Virtual reality brings to mind immersive environments, interactive games, and training simulation experiences. But rehabilitation researchers are also exploring how virtual reality can help people with chronic pain. To shed light on this new field, which was described as being in a “discovery phase,” a team of researchers from Tufts University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs published a scoping review in Virtual Worlds in January 2026.

From advice to practical takeaways, on July 21, 2026, the Hot Metal Book Club discussed Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It by Scott Kupor. Based on Kupor’s first-hand experience working at a venture capital firm located on Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley, this book highlights how venture capital funding works, who it is right for, and how venture capital firms decide to invest in startups.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center, a new video was released featuring reflections from the artists, designers, technologists, and storytellers who have shaped the program over the past quarter century.

Negotiations are something many people find uncomfortable, especially when it comes to landing a job early in your career. On June 24^th, Collaborative Real Estate, in partnership with the Pittsburgh chapter of Women in Bio, held an interactive panel discussion that brought together professionals sharing perspectives from both sides of the negotiation table. Students looking for their first job, those looking to make a career path change, and professionals wanting to brush up on their skills gathered to learn how candidates can evaluate offers, advocate for themselves, and determine what can be negotiated.

Gather around, all who dare, for a true tale of how a team of graduate students used modern technology to connect people’s hearts to history and the real people who lived it. But first, the team had to…build a ghost. The GhAIst team at the Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center (CMU ETC) brought Joseph Priestley’s scientific legacy and unexpected losses to life. They created and installed an AI-powered interactive, immersive, and educational experience for teenage visitors to engage with on-site at the Priestley-Forsyth Memorial Library.

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Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center has a room called the CAVERN, a 270-degree curved screen that puts virtual objects right in front of you. No headset required. This spring, a student team figured out how to make it work for two people at once.

After you walk under a trellis decorated with fragrant and multicolored blooms, a grandmother’s voice welcomes you to tend to the Remnants garden, located in the immersive CAVERN space at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center. As you continue to water and prune, the flowers wilt, the colors fade, and the weeds grow. Remnants provides an immersive, emotional, and transformational experience for guests to understand and empathize with what it is like for a caregiver of a person living with dementia.

Everyone talks about disruptive innovation, but how and why does it happen? On May 19, 2026, Ned Uber, PhD, facilitated a discussion at the Hot Metal Book Club to discuss The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen. Grounded in Christensen’s framework that true innovation isn’t about better technology, Uber shared how it's about reframing problems and building business models that allow new solutions to take root.

This past year marked a defining chapter for Hot Metal Campus. Researchers, entrepreneurs, students, creatives, and innovators across campus came together to strengthen a growing ecosystem rooted in collaboration, discovery, and Pittsburgh’s continued momentum in life sciences, technology, media, and entrepreneurship.

The Book captures that momentum. The inaugural year-in-review publication highlights the people, projects, research, events, and ideas that shaped Hot Metal Campus throughout 2025.

We’re pleased to welcome Panther Life Sciences to Hot Metal Campus. Panther is engineering solutions for skin health by “unlocking the tremendous biological powers of our skin.” The move of Panther to Hot Metal Labs to expand their laboratory operations signals the next step for the team to modernize skin care and bring shelf-stable treatments directly to customers, including their goal of bringing their first clinically proven product to market in 2027.

Once upon a time, in a middle-school classroom in Pittsburgh, students were studying art and engineering. Every day, in school, in activities, and at home, they learned new things, including watching movies and playing games, but could these skills be something they would pursue with higher education in the entertainment technology industry? Until one day, Dawn, an animatronic owl that could turn its head, move its beak, and flap its wings, visited the classroom.

Based out of Bridgeside Point II in Hot Metal Campus, EvolvingSTEM is a science outreach program that brings evolution and microbiology research directly into classrooms across the Pittsburgh region. Run through Professor Vaughn Cooper’s lab in the Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh, the program equips students from grades 6 through 12 with the tools and framework to conduct real experiments on bacterial evolution.

It pays off to stay focused. On April 7, 2026, the Hot Metal Book Club met to discuss Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers by Geoffrey A. Moore.

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ENGAGE focuses on the social side of stroke recovery, helping people rebuild confidence and reconnect with their communities. This group intervention, which was co-designed by community members who are stroke survivors, was tested by a multi-university team of researchers led by Dr. Elizabeth Skidmore at the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Occupational Therapy.

How can virtual reality and haptic gloves work together to create profound emotional experiences? That is the simple but ambitious question that project Tacit aims to explore.

The most novel story you can tell is the one you choose to enter. To push the boundaries of mixed-reality storytelling and interactive gaming, the ImmerX team at Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU) Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) created five immersive worlds to explore in Travel-in-X.

Spirited discussion, strong opinions, plenty of coffee. On Tuesday, February 24, 2026, the Hot Metal Book Club attendees discussed The Billion Dollar Molecule: The Quest for the Perfect Drug by Barry Werth and the tensions behind innovation, including work-life balance, clashing egos, and the push-and-pull between business expectations and scientific reality.

Emerging from Carnegie Mellon University’s ETC, Kicks Lab is an experimental, educational video game meant to encourage middle school students’ curiosity in topics that blend science, arts, and engineering through shoe design.

A student team at ETC has been building something ambitious called Trinity. It’s a multiplayer co-op game that unites three players on three different platforms: VR, mobile, and PC. Designed for in-person play, Trinity has brought people together and surprisingly gathered a wider audience than anticipated.

There are games that can be played anywhere, anytime, but what about games created for a specific physical place and time? The Intergalactic Buttoneers modernized the iconic ETC Space Bridge, explored a series of location-based experience prototypes, and designed an immersive experience to bring the Space Bridge to life during the 2025 ETC Fall Festival.