Empathic Computing Laboratory

The Empathic Computing Laboratory (ECL) is an academic research group based at the University of Auckland, jointly directed by Professor Mark Billinghurst, one of the most cited researchers globally in augmented and virtual reality. The lab investigates how virtual and physical worlds can be merged to support richer human collaboration, with recent projects exploring shared eye gaze, gesture sharing, and physiological sensing to measure synchronisation between people working on shared tasks remotely. Billinghurst has published more than 650 papers on AR, VR, and related fields, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and recipient of the ISMAR Career Impact Award. The ECL's work sits at the research frontier of New Zealand's XR sector, feeding advances that eventually filter through to commercial products.