MiXR Studios Podcast: Anti-Black Racism and the Promise of Virtual Reality with Guest Dr. Courtney Cogburn

Jeremy Nelson, Director of the XR Initiative

In this week’s MiXR Studios podcast, we continue our conversation with Dr. Courtney Cogburn from Columbia University and discuss her groundbreaking work in virtual reality with 1000 Cut Journey and how it is as important as ever in the midst of the current Black Lives Matters movement. In the 1000 Cut Journey VR experience, the user becomes Mike Sterling, a black man, and experiences racism at various points of his life.

In my discussion with Courtney, we cover a range of topics that include how her work has evolved to what her group has been doing with corporations to use VR to have a real conversation and make a change.

Dr. Cogburn’s transdisciplinary work focuses on how to characterize and measure racism and its effects on health. We talk about the intersection of racism, population health, and emerging technologies and how to make a difference. We talk about how the current social movements have validated the work she has been doing and are as critical as ever. Dr. Cogburn’s team has worked with law firms, medical schools, tech & media companies to make real change. Dr. Cogburn highlights a partnership with a medical school and how this work is critical in medicine. In her work, VR is a vehicle to start a conversation and the dialogue is more important than experiencing the VR. She discussed how she decides which corporations to work with and what change she is hoping to make.

We have a fascinating conversation about how the University of Michigan has created an environment where race is being discussed and ideas can be debated openly. We talk about the experiences we both had while attending U-M and how the deliberate decisions made here have created a model for other institutions. Our conversation covered a broad spectrum of topics from COVID-19 to structural racism, and how those realities intersect as black individuals are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.

Courtney says her motivation to use VR was driven by frustration with other methods of showing data, and how VR could bring the conversation to another level. The opportunities for institutions of higher education to build upon her work to enhance and create experiences to create institutional change. Her message for the future is “VR AND” with a focus on how VR could help people understand and address social issues. Her next project begins to visualize the data about racism in a way to push the boundaries on how to learn and engage.

I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Dr. Cogburn and I am grateful for the important work she and her team are doing with VR in this space. Please share with us what you would like to learn more about in the XR space at [email protected].

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Transcript: MiXR Studios, Episode 7

Jeremy Nelson (00:05):
Hello, I’m Jeremy Nelson. And today we are talking with Dr. Courtney Cogburn, who is an associate professor at the Columbia University school of social work and faculty of the Columbia population research center and a University of Michigan alum. We are talking about her critical work with anti-black racism and virtual reality in her 1000 cut journey experience on how she thinks about systemic racism and the opportunity to make a difference. Coming up next in our mixr podcast.

Jeremy Nelson (00:44):
Hello, Dr. Cogburn, thank you for joining us today.

Courtney Cogburn (00:47):
Thank you for having me. I’m delighted to join you.

Jeremy Nelson (00:50):
Yeah, we’re really excited to have you back and continue the conversation we started earlier this year. A lot has happened since, since you were here in January, it seems like a lifetime ago. So much has changed.

Courtney Cogburn (01:04):
So much has changed, so much is actively changing. I think we’re all just trying to keep up.

Jeremy Nelson (01:09):
Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know on so many levels, um, well, for some of our listeners that weren’t able to attend your, your session in January or, or may not be familiar with your work, would you mind giving a little context on your area of research and then the work you’ve done in virtual reality?

Courtney Cogburn (01:27):
Sure, sure. So I, um, I like to fancy myself a transdisciplinary researcher, meaning that I try to blend methods and theory from across multiple disciplines to, to address issues of racism. And I focus specifically on how we characterize and measure racism, um, in part, because, uh, I’m trying to understand the effects of exposure to racism on health. Um, but also, uh, have that characterization of racism has become important to a broader discourse for understanding a variety of issues I think that we’re facing in society and have really come to a point where I’ve come to a point where I feel like more people need to be on the same page about what racism is and how it functions in order for us to collectively make better decisions about what to do about it. Um, and, uh, that, uh, goal led me to work in virtual reality

Courtney Cogburn (02:30):
funny enough. Um, so using VR, I, um, and I should say and often say when I, when I talk about my work in this way, that I had never used VR when I first started, um, working in this area, when I wrote the proposal to fund our initial project, but really felt that the, the old adage of being able to walk in someone else’s shoes, um, could be achieved potentially using virtual reality. So, I reached out to a partner at Stanford who had been working in virtual reality. We call VR for over 20 years and sort of again, taking this transdisciplinary approach, blended our areas of expertise and our backgrounds to create a virtual reality experience targeting some of these issues. I’m now kind of in three different spaces, conceptual work around what racism is, um, uh, population health research, where I’m trying to assess the effects of racism on health and work in emerging technologies where I’m trying to intervene on problems of racism in society.

