Assistant Professor
Julia Chatain is an Assistant Professor for Learning Technologies and Distance Education at UniDistance Suisse. After working as a software engineer in the fields of XR and game technologies, she completed her Doctorate of Science “Embodied Interaction in Virtual Reality for Grounding Mathematics” from the Computer Science department of ETH Zurich in 2023, for which she was awarded the ETH Medal for “Outstanding Dissertation.” She then continued her academic career as a Senior Scientist at the Singapore-ETH Center, where she designed an international research program on Future Embodied Learning Technologies (FELT). Part of her research is funded by the Jacobs Foundation "Young Scholar" grant which she obtained for the project "Achieving Adaptive Mathematics Knowledge through Embodied Causal Learning." She started her position as Assistant Professor at UniDistance in 2026.
Julia Chatain’s research focuses on
In this context, much of her research has explored how humans use their bodies when reflecting on mathematical problems, and how to leverage Virtual Reality technology to enable meaningful and effective bodily movements during learning.