Mary Spio (right) and Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade have collaborated on virtual reality learning experiences on how to become a better basketball player.
None of it made sense.
Whenever Mary Spio ’98 wore a virtual reality (VR) headset, she would feel nauseous and get sick. She wasn’t alone. Other women who tried on a VR headset told Spio they felt the same way.
Spio set out to determine the root cause of these issues, even after some of the largest virtual reality companies rejected her idea that there was an issue specifically for women. What she discovered would revolutionize the VR industry, making the technology accessible and enjoyable for everyone.
“VR headsets involve the interpupillary distance [IPD] or the eye distance, and women and men have very different eye distances. The lower limit of everything that had been built at that time was at the upper limit for women, which meant when the average woman put on the VR headset, the eyeballs were being pulled apart and she suffered from audiovisual incoherence. They would get sick and couldn’t enjoy the experience as it was intended,” says Spio, who earned an electrical engineering degree from the College of Engineering and Computer Science.
Working with an ophthalmologist and a scientist that built nothing but lenses, Spio started studying VR headsets. She quickly learned that the dynamic range of the lenses being used was way outside the range for women and children, which motivated Spio to build the first headset with the IPD adjustment and featured the correct lens range for users of all ages.
For users who didn’t grow up playing video games, Spio also created a patent-awarded, easy-to-use controller that eliminated another barrier to entry.
“Men and women just see the world differently, and that carries over into VR. I filled this gap that no one was looking at. It was a gap they didn’t even know existed. In a way, I was able to build this technology and now we have more women using our platform,” Spio says.
Mary Spio
Today, Spio is the founder and CEO of CEEK VR, a developer of premium social virtual and augmented reality experiences that simulate communal experiences, such as attending a live concert, learning in a classroom or cheering on your favorite team at a sporting event. She has even collaborated with Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade on virtual reality learning experiences about becoming a better basketball player.
The technology is being leveraged by industries ranging from health care to entertainment to offer participants hands-on training that mimics real-world scenarios and can be more impactful than traditional learning measures.
Her career accolades include being named an NBC News 100 History Makers in the Making, receiving Boeing’s Outstanding Achievement in Electrical Engineering Award, and earning an Arents Award in 2017, the highest award Syracuse University bestows on its alumni.
Spio sat down with SU News to discuss her revolutionary career, why she’s driven to use the technology to help underrepresented members of society and the indelible impact Syracuse University has had on her life.
I had an online video platform that was being used by a lot of different companies, including Xbox. I envisioned that VR could be a great way for people to learn, because it was just learning by doing. But everything then was focused on games, which is great, but I wanted to use this technology for something more than video games. I knew this technology could be used for CPR training, for example. That was one of the first things we built with Miami Children’s Hospital was an infant, child and adult CPR program.
In CPR, there was a huge gap between nursing students and the average age of a nurse, and at the time, a lot of nursing students were dropping out not because they couldn’t do the studies. They were dropping out because of a confidence and a skill gap. VR became a way to train nurses or create nursing residencies.
If you’re in a situation where a child requires CPR or someone has sepsis, you can learn how to save that person or you can make mistakes without feeling like something bad could happen, which is where that confidence gap lies. Plus, they could learn skills you could only do on a live patient like intubation.
Mary Spio
I was born in Syracuse and my dad [John Spio G’72] graduated from Syracuse University, but I took a zigzag journey because I grew up in Ghana. My dad was an activist and that’s why he went back to Ghana after I was born. I came back to the U.S. when I was 16, and the opportunities I’ve been able to tap into all happened because I was able to get a good education and build up these networks.
All I want is to create a technology that allows people to contribute value, because that’s all I wanted to do. Through my path of going to work for McDonald’s, joining the military, coming back to Syracuse University to study electrical engineering and computer science, and earning my master’s in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech, all of that was so I could discover and contribute value to society. I want people to use this technology to be exposed to their passions and learn where this could lead them and the ways they can contribute their own impact.
It’s very exciting! The biggest use that we’re seeing for VR, especially in areas where people are paying for the service, staying the longest and seeing the biggest impact is in things like self-education. We’re seeing giant leaps in how people can self-educate and how they can build their skills using this technology. Skills like operating a forklift that are dangerous, complicated and expensive, we’re now simplifying with this technology.
Syracuse holds such a great place in my heart. The support I received while at Syracuse was incredible. I tell this story about when I was in my electrical engineering lab, the table that I used belonged to the space commander, Eileen Collins ’78, H’01. My ECS lab manager, [Don Shaw] always told me “This is Eileen’s table, so you have to do great things here.” When I did my senior project, which won the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers [IEEE] Award, Don said, “this is your table now.”
Syracuse was such a fertile ground that rewarded those who were committed to learning. The support and what I learned was really invaluable and I always want to give back because I received so much.
