The first two lunch meetings of 2025 celebrate the start of project VHESPER, which examines the emerging role of virtual humans (VHs) - highly interactive, realistic digital agents - across various applications, including healthcare, education, and entertainment. The project aims to strengthen European research networks by exploring VHs’ societal impacts, conducting experiments on empathic interactions between real and virtual humans, and laying the groundwork for EU-funded research and development (R&D) proposals.

Kyana van Eijndhoven is a postdoctoral scientist at the Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, Tilburg University. During her PhD research, she focused on combining theory and practice of cognitive science, complexity science, and machine learning to examine team coordination, and anticipate its breakdowns during crisis situations based on physiological signals. She is currently involved in a project to assess the role of nonverbal mimicry in human-virtual human interaction, by creating a scoping review of related empirical studies, building a dashboard to ‘control’ nonverbal mimicry in virtual humans, and conducting experiments to study our implementation of nonverbal mimicry.

An exploration of nonverbal mimicry in human - virtual human interaction
Nonverbal mimicry, the spontaneous imitation of others’ physical behaviour, plays a vital role in social interaction between humans. For example, facial mimicry can help us with the perception of others’ emotions, emotional mimicry can facilitate a connection to others, and behavioural mimicry can improve the smoothness of interaction. But what role does such mimicry play if it occurs in human-virtual human interaction instead? In recent years, numerous developments have been achieved to allow for the implementation of nonverbal mimicry in virtual human technology. Kyana will present the preliminary findings of a scoping review, which was conducted to assess empirical research involving the implementation of nonverbal mimicry in human-virtual human interaction.

Ruben Decoster is a lecturer and researcher at Howest University of Applied Sciences, specializing in the evolving intersection between humans, play, and work. With a formal background in organizational psychology, his research focuses on e-learning, generative artificial intelligence, virtual humans, and social-emotional skills development. He has contributed to projects funded by Howest, Europe WSE, Erasmus+, and VLAIO on topics related to skills development and artificial intelligence. Within the project AVATALK, Ruben plays a key role in shaping the project’s learning experience, focusing on developing e-learning modules, optimizing virtual human interactions, and ensuring the system effectively addresses the practical training needs of organizations. At the Howest Applied Psychology program, he teaches courses on sustainable behaviour change and group dynamics.

Virtual humans for real conversations: training conversational skills with AI
In today's rapidly evolving professional landscape, interpersonal skills are more crucial than ever. However, traditional training methods for these soft skills are often time-intensive, costly, and difficult to scale. The TETRA research project AVATALK, a collaboration between DAE Research and Mensenmaat at Howest, tackles this challenge by developing a virtual environment for communication skills training.

AVATALK focuses on creating lifelike virtual humans that simulate complex emotional interactions through text, voice, and video. This builds on prior research conducted in the Applied Psychology program at Howest, where students practised intake conversations with virtual patients. The platform provides a safe and flexible learning environment, allowing learners to practice and refine their conversational skills in realistic, interactive scenarios, from healthcare consultations to performance reviews. Through collaboration with more than ten industry partners in HR, healthcare, and customer service, AVATALK ensures its training approach remains aligned with real-world needs.

AVATALK aims to make communication skills training more accessible, scalable, and cost-effective, empowering organizations to reskill and upskill employees while preparing them for the future workplace. In this talk, Ruben Decoster will discuss the development of AVATALK, its challenges, key innovations, and future directions.

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Upcoming lunch meeting:
· 3 April – Artificial Intelligence & Biodiversity
Confirmed speaker: Gerard Schouten (Professor AI & Data at Fontys University of Applied Sciences)