Jeremy Nelson (03:34):
Yeah, it’s, you’re, you’re at the intersection of it all, especially right now. It seems like. So, yeah, you’ve just described like the last three months seems like that your work’s gone on much longer than that. Um, yeah. And you know, for, for our listeners, you know, Dr. Cogburn came out and gave a presentation in January and we have a video of it, uh, we’ll make a reference to that to see some of the work. It was fascinating. It was, it was powerful, I think, for the, the audience and then the discussions were great. And, you know, how, how has your work changed since we, since we last saw you in January, what’s what’s evolved?

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Well, my, my work hasn’t changed as, as you just pointed out, it was already right at the epicenter of all these things. Um, I think, uh, you know, continuing to do more of, of what we’ve been doing. So in addition to, you know, data analysis and writing up papers related to the, the empirical work that I’ve been doing have been contacted by, you know, major corporations, um, the leadership of these corporations who are in earnest, reaching out, trying to get support around, you know, what they do next and what, what steps they take, I’m interested in using the VR to help people better understand these issues. Um, so if, if anything, um, I feel there’s just been, you know, additional validation that the work we’ve been doing is, um, socially relevant and important, um, and potentially serves, um, a critical role in, in helping people frame and understand these issues, which, which, again, from my perspective, is key, any initiative policy that you’re going to support in your organization or training that you’re going to launch, all of that is driven by your understanding of what you think the problem is. Um, and so, you know, getting firm grounding on the nature of racism, not only in society, but how it functions within our organizations, I think is, is critical to actually making meaningful progress in these areas.

Jeremy Nelson (05:48):
Have you brought The Thousand Cut Journey experience to corporations in the past, or have you done, you know, I know you, you brought it to a course here at Michigan, and we’ll talk about that in a little bit, but have you worked with any companies or done research kind of in a, uh, employer or employee setting?

Courtney Cogburn (06:04):
Yeah, we have, we’ve worked with law firms, medical schools, tech and media companies. Um, um, so there, there was interest sort of building around this already. Um, we actually have a paper that was just officially accepted today based on a medical school partnership using the virtual reality. Um, it’s coming out in academic medicine where we’re talking about, um, why these issues are so critical in medicine and talking about our partnership and some cursory, um, affects that we observed as a result of the VR. So yes, we’ve, we’ve definitely been working in this space and, um, have been, you know, trying to imagine what are the most meaningful ways forward? What are the most meaningful partnerships for, what is the most meaningful way to use this particular technology? Um, so, um, I’m excited that, uh, people are, you know, I guess exposure is, is increasing even more, interest is increasing. So we’re excited about that.

Jeremy Nelson (07:06):
Yeah, no, congratulations on the paper. That’s, that’s exciting. Yeah. And, you know, I know when, when you brought the experience to the University of Michigan with professor, Sarah Blair’s course, it was important to have, you know, some scaffolding in place, um, you know, opportunity for discussion and debrief. Um, how do you see that, you know, working with these companies, or how do you engage with a company that, you know, to make sure they’re really in it for the right reasons or wanting to do this and to make a difference versus, you know, checking a box or something like that.

Courtney Cogburn (07:39):
Yeah, yeah. It became clear very early on that. Um, and I, I knew this going in as well, but it was solidified once we started having people go through the virtual reality experience that the VR is not a magic pill. It’s not going to sort of suddenly change your understanding of everything. I think it’s quite powerful, but you need to do something with that feeling. You, you know, that feeling you have when you come out of that, you need something with that. So I think Dr. Blair’s course is I think a perfect example where students are critically examining what they’ve seen in the VR, they’re critically examining the tech, they’re imagining other kinds of applications. I think that type of engagement is really important. Um, when we start to think about what’s the right partner for us, you know, we, we have lots of interest from multiple people at multiple, these, um, we have to choose, you know, I’m only one person, um, who, how do we decide who we work with?

