Sharon Mozgai
Human-centered design for health innovation.

Founding Director of the Virtual Human Therapeutics Lab at USC ICT. She advances health and human well-being through human-centered design — interdisciplinary research across AI, immersive technologies, and behavioral science — translating emerging technology into real-world impact across VA, DoD, and healthcare settings.

smozgai@post.harvard.eduGoogle ScholarLinkedInCV (PDF)USC ICT
Total citations
1,019
h-index
14
Publications
45+

— 00 / Ask

Ask anything about Sharon's work.

A small assistant grounded in her CV, publications, and the public record of her lab. It won't speculate, it won't give medical advice, and it won't answer personal questions — try BRAVEMIND, Battle Buddy, or her path from psychology into AI.

— 01 / About

Sharon Mozgai is a researcher and technology leader focused on advancing health and human well-being through human-centered design. As founding Director of the Virtual Human Therapeutics Lab at USC ICT, she leads interdisciplinary research spanning AI, immersive technologies, and behavioral science, with a focus on developing and evaluating scalable interventions for mental health, training, and human performance.

Her work is driven by a commitment to translating emerging technologies from the laboratory into real-world impact, including applications in VA, DoD, and healthcare settings. Bridging research, design, and technology, she works to ensure that emerging innovations are both evidence-based and grounded in the real-world needs of the people they serve.

Her research includes leadership of Battle Buddy, a veteran-centered suicide prevention initiative that received a $1 million award through the VA Mission Daybreak program; a key role in the recent development, evaluation, and dissemination of Dr. Albert “Skip” Rizzo’s BRAVEMIND, a pioneering virtual reality exposure therapy system for PTSD that has reached more than 170 clinical sites; and co-leadership of CARE, an initiative dedicated to supporting unpaid caregivers through evidence-based resources, community engagement, and technology-enabled solutions.

Trained in psychology — an Ed.M. in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard and a B.A. in Psychology from NYU — she joined USC ICT in 2015, and also teaches as an adjunct lecturer at Endicott College.

— 02 / Work

01 / Socially interactive agents

Virtual humans that see, listen, and respond in real time

Frameworks and open infrastructure that let socially interactive agents hold a real conversation — and that other researchers can build on.

Sharon directs the Virtual Human Therapeutics Lab at USC ICT, where she leads the development of socially interactive agent (SIA) platforms. Recent work includes Estuary, a framework for building multimodal, low-latency, real-time socially interactive agents, and continued stewardship of the Virtual Human Toolkit — the long-running, widely used research platform for embodied conversational agents — alongside the Rapid Integration & Development Environment (RIDE). The throughline is user-centered: making the machinery of virtual humans reliable and reusable so researchers can focus on the interaction, not the plumbing.

  • Estuary
  • Virtual Human Toolkit
  • RIDE
  • Real-time SIAs

02 / Clinical VR & therapeutics

Evidence-based VR and mHealth, from the lab to the clinic

Virtual humans and immersive therapy that move into VA, DoD, and hospital settings — built with the people who use them.

Sharon leads Battle Buddy, a veteran-centered suicide prevention initiative that received a $1 million award through the VA Mission Daybreak program, and played a key role in the recent development, evaluation, and dissemination of Dr. Albert “Skip” Rizzo's BRAVEMIND, a pioneering virtual-reality exposure therapy system for PTSD that has reached more than 170 clinical sites. She also co-leads CARE, an initiative supporting unpaid caregivers through evidence-based resources, community engagement, and technology-enabled solutions. Her lab embeds conversational AI agents inside evidence-based mHealth applications for mental, emotional, and physical health.

  • BRAVEMIND
  • Battle Buddy
  • VRET
  • mHealth
  • Veteran suicide prevention

03 / Design & affective computing

Building with the user, and measuring what matters

Human-subjects rigor and user-centered design, paired with a decade of affective- and behavioral-computing research.

Trained in psychology (Ed.M., Harvard) before moving into AI, Sharon brings human-subjects methodology to virtual-human research: participatory and user-centered design, IRB-governed studies, and AI-assisted methods that accelerate work like scoping reviews. Earlier collaborations span affective and behavioral computing — the AVEC depression and affect-recognition challenges, intranasal-oxytocin effects on facial expressivity, and vocal and physiological signatures of stress — and the social psychology of human–agent interaction, including deception, morning morality, and emotion regulation in negotiation.

