Faculty

Gregory Welch is a Pegasus Professor and the AdventHealth Endowed Chair in Healthcare Simulation at the University of Central Florida, with appointments in the College of Nursing, the College of Engineering & Computer Science, and the Institute for Simulation & Training. He is also co-director of the Synthetic Reality Laboratory at UCF. Prior to UCF, he was a research professor at the University of North Carolina where he worked on the Voyager spacecraft project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and on airborne electronic countermeasures at Northrop-Grumman’s Defense Systems Division. He conducts research in areas including virtual and augmented reality, human-computer interaction, human motion tracking, and human surrogates for training and practice, with a focus on applications in healthcare and defense. He has co-chaired numerous international conferences, workshops and seminars in these areas, co-authored more than 200 associated publications, and is a co-inventor on multiple patents. His 1995 introductory article on the Kalman filter has been cited more than 13,000 times.

Education

• PhD in Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• MS in Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• BS in Electrical Engineering Technology, Purdue University

Selected Editorial Activities

• Associate Editor, PRESENCE: Virtual and Augmented Reality
• Associate Editor, Frontiers in Virtual Reality

Selected Awards & Honors

• Visualization and Graphics Technical Community Virtual Reality Service Award, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2026
• Academy of Science, Engineering & Medicine of Florida, 2025
• Fellow, IEEE, 2022
• Fellow, National Academy of Inventors, 2021
• Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award, IEEE, 2018
• International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Long Lasting Impact Paper Award, IEEE, 2016

Selected Professional Activities

• Association for Computing Machinery
• European Association for Computer Graphics
• Founding Member, International Virtual Reality and Healthcare Association
• Society for Simulation in Healthcare
• International Nursing Association of Clinical Simulation & Learning