Courtney Cogburn (08:35):
And for us, for me, organizations that aren’t running from race. And I know a lot of people have turned to raise recently and they’re naming anti racism and anti-black racism explicitly. That was not the case. Right, right. Right. People like to talk about diversity is sort of this umbrella term, we’re really getting more comfortable talking about gender issues. Uh, but people were still incredibly uncomfortable naming, accepting the significance of race and racism. Um, so that’s my low bar. Are you afraid of using the word, race and racism? Uh, and if you are then no, you know, you’re starting something you’re starting somewhere else and work with someone else maybe. Um, but yeah, that’s kind of a key piece, but, um, you know, really trying to get a sense of, um, uh, are they ready to, uh, uh, who were they asking me to meet with, right? Are they, are, are they involving senior leadership in the conversations? Then, you know, that those sorts of gestures indicate to me that you’re serious about the problem. Um, if you come to me and say, how do we train all 300 of, you know, our mid level or, um, entry-level employees? That feels potentially more like you’re trying to check a box, um, rather than really engaging, what is this, what do you think the effects of this are? Who should be the target? Right? Meaningful conversations around what we’ve been learning and what we’re doing.

Jeremy Nelson (10:09):
Well, it has to be the thread drop thread line through the entire organization to really move the needle. It can’t just be, everyone else.

Courtney Cogburn (10:17):
Yeah. It’s been interesting. I just got off of a call with someone from an organization and that organization just moved their chief diversity officer into the C suite and was like, of course, that person should be in the C suite, can’t be the design programming office. Right. That sort of puts together activities for employees, um, the work of diversity, equity inclusion is a thread like you just said throughout the entire organization. Um, and hopefully people are really starting to come to terms with it. Um, and certainly I know in, in spaces like law, where, um, you know, they’ve made these major investments in DEI over the past, you know, 20 years and we’re expecting to see some payoffs at this point, and they’re not seeing them or only seeing them for white women. Um, and when I see those kinds of patterns in people’s data, I say, it’s because you ignored race. You didn’t deal with race explicitly, you dealt with gender and thought everything else would kind of come together all together. And that’s just not, what’s bearing out in, in what we’re observing. So, um, I think it’s encouraging people to using the word race, um, word racism, and we’ll see, we’ll see what sort of meaningful activities come next.

Jeremy Nelson (11:34):
Yeah, no, I mean, I think it’s fundamental here at the University of Michigan. I mean, you know, you’re, you’re an alum and you spend a lot of time here. Like it’s, it’s sometimes I feel like we’re in a bubble to some degree, like why isn’t everyone else see it this way or experience it this way, but it was, you know, for me, you know, I grew up in a, a rural, you know, mostly Caucasian town and, you know, I wasn’t exposed a lot. And I think that was one of the, a lot of just different people, different races, different opinions. And I think that was one of the most valuable experiences for me coming to Michigan is just being exposed to so many different people, so many different races, like just what is possible. I didn’t, I didn’t even have a sense of, you know, just had all these preconceived notions and, you know, racist thoughts. And I just didn’t, I didn’t know any different. And I think that’s been such a change for me personally.

Courtney Cogburn (12:25):
Yeah. And I, um, you know, part of what I was just sort of bragging about Michigan in a talk I gave, I think it was yesterday, I’m losing track of time and it happened. And, um, I was saying, you know, it’s not like Michigan’s perfect by any stretch right? I still encountered racism regularly as a student there. I said, the difference is that Michigan talks about it, um, that people are having conversations that there are policy shifts that we can actually observe. There’s moving of money, right? To actually support some of these things. And so, um, again, still Michigan, shouldn’t be the bar, right? There’s still a lot, a lot of work to do, but even that being a student in that kind of climate makes a world of difference. Um, feeling that at least you’re being listened to, um, conversations are at least happening that you see in your black faculty and administrators, um, in positions of power who are help shaping the institution and the decisions and discussions that are happening, that makes a big difference.