  • User-centered design
  • AVEC
  • Affective computing
  • Human–agent interaction

— 03 / Affiliations

  1. 2023 – Present
    Director, Virtual Human Therapeutics Lab
    USC Institute for Creative Technologies · Los Angeles, CA
  2. 2019 – 2023
    Assistant Director, Medical VR
    USC Institute for Creative Technologies · Los Angeles, CA
  3. 2018 – Present
    Adjunct Lecturer (Graduate)
    Endicott College · Beverly, MA
  4. 2018 – 2019
    VP, Content
    HIA Technologies, Inc. · Remote
  5. 2017 – 2018
    Senior Research Analyst
    Anticipant Speech, Inc.
  6. 2015 – 2018
    Research Analyst, Virtual Humans Group
    USC Institute for Creative Technologies · Los Angeles, CA
  7. 2014 – 2015
    Researcher (NSF text-annotation review)
    Florida International University · Miami, FL
  8. 2011 – 2014
    Research Associate, Organizational Behavior Unit
    Harvard Business School · Boston, MA
  9. 2010 – 2014
    Text Analyst / Adjudicator, CSAIL
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology · Cambridge, MA
  10. 2007 – 2009
    Psychology Technician
    San Francisco VA Medical Center · San Francisco, CA

— 04 / Selected publications

Full list →
  1. 2026

    Rapid Personalized Doppelgänger Avatar Generation: Dyadic Evaluation of the TAC-Twin Virtual Human Pipeline

    Mozgai, S., Fast, K. K., Sookiassian, E., Leeds, A., Hartholt, A.

    Human Interaction and Emerging Technologies (IHIET-AI)

  2. 2025

    Estuary: A Framework for Building Multimodal Low-Latency Real-Time Socially Interactive Agents

    Lin, S., Rizk, B., Jun, M., Artze, A., Sullivan, C., Mozgai, S., Fisher, S.

    ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA)

  3. 2025

    Optimizing SIA Development: A Case Study in User-Centered Design for Estuary, a Multimodal Socially Interactive Agent Framework

    Lin, S., Jun, M., Rizk, B., Shieh, K., Fisher, S., Mozgai, S.

    ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

  4. 2025

    Expert Consensus Best Practices for the Safe, Ethical, and Effective Design and Implementation of AI Conversational Agent Technologies in Healthcare Settings

    Rizzo, A., Mozgai, S., Sigaras, A., Rubin, J. E., Jotwani, R.

    Journal of Medical Extended Reality, 2(1)

  5. 2025

    Multi-Platform Intelligent Agents with the Virtual Human Toolkit

    Hartholt, A., Fast, E., Kim, K., Leeds, A., Sookiassian, E., Mozgai, S.

    ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA)

  6. 2024

    Accelerating Scoping Reviews: A Case Study in the User-Centered Design of an AI-Enabled Interdisciplinary Research Tool

    Mozgai, S., Kaurloto, C., Winn, J., Leeds, A., Beland, S., Sookiassian, A., Hartholt, A.

    ACM CHI Extended Abstracts

  7. 2023

    Persuasive Technology for Suicide Prevention: A Virtual Human mHealth Application

    Mozgai, S., Rizzo, A., Hartholt, A.

    18th International Conference on Persuasive Technology (Best Technical Demonstration Award)

  8. 2023

    Machine Learning for Semi-Automated Scoping Reviews

    Mozgai, S., Kaurloto, C., Winn, J., Leeds, A., Heylen, D., Hartholt, A., Scherer, S.

    Intelligent Systems with Applications

  9. 2021

    Building BRAVEMIND Vietnam: User-Centered Design for Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy

    Mozgai, S., Leeds, A., Kwok, D., Fast, E., Rizzo, A. S., Hartholt, A.

    IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality (AIVR) · 9 citations

  10. 2021

    From Combat to COVID-19 — Managing the Impact of Trauma Using Virtual Reality

    Rizzo, A. S., Hartholt, A., Mozgai, S.

    Journal of Technology in Human Services, 39(3) · 25 citations

  11. 2020

    The Effects of Experience on Deception in Human-Agent Negotiation

    Mell, J., Lucas, G., Mozgai, S., Gratch, J.

    Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 68 · 38 citations

  12. 2020

    Iterative Participatory Design for VRET Domain Transfer: From Combat Exposure to Military Sexual Trauma

    Mozgai, S., Hartholt, A., Leeds, A., Rizzo, A. S.

    ACM CHI Extended Abstracts · 25 citations

  13. 2020

    An Adaptive Agent-Based Interface for Personalized Health Interventions

    Mozgai, S., Hartholt, A., Rizzo, A. S.

