Much of my work is motivated by theories of embodied cognition. As a graduate student in Cognitive Science more than two decades ago, I was fascinated by our abilities to communicate through gestures and launched a research program exploring how listeners integrate speech and iconic gestures produced during conversation. Since then, I have led teams to Embodied Code, a creative coding toolkit in virtual reality (VR), and Balboa Park Alive!, a smartphone app that explores biodiversity in Balboa Park through embodied perspective taking.  In parallel, I have conducted studies on the perceptual correlates of awe and aesthetic experience using eye tracking and electrocardiography in the galleries of the San Diego Museum of Art and in VR. I have also examined cortical correlates of empathy in social VR using electroencephalography (EEG).  More recently, I have been working on implementing brain-computer interfaces (BCI) in VR for mental health and foundational EEG models that can support real time classification of user states and can inform context-sensitive intelligent agents.