More specif­i­cally he’s inter­ested in inves­ti­gat­ing: human spa­tial cognition/orientation/updating/navigation; Enabling robust and effort­less spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion in VR and telep­res­ence; Self-motion per­cep­tion, illu­sions (“vec­tion”), inter­faces, and sim­u­la­tion; Designing for trans­for­ma­tive pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences using VR; Bio-responsive vir­tual envi­ron­ments (and many other things as you can see on the projects page).

Bernhard teaches classes on immer­sive environments/Virtual Reality, game design, human-computer inter­ac­tion and cog­ni­tion, and quan­ti­ta­tive research meth­ods, and recently designed a new 15-credit “Semester in Alternate Realities” course first offered in 2019, and re-designed it to a 6-credit inten­sive summer inter­s­es­sion course. He gave a TEDx talk on the poten­tial of Virtual Reality: “Could Virtual Reality make us more human?” and sup­ports TEDxSFU as it’s gen­eral chair since 2015, where he also coached more than 30 TEDx speakers.