Courtney Cogburn (13:32):
Um, and it’s not lip service, right? It’s, it’s sort of putting investment into these things that really matter. And I think to your point about the way you grew up, um, I think more and more people are starting to frame that, um, sort of starting to understand that that was constructed right? That my life was so white, didn’t have exposure to other people was a thing that was built to a large degree in terms of how neighborhoods were, were structured. And we just happened to kind of end up in these racially segregated spaces. And sometimes people say, well, yeah, people just who are similar, like to live together. And that’s how they end up. Like, no, that’s not how that works actually. Um, people are certain people are encouraged to live in some places and other places and it’s, it can be more difficult to live in other places. And so these spaces get constructed and then fuel the very thing that we say we wanted to fight against. Right. That, um, those types of organic, meaningful relationships with people who are different from you in any number of ways are critical. And so many people don’t have it because they have sort of racially sheltered existences.

Jeremy Nelson (14:46):
Yeah. And I mean, I didn’t even know. I mean, it was just like, it was wasn’t necessary what I was looking for, but it just, it was an experience that I was able to embrace once I got here and thankful for that. Um, at least as a start, well, you know, kind of along kind of what’s happening currently, you know, what is your thinking regarding the connection between your work and some of the most recent issues with violence against the black community, you know, racial justice, how is that impacting your work or changing any attitudes from the folks you’re talking with?

Courtney Cogburn (15:20):
Yeah, I think, I think I’m seeing a couple of things. Um, so at first I have to say it’s, um, a complicated reaction that I’m having to this personally. Um, so I am, um, encouraged that people are talking and thinking about this and I’m seeing more and more non-black people in the street marching and protesting, you know, over and over and over again. Um, people, you know, making people or who organizations making statements or reshuffling leadership in their organizations, right? All of this is encouraging. It’s complicated because this is where we have always lived. George Floyd is not any different really than any of the other things that we’ve been marching and gelling and fighting for decades. And it’s, uh, more than a little frustrating that it’s something so extreme, that someone’s public lynching was what was necessary for, you know, the general public and white people in particular to wake up.

Courtney Cogburn (16:30):
And that’s part of that frustration is part of what pushes me to say. I can guarantee you your black colleagues and students and employees have already been saying this and talking about this and trying to get you to listen. And you worked. So you have to come to terms with that yourself. Um, why were you ignoring this? Why were you avoiding these issues? Um, and so for me, there’s a shift in not just trying to so much of my work has been just convinced, trying to convince people to listen and pay attention. And now I’m sort of holding them accountable for their failure to listen before this and their failure to act before this, because this is not new. This has always been where we’ve lived. We’ve seen these cycles of reconstruction and, um, black people trying to build their lives and then being met with white racial violence.

Courtney Cogburn (17:27):
And then new legislation is put in place to try and, you know, create equality for black people. And that’s met with white racial violence. And, you know, it’s a cycle that we’ve been in since the birth of this country. Um, we have to come to terms with that and be very, very honest about our history and how that history continues to persist in, in our thumbs, in our cultural practices and our beliefs about, um, uh, who’s valuable and who’s not, um, and it shouldn’t take a public lynching to do, you know, data around, um, employment, disparities, mass incarceration, health inequities, all of those things should have been indicators to you. We don’t live in an equal society, but that that’s not where the general public was in framing those issues.

Jeremy Nelson (18:16):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I, and I wonder how much, you know, with, with the COVID, it seems to be affecting, you know, black people and other races more, uh, more than others, right? At least in some areas, especially here in Detroit, it’s a much higher number, which is terrible.

Courtney Cogburn (18:33):
Yeah. No, that’s, it’s, it’s definitely the pattern that we’re observing nationally in, and my concern that with all the data that’s missing around, um, COVID in terms of, you know, um, consistent documentation of, of demographic data, um, that the patterns’ probably worse than what we’re already seeing, but nationally we’re already seeing that infection rates are higher and mortality rates are higher and not just astoundingly higher, you know, three, five times higher. Um, that’s not a pattern I’ve talked about this right on the health side of my, my work, when you see a pattern like this. Um, and we see it for most, a lot of the major diseases in our society. We see the same pattern. So COVID is not a surprise for people who think about this, to then go to an individual level explanation for why we’re observing this massive population level pattern. Well, if they just distanced, they’re not practicing social distancing.

Courtney Cogburn (19:36):
If they just ate better, then they wouldn’t have these underlying diseases. So you’re basically saying this whole group of people are engaged in the exact same behaviors that consistently enough to lead us to this pattern, that’s absurd, right. They’re sort of moving as robots, eating the exact same things and doing the exact same. That’s not how this works. Right? And so when you see a pattern like that, you need to turn to structural reasons that would be pointing an entire group of people in this sort of equal way. Um, and you know, in my conversations around that is structural racism. That is what structural racism is, right? It’s not an individual choice to do something. It is a whole system that’s creating a circumstance for a group of people. And it’s that shared circumstance that produces to this shared outcome across this entire group of people.

