others by improving current technologies and by creating new and innovative technologies based on present gaps in the industry.

Our project is Arcadian Dream: An Escape from Pediatric Cancer. The goal is to create a simple, yet intuitive, virtual reality (VR) gaming experience for children who are undergoing chemotherapy and similar cancer treatments. The main premise for this project is a fun and kid-friendly environment in which pediatric patients can escape the stress from being in a hospital environment. We want to improve the patient's quality of life and create a distraction from the hospital environment. While in our VR world, the patients would be able to explore, play games, communicate with others and just have fun.

This VR experience will allow us to focus on helping children be more psychologically comfortable during treatments. This has the potential to open many doors in the realm of clinical virtual reality research in order to improve patients' quality-of-life.