Fredric Vivan Van Freeman

VR/XR Creative Director & Developer / UX Researcher / Artist (MSUX)

Fredric V Freeman is dedicated to a career path focused on exploring science and technology within the realms of emerging digital platforms, healthcare, and the humanities. He is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, researcher, and designer with over 20 years of experience in the digital design field. Fredric’s varied background includes software development and interactive design solutions for the healthcare sector, award winning motion based narratives for the financial industry, and mobile first high volume e-commerce data visualization approaches.

Freeman currently works with Nemours Children's Hospital of Delaware to serve as Co-PI and Creative Director of Virtual Reality design and development on a pilot clinical trial for a VR educational tool to improve health outcomes for youth with Sickle Cell Disease. This virtual reality project focuses on digital innovation to solve real world problems that have high community impact. Ultimately this VR research project spans across multiple institutions featuring collaborations with multidisciplinary SCD clinicians and researchers, patient education specialists, patients, and families. Fredric has also helped to design and run virtual reality patient testing workshops, with a focus on technology safety and COVID19 compliance. He has previously worked on digital health projects including Pfizer’s first iPhone app, a clinical depression aid, based on the DSM-5 manual. He has also worked with a team to concept, design, and develop an interactive healthcare application for Bristol-Myers Squibb leveraging MIT open source technology, customized bluetooth user input devices, and a large format display.

More recently Fredric has served as Lead Faculty of VR/AR/XR at Thomas Jefferson University School of Design and Engineering. In this role he led numerous transdisciplinary XR projects involving faculty, students, and staff from various disciplines such as Architecture, Animation, UX, Industrial Design, Graphic Design, and Information Technology. These virtual, augmented, and extended reality projects featured collaborations between the College of Design, Engineering & Commerce, and the College of Architecture & The Built Environment.

His pedagogical approach focuses on a combination of primary and secondary research along with creative development to aid students and learners in the synthesis of new information. The crux of his teaching philosophy is providing students with a multidisciplinary learning environment, often leveraging skill sets from various backgrounds to promote skill sharing and innovation through cross pollination. Freeman’s teaching background also consists of constructing numerous new courses and redesigning existing course material. As well as helping transition traditional in-person courses to an online format due to Covid19.

Currently he is serving as interim faculty of Graphic Design, Web Development, and Virtual Reality at Sam Houston State University as part of the College of Art and Media, CEO of his boutique creative agency, KUZU Creative House. He is also the Co-Founder of the XR Health and Humanities Lab at Sam Houston State University.

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