Courtney Cogburn (20:34):
Right? And so, um, that type of understanding, uh, uh, is something that is not new. I am certainly not the first person to talk about this, there are decades of research of people yelling and screaming and documenting these things. Um, and so I think the shift to your, to your original question, the shift in my work has not, not my work at all, but it’s how I am engaging people around my work, which is doing, you see how we’ve always been saying this? Do you, you see now that it’s not just police violence, do you see now that, um, uh, educational inequities, um, weren’t, um, achievement problems with black children, they were, it’s a systemic problem around the nation that’s producing outcome and that’s the shift, right. Really force people to connect the dots. Um, and in very concrete, concrete ways, now that I feel like they’re starting to get it. Um, and honestly, you know, Jeremy, that was the point of the VR was we have all this data, journalists, artists, filmmakers, musicians, have all been talking and documenting and yelling these things. And it’s still not, you’re still not getting it. So, uh, okay. Now let’s try VR. Sure, sure. That works. We shouldn’t have to do that because you know, the evidence is already clearly there for you to see and digest. Um, but that was the motivation of the VR was trying to help people engage in a deeper way for these very, um, insidious issues.

Jeremy Nelson (22:15):
Yeah. I mean, well, it’s, it’s, it’s very powerful. I mean, it’s, it’s a great work you’ve done. What, what possibilities do you see or cautions about, you know, continuing to move or scale that you, we have access issues with VR and headsets and all that, especially right now, but yeah. What possibilities or cautions do you see about moving this into classrooms or into boardrooms from a DEI standpoint

Courtney Cogburn (22:39):
For us the opportunity to, so I think in terms of classroom, being able to partner with, with educators at primary and secondary lab levels and continuing to do that in higher education to really think about the curricula compliments to the VR, and also understanding that the piece that we created was just an exploratory first shot doing this. Um, so are there opportunities for us and for other people to create the kinds of virtual reality experiences that, you know, really push and expand our learning and, and understanding? And then in, in corporate settings, this, this is all very new, but in corporate settings, we’re trying to understand, I have a clear sense that I think it’s best to target senior leadership in these, in these organizations, what are the other types of supports that they need after they’ve gone through the VR experience to really help move toward institutional change and that some of that I can do and support, but that’s really what they have built in house and really supporting those, those efforts in order for it to be longterm.

Courtney Cogburn (23:51):
So the sort of the short answer is the VR “and”, and what’s what, what are the possibilities for the “and” um, and who are the right partners for developing the “and”, um, in, in different spaces? So I think, um, you know, my, my, my colleagues and I who’ve worked on this project are really excited about that. Um, we are developing new work, um, that’s integrating data visualization into VR, um, so that, you know, the short way to describe that is, um, can we visualize structural racism in virtual reality? When you talk about people are starting to connect the dots, how education is tied to health is tied to our criminal systems is tied to, uh, housing, et cetera. Can we visualize the web of those connections leveraging the power of, of VR? So we’re, we’re working on a project related to that right now as well. Um, so again, VR is not some magic solution, but I think there are lots of possibilities for using VR and other emerging tech to, to help us push the boundaries of how we learn and understand and connect.

Jeremy Nelson (25:00):
Yeah, no, I, I agree. And we’d love to participate in any way we can. So maybe we’ll follow up with, with opportunities to, to bring the new XR initiative and the work we’re doing here to the space and help scale it out. Yeah. I’d love to. Well in terms of the current experience or future experiences, have you, have you worked with any police departments or officers, or kind of in the training and that space, have you done anything in that to, to show the power? I mean, it’s probably a little bit outside of your expertise, but just wondering with, there’s a lot of call for change there and, you know, on bias training, have you seen anything in that space for you, your work?