    ACM Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI), Companion · 12 citations

  14. 2018

    NADiA: Neural Network Driven Virtual Human Conversation Agents

    Wu, J., Ghosh, S., Chollet, M., Ly, S., Mozgai, S., Scherer, S.

    ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA) · 37 citations

  15. 2017

    AVEC 2017: Real-Life Depression and Affect Recognition Workshop and Challenge

    Ringeval, F., Schuller, B., Valstar, M., Gratch, J., Cowie, R., Scherer, S., Mozgai, S., Pantic, M.

    Audio/Visual Emotion Challenge (AVEC), ACM Multimedia · 490 citations

  16. 2017

    To Tell the Truth: Virtual Agents and Morning Morality

    Mozgai, S., Lucas, G., Gratch, J.

    International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA), Springer · 15 citations

— 05 / In the press

Virtual humans, clinical VR, and an app to keep veterans alive.

Coverage and clinical results from USC ICT and beyond.

USC News
VA Mission Daybreak
February 2023

AI-driven app for veterans' mental health earns USC ICT a $1 million prize

Battle Buddy · USC Institute for Creative Technologies

“Integrating virtual humans with mobile health applications opens up new opportunities to connect with veterans and overcome some of the barriers associated with suicide prevention.”

— Sharon Mozgai, project leader, Battle Buddy
Battle BuddyRead at USC News →
USC ICT
BRAVEMIND
2022

BRAVEMIND: virtual reality exposure therapy for PTSD

Difede, Rothbaum, Rizzo et al., randomized clinical trial

“VR exposure therapy was also found to be preferred over traditional therapy by 76% of incoming patients in this trial.”

— USC ICT, on the 2022 BRAVEMIND randomized clinical trial
BRAVEMINDRead at USC ICT →
USC ICT
Virtual Human Therapeutics Lab
2023

The Virtual Human Therapeutics Lab

Directed by Sharon Mozgai

“The lab uses embodied conversational AI agents inside evidence-based mHealth software applications to demonstrate the role virtual humans can play in promoting mental, emotional, and physical health as well as behavioral change.”

— USC ICT, Virtual Human Therapeutics Lab
Virtual Human Therapeutics LabRead at USC ICT →
  1. 2024
    Building a Lifeline at The Virtual Human Therapeutics Lab

    USC ICTBattle Buddy

  2. 2024
    Celebrating 25 Years of USC's Institute for Creative Technologies

    USC TodayVirtual Human Therapeutics Lab

  3. 2024
    USC CBC and Keck Medicine Unite at ICT to Shape the Future of Healthcare and Human Performance

    USC Center for Body ComputingVirtual Human Therapeutics Lab

— 06 / Selected talks

  1. 2026
    Panel — Redefining Patient Privacy: AI, Immersive Data, and New Vulnerabilities

    Augmented World Expo (AWE) USA · Long Beach, CA

  2. 2024
    Panel — Mission Daybreak

    VA Immersive Summit · Washington, D.C.

  3. 2023
    Tutorial — Virtual Human Toolkit 2.0

    23rd ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA) · Würzburg, Germany

  4. 2023
    Tutorial — Creating Virtual Worlds with the Virtual Human Toolkit and RIDE

    Intelligent Human Systems Integration (IHSI)

  5. 2022
    Demonstration — RIDE: ECA and Multiagent Capabilities

    AAMAS Demonstration Track · Auckland, New Zealand

— 07 / Service

  • Demo Chair
    26th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA) · Puebla, Mexico
  • Poster Chair
    25th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA) · Berlin, Germany
  • Workshop Chair
    23rd ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA) · Würzburg, Germany
  • Program Committee
    18th International Conference on Persuasive Technology · Eindhoven, Netherlands
  • Program Committee
    17th International Conference on Persuasive Technology · Doha, Qatar
  • Data Chair
    7th Annual Workshop on Audio/Visual Emotion Challenge (AVEC) · Mountain View, CA
  • Local Chair
    16th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA) · Los Angeles, CA

— 08 / Now

What the lab is building, now.

At the Virtual Human Therapeutics Lab, the front-burner work is Battle Buddy — a virtual-human mHealth app for veteran suicide prevention, built with the SoldierStrong Foundation and funded through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' Mission Daybreak challenge — alongside continued clinical deployment of BRAVEMIND VR exposure therapy.

On the platform side: Estuary, a framework for low-latency, real-time socially interactive agents, and the next generation of the Virtual Human Toolkit. Cutting across all of it — how to design and evaluate conversational AI for healthcare safely, ethically, and with the people who actually use it.

Up next: a panel on patient privacy and immersive data at AWE 2026 in Long Beach.