Research
Summary

I am a second-year Ph.D. researcher at Purdue University working on education in XR and human-AI interaction in XR. I build and evaluate LLM-driven pedagogical agents that teach procedural skills in VR, and I study how people co-design with AI agents in immersive spaces. I have first-author papers at IEEE ISMAR and TVCG, and I prototype in Unity/C#, Python, and web stacks.

Advisors: Dr. Christos Mousas and Dr. Alejandra Magana, School of Applied and Creative Computing.

Quick Facts
Status:
Seeking research internships
Focus:
Embodied pedagogical agents, LLMs, XR learning and training, human-AI co-design
Language:
English (C1) and Spanish (Native)
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Transforming Lecture Videos into LLM-Enhanced Immersive Learning Experiences

A. L. Jimenez, P. Acevedo, M. Choi, D. Cui, C. Mousas

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (Proc. of IEEE ISMAR 2026), TBA(TBA), pp. TBA, 2026

First author. Designed an automated pipeline that converts lecture video into interactive immersive environments driven by LLM-based pedagogical agents (GPT and Llama).

Paper (TBA)Video
Virtual Roomie: Immersive Layout Co-design with a Virtual Agent

A. L. Jimenez, P. Acevedo, C. Mousas

IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, pp. 131-141, 2025

First author. Designed the cost-based layout optimization and spatial-reasoning algorithms, built the full VR application, and ran the human-subjects evaluation.

An Exploration of the Effects of in-VR Assessment Format on User Experience and Performance

P. Acevedo, A. L. Jimenez, A. Magana, B. Benes, C. Mousas

International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence & Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments, pp. 1-10, 2024

Second author. Contributed to system implementation, experimental design, data collection, and analysis.

See all on Google Scholar

Research Experience

Aug 2025 - Present

Purdue University
Graduate Research Assistant

Advisor: Dr. Christos Mousas, School of Applied and Creative Computing

  • Build and evaluate LLM-driven embodied pedagogical agents in VR that combine conversational behavior with agent actions in the simulated environment.
  • Prototype in Unity/C# (agent behavior architectures, human-agent co-design workflows, spatial interaction techniques) and Python, and run human-subjects studies end to end (design, IRB, data collection, quantitative and qualitative analysis).
  • Lead a PRISMA-style systematic review on psychomotor skill acquisition in VR (10,000+ records, reproducible Python screening pipeline).
  • Collaborate across concurrent projects and mentor junior team members on XR development.

Jan 2024 - May 2025

Purdue University
Graduate Research Assistant

Advisor: Dr. Kazumi Hatasa, School of Languages and Cultures

  • Designed and built an immersive VR language-learning environment in Unity with text-to-speech conversational interaction and modular instructional activities.
  • Optimized performance and ran usability testing so the system runs on standalone head-mounted displays in real classrooms.

2020 - 2022

Purdue University (SURF 2022) and Universidad de los Andes
Undergraduate and Summer Researcher
  • Built Escape VR, a networked multiplayer VR escape room (Unity, Photon), and ran a 60-participant user study on collaboration in shared virtual environments (advisor: Dr. Pablo Figueroa).
  • Built Unity/C# components for Experience-Driven Optimization of Virtual Environments as a SURF fellow (advisor: Dr. Christos Mousas). Earlier NLP work with word2vec and TensorFlow.
Industry Experience

Jan 2023 - May 2023
Feb 2022 - May 2022

Unity Technologies
Software Engineering Intern, Development Support

Remote, two internship terms

  • Analyzed and optimized customer projects for rendering performance and memory, and reviewed HLSL shaders.
  • Built internal tooling and debugging utilities in C# and C++ that helped engineers localize performance bottlenecks.

June 2021 - Feb 2022

Banlinea
Cognitive Computation Engineer and Software Developer
  • Worked on visual recognition, NLP, and neural network research.
  • Built a form to streamline an internal process, with a React frontend and a Kotlin backend.

2022

Universidad de los Andes
Undergraduate Teaching Assistant
  • Algorithms design and analysis: taught dynamic programming, graphs, and recursion to a group of 40 second-year students.
  • Introduction to Systems and Computing Engineering, and Object-Oriented Programming: supported students with App Inventor, Unity, and Java projects.
Education

Aug 2025 - Expected May 2029

Ph.D.
Technology: Virtual Reality and Human-AI Interaction

Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN

  • Advisor: Dr. Christos Mousas. Co-advisor: Dr. Alejandra Magana.
  • Andrews Fellowship, a competitive institutional fellowship for incoming doctoral students.

Aug 2023 - May 2025

M.S.
Computer Graphics Technology, GPA 4.00 / 4.00

Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN

  • Thesis: Human-AI Co-Design in Virtual Reality, a VR system in which an intelligent virtual agent proposes spatial layout modifications generated through cost-based optimization. Published at IEEE ISMAR 2025.

Jan 2019 - Apr 2023

B.E.
Systems and Computing Engineering, GPA 4.36 / 5.00

Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia (ABET-accredited)

  • Capstone: Escape VR, a networked multiplayer VR system for studying collaboration under time pressure, evaluated with 60 participants.
  • Visual Computing Laboratory. Director of the Systems Engineering Student Council and student representative on several university committees. Board member of the ACM university chapter.
Contact Me
Looking for a research intern in XR, LLM-driven agents, or learning technologies? Get in touch.

Email

jimen198@purdue.edu

Status

Open to research internships.