Courtney Cogburn (25:42):
No. So I get asked that question all the time and my, my basic response is that I’m not interested in doing that work as important as I think it is. Um, and that’s just that that’s just a personal decision, um, for me. Um, but there are, and again, I go back to that criteria of are people who I work with explicitly acknowledging racism as a part of the problem. Um, and if you are not, then that’s just not a boulder I’m willing to push up the hill. Um, but there are people who have taken on this challenge in this space. Um, Jennifer Eberhardt at Stanford has been doing work around VR and training with police. Um, I know several others are working in this space as well. So I think it’s a, it’s a, it’s an important space to work in. Um, and, but I think for all of us, right, in, in the really the black youth who are leading this, um, you know, uh, revolution that I think in the moment have been asking us to not think only of reforms, right,

Courtney Cogburn (26:54):
and police training, but to reimagine how we police to reimagine public safety, to reimagine how we allocate resources. And if we reallocate resources, maybe the need for police diminishes, right. If people actually have like a job and save places, so, um, mental health needs taken care of. Right? And so, um, we have to think about, that’s not a VR job, right? That’s what the policy solution, that’s not a, that’s not a VR solution necessarily, but like when I’m saying, I think what VR could potentially be used to do is help people imagine a different society, visualize a different world and certainly come to terms with the world we live in right now, um, in a very concrete way, which is what we’re trying to do.

Jeremy Nelson (27:45):
Yeah. No, I mean, and feel it kind of in your bones in a different way. I know when I, when I experienced it, it, you know, I’ve, I just felt it such power, you know, with such a power and fundamentally differently than watching a video or hearing somebody tell their story, which are powerful in themselves. Right. It just connected with me on a, on a whole nother level.

Courtney Cogburn (28:05):
Right. Right. Well, I appreciate you saying that I’m, I’m glad it had that effect. Um, and you can imagine that when we set out to do this, we didn’t know where we would land or what the effect would be, or whether this is something we should be doing, or whether trying to represent a black man experiencing racism in VR was reductive and silly and would come across as like a game or entertainment. There were so many things that we didn’t know will this actually come together in a way that’s just like, not a major offense to my people, right?

Jeremy Nelson (28:42):
That would be terrifying.

Courtney Cogburn (28:44):
Terrifying. I did not want to mess this up and it’s been, not that it’s perfect by any stretch, but, um, it’s been so encouraging, um, for white liberal people in particular who, you know, again, like talk about these things or, you know, engage to, to varying degrees and pretending racism doesn’t exist, even if they don’t really understand all the ways that it shows up in society for that group to say, I thought I got this, but I didn’t.

Courtney Cogburn (29:15):
And I didn’t really understand. I’ve never really felt it in this way. And consistently tell me that they are different as a result of going through a 10 minute VR experience. That’s incredibly powerful. And I had no idea that we would consistently land in that place for people. And it’s also been encouraging that black people, especially black men, who go through the experience, tell me that it feels authentic and that it feels meaningful. And I tear up almost every time a black man comes up to me having done after doing the VR and wants to hug me or thank me for representing this experience. Because I did go in with this fear that I was going to get this wrong, or that this was not the right way to go about this, potentially. It wasn’t the right way, even though my, for telling me something differently.

Courtney Cogburn (30:11):
Um, so that is so meaningful to me. And there’s still an ongoing tension, Jeremy, around using my time and resources, building VR to educate white people about things they should already know and understand that’s a tension for me. Um, there’s so many things I could be doing with time. Um, I could be helping reimagine where we go next. I could be helping to, you know, along with others reimagine society. Um, but instead I had to spend a substantial amount of my time explaining kind of the basic elements of our country. Um, and that has been rewarding and incredibly frustrating. It’s kind of like exactly what this moment is, how I described this encouraged me and, um, you know, frustrating.

Jeremy Nelson (31:06):
Well, thank you for your work. Thank you for the passion and commitment you’ve put in to all of this. Thank you for the time today. It was, it was great talking with you. I appreciate everything you’re doing and taking time out of your day to share with us.

Courtney Cogburn (31:22):
Thank you. Thank you for continuing to support what we’re doing and, and highlighted and, um, you know, so proud of my Michigan family, taking on this mantle and doing this work around emerging technologies and in doing it in a way that, you know, tries to maximize the positive impact we have on the world. So thank you for, for your work as well.

Jeremy Nelson (31:44):
Great. Have a good day.

Courtney Cogburn (31:45):
Okay. Thanks everybody.

Jeremy Nelson (31:57):
Thank you for joining us today. Our vision for the XR initiative is to enable education at scale that is hyper contextualized using XR tools and experiences. Please subscribe to our podcast and check out more about our work at https://ai.umich.edu/xr.

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