Dr Oliver Kannape is the founding Director of the Virtual Medicine Center (VMC) at the Geneva University Hospitals (HUG). As first center of its kind, the VMC is integrating XR technology across HUG with a focus on patient care, clinical research, and medical education. Oliver’s tenure as Scientific Coordinator at MindMaze has further seen him pioneer XR applications for chronic pain, refractory breathlessness, and substance use disorder. These roles allow Oliver to bridge academia, industry, and healthcare to drive medical XR innovation.

Translational Research:

As a cognitive scientist, Oliver has a broad training and research background combining Virtual and Augmented Reality, motion capture, and neural interface technology with experimental approaches from psychobiology and cognitive neuroscience. His research has progressed from a focus on the neuroscience of multisensory perception, sensorimotor control, and corporeal awareness, during his PhD at EPFL, to applying their principles in the clinical domains of neuroprosthetics (at MIT), digital therapeutics (MindMaze), and medical XR (VMC). Oliver’s experiences from an early career award from the Swiss National Science Foundation to over a decade of translational research using XR technologies, uniquely positioned him to become the founding Director of the Virtual Medicine Centre at the Geneva University Hospitals.

Editorial Affiliations:

Oliver is a founding member of the American Medical Extended Reality Association (AMXRA) and member of its journal’s inaugural editorial advisory board (Journal for Medical Extended Reality, JMXR). He is also associate editor for Assistive Technology, the journal of the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA).