A Fulbright experience in Erie, with Bibiana Mayer Steckel

Dr. Ralph Ford, chancellor of Penn State Behrend, talks with Bibiana Mayer Steckel, a Fulbright Scholar from Brazil, about her work with the Virtual/Augmented Reality Lab, where she is studying the use of VR technology to connect with children who have autism. Originally recorded on April 30, 2026.

Transcript

Welcome And The VAR Lab

Ralph Ford 0:00

I'm Dr. Ralph Ford. I'm Chancellor of Penn State Behrend, and you are listening to Behrend Talks. Today I have a guest a little bit different for us this time, Bibiana Mayer-Steckel, a Fulbright scholar, who is here spending the year at Penn State Behrend, particularly in our virtual and augmented reality lab. And from now on, we're going to call that the VAR Lab, VAR Lab. And this lab uses, as I said, virtual and augmented reality to enhance learning environments, drive research, interesting things from you know creating, recreating historical buildings and objects, all sorts of things we'll talk about today. Training in the workplace. It's run by Dr. Chris Shelton. Anyways, welcome to the show, Bibiana.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 0:43

Thank you.

Ralph Ford 0:44

You know, I'm going to go through a little bit more about your, I'm going to read your biography and then we'll get into the to the discussion. But uh just so everybody knows you took an unusual path to get here. You're an occupational therapist. You traveled here from Brazil, where you worked in something called the Nerve Lab and uh a sensory integration clinic. Uh your work there includes assessments and individual occupational therapy sessions for physical and cognitive rehabilitation. You treat uh sensory dysfunction in pediatric and adolescent patients, and you're working on your PhD, you earned a master's degree from Federal University of Health Sciences in Porto Alegre. And uh you have a bachelor's degree in occupational therapy from Federal University of Santa Maria. Sorry if I jump around a little bit here. And it's your second stint in the US, and you spent time at New York Institute of Technology. Again, welcome. Could you start with tell us a little bit about what an occupational therapist is? What is it that you do in your research and your work?

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 1:51

Okay. So what an occupational therapist does is assess

What Occupational Therapists Actually Do

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 1:56

it kind of works with different age of people, so from childhood to uh elderly. I work more with children and adolescents, but basically what we do is to evaluate how the person is doing with their daily activities. So, and that includes basic activities like showering, dressing, eating, and can be more complex like going to a bank, going to the market, being able to have a job or being able to attend school. So all these activities that are kind of normal for most people. Some people that face disabilities can have a hard time doing it. So what we do is evaluate if they're doing properly these activities, and if not, why? And uh based on this assessment of what's happening, that this person cannot do these activities properly, that's how our intervention goes. And then there is a range of different kinds of intervention because it depends on how what type of activities and how this person can, like what kind of support they we will have from the family, from uh from the person coming to therapy, if this person needs more uh domiciliar care, needs to go to the residence, or if the person needs to go to the clinic, it will depend. It's it's complicated to explain OT because it ranges from like a lot of ages and a lot of different disabilities. So I can tell about my work.

Ralph Ford 3:33

We will say this, it's important work, and that's why I'm asking the question because I want our listeners to know and have a good understanding. So just keep going, take your time.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 3:42

Sure. So what I do, I work, uh my focus is with children. So I evaluate all activities a child must be doing because we have certain activities that a child should complete by certain age, like with seven years old, this child has to be able to tie their shoes. So there's a lot of small activities the child has to be also evaluate how they play because we know that a lot of things that we do as an adult is because we learn by playing. So if the child has difficulty playing, imagine, I have to work with that too, is a is an occupation of the child. If the child has imagination but have disability, motor disability that doesn't allow him or her to play, we also work with that. So it depends a lot on what causes the impairment. And the occupational therapy has to know about the disability, has to know details of symptoms, but mainly it has to know to observe because the same disability can cause different impairments. So we our main job is to analyze the activity that is being impaired, why exactly, what symptoms are uh causing that, and then work with that. And what I am now working very closely is with sensor

Sensory Integration Explained Simply

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 5:09

integration, which is a very specific kind of work. Sensor integration, and I think we're going to talk a lot because my PhD is about that too. So sensor integration is a brain ability to get all the information we receive from the world by vision, hearing, touch, like our senses, our brain integrates it properly so we don't get too annoyed of things around us, but we are aware enough to feel when a bug touches you, so you have to defend yourself. So you function properly and you adapt to this world and you can do your things without getting bothered, and by getting help from your environment feedback. So that's uh what sensor integration does. And a lot of kids, mainly kids with autism, have sensor integration impairments, but other kids with other disabilities can have, since it's a brain-related and it's physiologic. Uh, some kids with cerebral palsy, for example, which is my brother's case, they can be more reactive. Also, it's associated with a lot of uh when the kid is very young, when it's a baby, and receives a lot of procedures in hospital. Like kids with cerebral palsy, usually they were prematures too, so they receive a lot of uh medical, yeah, medical care in the in the early life, which is necessary for them to leave, but also causes uh has this bad part that can cause well.

