From June to August in 2025, I was selected by my department for an internship with the VRchaeology project at The Stu/dio in Urbana-Champaign. I contributed to the development of an educational VR experience by enhancing the environment and lighting, expanding the map, and refining the overall virtual space. Built in Unreal Engine for the Meta Quest headset, VRchaeology is designed to give students hands-on exposure to real-world archaeological methods without leaving the classroom. During those two months, we worked under the guidance of our project manager, Gabe Wozniak, and collaborated closely with him throughout the project. We communicated with developers, professors, and other team members while also becoming familiar with the broader office environment and workflow. VRchaeology is split into eight different labs where each level is intended to be a lab for one week in the classroom.
Credits
I’m deeply thankful to Rochele Gloor, Terrence Masson, Dan Cermak, and Rob Campbell for giving me this opportunity and for their invaluable guidance throughout the journey. A heartfelt thanks to Killivalavan Solai for the warm welcome, for always bringing us together, and for sharing such thoughtful advice along the way.
Sponsor - Dr. Laura Shackelford
Co-PI (NSF Grant) - Dr. David Wen-hau Huang
Associate Producer - Sepehr Vaez Afshar
Project Manager - Gabriel Wozniak
Additional Project Management Support - Om Mistry, Pranav Shah
Programming - Anish Gupta, Praneeth Rangamudri, Nick Simons, Aashish Subramanian
Additional Programming Support - Zach Krauter, Ezra Schur, Gloria Xiao, Weijia “Charlie” Zhang
Design - Madison Rosenberger
3D Art - Nancy “Nan” Kang, Dominic Larrieu, Xiaoxu “Johnny” Lyu, Yiwen “Tiffany” Wu
Additional 3D Art Support - Karan Ganesh, Mengzhen Yu
2D Art - Synthia Cao, Pengkun “Daniel” Mao, Ruoheng Yang
Music - Adrian Pawlikowski
Sound Design - Aubree Gray
Voice Acting - Olive Wang
Stu/dio Leads - Daniel Cermak (Director), Robbie Sieczkowski (Producer), Max Yang (Programming Lead), Aditya Bhave (Art Lead), Rodrigo Hidalgo Amat Y Leon (Design Lead), Sarvin Eshaghi (Quality Assurance Lead), Olive Wang (Accessibility Lead)
Archaeology Content Support - Emma Verstraete, Alexandra Zachwieja