Joan Llobera

Joan Llobera is a virtual reality scientist whose work brings together electrical engineering, cognitive science, software development and behavioural research. His research has recently focused on bringing physics-based character animation into virtual reality, and his academic work has explored embodiment, social interaction, auditory perception and interactive storytelling. He shares research papers, teaching materials and open-source software through his website.

From 2017 to 2020, Llobera created and taught undergraduate and graduate courses at ENTI, a university school associated with the University of Barcelona. Topics included computer graphics and character-animation algorithms; in 2021, he also taught physics-based character animation at SIGGRAPH. His software contributions include tools for physics-based interactive characters, including Marathon Environments and the later Modular Agents framework, as well as a Behaviour Networks implementation for Unity3D.

Llobera has also founded or co-founded two companies: Timepath, focused on embodied, socially interactive VR experiences, and IZI Record, which used deep learning to automatically edit concert videos recorded by different people. His creative interests include music, short stories, photography, film and videogames.