Ralph Ford 6:42

Let me step step back. We're gonna we're gonna dig deep into this uh for sure. So first, I mean I think this is great, like we're getting a you know an overview of the sort of things you do in the research, but let me ask this question first. Why? Why did you study this?

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 6:58

Uh okay. So my brother,

Her Brother And The Why

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 7:01

he is a child that with cerebral palsy. My older brother, he's two years older than me. And uh what effects on him was the diplasic, so sh uh he cannot walk like us. He can walk with um help of dispositives, but he cannot walk by himself. And um during this childhood, and mainly because we live in Brazil and he is now 32, so we were child in a time that I don't know about US, but in Brazil there was not many resources about child development. And my family did everything they could, but he had a very uh restricted childhood because of the motor impairments, and what we did a lot was to play together video games and to go to therapy because I would go to physiotherapy with him, I would go to occupational therapy with him, so uh idrotherapy. So our routine was me helping my mom taking him to places because my mom she didn't work to take care of him and to take care of me too, uh, and my father would work to support us, so she was the one taking him to all therapies, and I was going with them all the time.

Ralph Ford 8:24

So, did you see things there that you said, geez, we can do this better, or I'm just fascinated by it?

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 8:30

Yeah, I think it was so much part of my child development that and I was kind of a co-therapist because I would help him at home with the activities, and I would see my mom helping him at home. That I didn't felt this way at the time I chose, but after some years I was reflecting about my childhood and my path, and I definitely think there was like an unconscious kind of uh situation that made me pick occupational therapy because it was related with him, and a lot of things that I learned later during my undergrad as an occupational therapy, I could look back and see, I I know this because I lived this with my brother, or things that are more new, especially sensor integration. Sensor integration is is not new in the US, but it was kind of new in Brazil. Uh, when I learned this kind of things, I looked back and I thought, I wish my brother had this kind of treatment. And uh I could understand how he behaves. He was very reactive to noises and uh and now I understand, of course, his brain. He he was born with five months, so he spent the four last months of what was supposed to be the pregnancy in a hospital with a lot of different stimulus.

Ralph Ford 9:54

So how did you let's switch to to Behrend? And

From Brazil To A Fulbright Match

Ralph Ford 10:00

we're gonna come back to your brother and the research you're doing because all of this ties together. Yes, and it's a great story. Tell me how in the world did you come from Brazil to snowy, eerie, Pennsylvania and Penn State Behrend? And what would and and you're on a we're gonna talk about the fact that you're on a very prestigious scholarship, known as a Fulbright scholarship, but how did you make a connection here? Why did you decide you want to come here?

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 10:22

So I I was already working with virtual reality. I worked with virtual reality in my masters. I liked that, so I would use this as a kind of connection with my brother. And once I became uh occupational therapy and I started working with children, uh, we also had a game therapy room, we would say, where we have some resources in the clinic I was at the time. And I was the only one that really liked and took the kids there because it was kind of optional. Uh, and then once I started doing this, I wanted to really understand how this could be used in a therapy setting because it's not very structured as evidence-based yet. So I wanted to suit that. Uh, and then I found out Nerf, which is the laboratory in Porto Alegre that I'm part now. I found out them. And then I did my master with them in their lab, uh, which I'm still connected now as a PhD. And for my master, I used uh virtual reality for legs movement, which was already uh developed. But for my PhD, I wanted to do something more related with sensor integration. In our lab, we don't do much development because we don't have that much technology to do uh virtual environment development. But we didn't find anything that could be similar to the sensor integration approach therapy. Uh, and then I wanted to do it, and we started there with the resources we had, but then I thought I need something extra because we don't have uh here what it takes. We don't have enough technology, we don't have uh enough expertise in building this. So I really wanted uh something extra for my PhD to really work and to be meaningful. So I heard about Fulbright. I was telling before that Fulbright is not so well known in Brazil as is in the US. So I heard about them as an opportunity to come here, and then I applied. And what I heard back from Fulbright is that I could decide whatever lab, they wouldn't let me choose one of them or say to me where I should go. Uh I could decide, but I should have a really good explanation why this lab would be important. Yes. And then I thought, okay, I would just search for the best lab I can have and start to talking because we also didn't have any connections, and I think that's another good point of me coming here because we didn't have any connections with US at all in my lab. We have some international collaborations with Spain and with Canada, but none with US.

Ralph Ford 13:10

So did you know Dr. Chris Shelton or did you just find him on the web?

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 13:14

Or how did I find him on the web? I yeah, I researched best virtual reality labs of US.

Ralph Ford 13:22

And we showed up.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 13:24

And yes, and yeah, and var lab I think it's in between the 10 best virtual realities from this part of the country, from the yeah, uh from I think on the East Coasters that we got like uh recog nice recognition in the top five or six.

