Mel Slater
Professor of Virtual Environments
Department of Computer Science
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
UK

m.slater@cs.ucl.ac.uk

+44 (0)20 7679 3709 Tel
+44 (0)20 7387 1397 Fax

My major research interest is the question of what makes virtual reality work, how is it possible to build virtual environments such that people respond realistically to events within them? What scientific explanations are there of this phenomenon? On the other side I also lead research on computer graphics aspects of virtual environments, in particular the issue of real-time global illumination. For this work I was supported by an EPSRC Senior Research Fellowship for 5 years from 1999.

I am an ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona, Spain, with several projects and PhD students remaining at UCL.

Virtual Milgram Experiment

We carried out a version of the famous Obedience Experiments by Stanley Milgram but in an immersive virtual reality. The purpose was to examine the extent to which people would respond to the situation as if it were real. The results are reported in the following paper:

Slater M, Antley A, Davison A, Swapp D, Guger C, Barker, C., Pistrang, N., Sanchez-Vives, M.V. (2006) A Virtual Reprise of the Stanley Milgram Obedience Experiments. PLoS ONE 1(1): e39. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000039.

There is a summary news article in Nature and a brief discussion of some surrounding ethical issues in the New Scientist Technology blog ('Morals in Cyberspace', 21st December, 2006).

Further Information