CEO/CoFounder of MedMicroMaps Dr. Jane spreads our mission with XR Women!

In the whirlwind that was April, I haven't posted in a while and have been busy building and creating. I recently had the honor to present for XR Women Wednesday meetups (full episode on Youtube). This amazing community of innovators meets every week in different social metaverse platform, most of which are accessible with your phone. I found this group a year ago, which has been a major source of inspiration and motivation to be a trailblazer in our shared industry.

This clip gets to the fundamental problem that MedMicroMaps is solving, originating from my postdoctoral experiences at UCSD and San Diego State 2010-2012. Microbiology labs are expensive and often dangerous, creating a major disparity for health science educators and learners in low resourced environments.

As a visual and hands-on learner myself, I dedicated my career to providing my students with any resource that will help them learn. I have spent 1000's of hours using microscopes, so my imagination is rich with colorful, funky cool microbes. The tools during the pandemic were inefficient, with learning dependent on Zoom classes on a 2D screen, PPT bullet points and text-only multi-choice questions.

Each of our 3D microbe assets are modeled on real images from light and electron microscopes instead of inaccurate 2D cartoon sketches that dominate microbiology textbooks. Another huge benefit of working in a virtual world is that the microbes can be scaled to big or small to explore different parts of their biology. I love the giant Giardia in the XR Women space as the parasite associated with diarrhea looks like a scary alien monster. FYI, don't ever drink from a fresh water stream as it's likely contaminated with Giardia-infected animal poop.

In our gameplay, the microbes start of white and the player must learn with the AI and an information tablet to discover the true color and its biology classification. I was struggling during the set of the XR Women space when I made Influenza virus GIANT! This gives a new meaning to Super Bug!

As we prepare for the launch of our Unity-based VR app on May 17th, I will be posting more regularly on social media so we appreciate all likes, comments and especially shares with your family friends, students and peers.

Please reach out if you have any questions or comments about XR Women, Engage or our crazy cool microbes!

All the best,

Dr. Jane