About the AR/VR Studio
The AR/VR Studio is a dedicated space for the exploration of cutting-edge immersive technologies — physically and imaginatively. The AR/VR Studio is equipped with technologies that include various software and design platforms, multiple headset configurations, workstations, and filming resources to help students experiment and create innovations in a wide range of industries.
Please note: the AR/VR Studio is a resource for all degree-seeking Harvard students.
What can you do here?
- Experience the latest AR/VR equipment in an open session.
- Learn about the technology with a dedicated team of experienced TAs.
- Understand how to apply the tech to your specific field and build deeper learnings with one-on-one meetings.
- Build MVPs and prototypes when you attend workshops.
- Imagine the future of this technology by attending guest speaker symposiums, when available.
Available Sessions:
Our workshops are constantly evolving based on what people need. If you’d like to suggest a specific workshop or training session, please email i-lab@harvard.edu to let us know!
Office Hours/Trainings
Please view the bios of the AR/VR staff members below, and reserve a time to connect with them. Please note a training must be completed before you can independently access the studio.
Play Sessions
- Meta Quest Play Session – Coming soon
- Microsoft HoloLens Session – Coming soon
Available equipment:
- Meta Quest 2 HMDs
- High Performance PCs
- The HTC Vive
- Microsoft HoloLens 2
- Magic Leap
- Software such as Unity
- Other production software
AR/VR Staff Bios
Yaser Mahmoud
Yaser is specialized in product & strategy in Augmented and Virtual Reality and passionate about the intersection of technology and social value. He is especially interested in applications of AR/VR in education, social, and productivity.
Yaser is currently pursuing his MBA at Harvard Business School. He currently serves as Chapter President for the VRAR Association, a global organization with 35K+ professions and 4400+ companies & schools. He is also a VC Investment Fellow with Owl Ventures, where he focuses on Metaverse EdTech Startups.
Prior to that, Yaser was a Product Strategy Lead at Meta, where he helped product leadership make the best strategic decisions in Meta’s line of Emerging Products, focused on VR (Oculus), AR, and Payments.
Before Meta, Yaser was a Product Manager at SmartAsset, a financial technology startup (now unicorn) in NYC. Prior to SmartAsset, he was management consultant at Deloitte, where he helped answer strategic questions for clients.
Yaser graduated from Yale with a BA in Economics and Global Affairs. In his spare time, he loves snowboarding, scuba diving, soccer, playing guitar, food, and books.
Solomon Demmessie
Solomon is passionate about AR/VR as well as trust and safety issues in consumer technology. He is an avid VR gamer and loves to show people the magic of VR gaming.
He is currently pursuing his MBA at Harvard Business School and is involved with the Entrepreneurship club as well as the Tech club. He has experience working in Trust & Safety at Meta, as well as experience working at a major video game company.
Solomon graduated from the University of Michigan with a BS in Computer Science. In his free time he loves video games, triathlons, and hiking.
Matt Cook
Matt Cook is Digital Scholarship Program Manager at Harvard Library. In this role, Matt provides instruction, assists in the development of technology spaces, and leads efforts to digitize and explore heterogenous (i.e. text, artifacts, AV, etc.) material collections, at scale, while keeping “humans in the loop” through the use of augmented and virtual reality interfaces. As a researcher, Matt also studies the state and trajectory of digital scholarship generally, what it takes to manage exploratory teams in libraries, and the scholarly impact of new knowledge services related to physical fabrication and mindfulness. Find out more at mncook.net.
Harvard’s Role in the History of AR/VR
Virtual reality — and the related fields of augmented reality and mixed reality — has its foundational roots at Harvard. From 1965 to 1968, Ivan Sutherland, an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Harvard, helped create the first virtual reality and augmented reality head-mounted display system, named “The Sword of Damocles.” Today, across Harvard, AR, VR, and MR (mixed reality) technologies are being leveraged in new and unique ways by students, researchers, faculty, and more. We want to give the students who are ideating around this as broad a playground to play in as can be imagined.
Rules, Policies, and Security
Learn about our security policies and rules-of-use.