Ralph Ford 13:39

Yes, that's correct, yeah.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 13:41

Yeah, uh so I schedule I so I schedule an interview with five different directors. I I saw I did my research. I found the labs and then I checked the webpage and I checked all they have, and then I didn't I rescheduled an interview with the five directors of the best labs I thought would best fit. And um after the interview, I was very into two different labs. I'm not say names right now. All the professors accepted me because I think all of them wanted a Fulbright Scholar working with them. But so I had to make the decision and pick one lab. And what really dragged me into here was how Christopher uh I didn't call him Dr. Shelton because we became uh I think y'all call him Chris here. Yes. Uh I would call him Dr. Shelton in the beginning. He said, no, please call me Chris. So that's what dragged me here. I thought I could really make a deep connection and have all the welcoming I need to feel because I thought I would be in the other side of the continent with no family, with no friends, with no one for one year. I need to be in a lab that I know people want me there. And he he showed me that he could really work with me. And we had so his PhD was also in the same area, not with sensor integration, but with virtual reality, in using this to be more accessible to population, which is my goal with my virtual environment. My goal is to make it more accessible because now we do have good clinics of sensor integration in Porto Alegre, but Porto Alegre is the capital, and we don't have this in other parts of the state. I live, it's Rio Grande do Sul. So I found like a lot of similarities, and he was far like comparing to the others, all of them said, Ah, okay, uh, you need this and this equipment. We have this, but we have to have a grant to try to get the other one. And he already had everything. Chris already had every like everything. It's an amazing lab. Yeah, his lab is impressive, it's really big. It's like six times the size of the lab that we have in Portal.

Ralph Ford 16:05

So you made that connection. Now, this wasn't the first time you'd been to the US, so we'll come back to your experience coming to Erie, but you'd actually lived in the US before?

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 16:14

Yes, I lived in Long Island. Uh, I studied at NYIT, New York Institute of Technology. At that time, I was in my OT undergrad. I came here, I did uh the classes in Masters, because here's a different uh organization of to become an OT. But at that time, it was a little bit easier because I came with a cohort of Brazilians. So I had other Brazilians that was also in the same university. Uh, and I felt like if I didn't connect with people from outside, at least I would have my community there. Uh, and this time I came alone, so yes, very different.

Ralph Ford 16:57

Well, I I lived on Long Island for a little while, so Erie and Long Island,

Culture Shock, Winter, And Driving Snow

Ralph Ford 17:02

pretty different places, right? That's East Coast, and we're like the Midwest. So, you know, well then let's talk about it since you've been here in Erie now, what, since last summer?

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 17:13

Yes, I arrived in the end of August, so I got to experience a little bit of the summer. Okay, yeah. And mainly, mainly this winter. It feels like it's a forever winter because it's too cold for me. I know it's not that cold anymore, but still cold.

Ralph Ford 17:32

It's been very unusual, unusually cold for the US in this part of the country. Now we get a lot of snow. We didn't get the normal amount of snow, but how about snow? Did you like our snow?

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 17:41

Uh not really. I like I like to the first day that it snowed, I was so happy because I haven't been in snow since my last experience in the US at NYT. So it's been 10 years that I haven't seen snow. And I saw the snow falling, and I thought it was so, so beautiful. But after some weeks, it was so bad that I have to wake up early and brush the car. And I didn't know that I had to brush a car. So the first time I got very confused, like what I do now, how I move my car with all this snow. And there's one day specifically that my car kind of sled.

Speaker 3 18:19

Yeah.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 18:20

Uh, and this all this car experience was something I didn't have in New York because in New York I didn't drive yet when I was there. So I used the bus and public transportation. And here I bought a car. So it was my first ever experience driving in the snow. It was not very good.

Ralph Ford 18:39

Well, you it takes a little while, but you get good. You get good.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 18:43

Well, let's talk about it. I didn't crash my car. I still alive.

Ralph Ford 18:46

I think that's that's super good to hear, right? So you that means that you know you navigated the winter. Well, let's talk about though. So you you found Dr. Shelton's lab, found it to be a you know, the Rvar lab, yeah, with Chris Shelton. So what are you doing up there? Like, what's the what's the experience been like working in that lab? And you're working with our students, and just tell

Turning A Therapy Room Into VR

Ralph Ford 19:07

me about like what's the sort of what things are you doing there? Uh-huh.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 19:10

So I'm very happy to be here. I think it's a completely different experience from being a PhD student in Brazil. I feel that here I have more space to work in terms of here. I'm criticizing my country a little bit. I feel that in Brazil we don't value the PhD students, they're just like students like every other student. And I feel that in the US, PhD students are more valuable as really employers, and they can do a job and then guide some students, they can develop their ideas in a more independent way. So that was the first difference I felt in between the countries. And I was now this last weekend, I was in Philadelphia with the other Fulbrights for a seminar, and all of them have the same, the ones from Brazil, they have the same view. Yeah, so I think it's a very cultural thing of US to value the PhD students. So I had contact here with a lot of first, it was like the feedback, extra feedback, equipment with vibration that deepers this the immerse sensation. We don't have that hair, that this kind of equipment there. We I mean we do have in Brazil, but they're so so expensive. Technology in general is very expensive in Brazil because we don't produce it, we import it. And uh every import device for technology has really high taxes, so that's why we don't have access to technology that much in Brazil. And uh since Chris had everything, I literally experienced everything I could, and then I tried to put my environment that we're already developing in that uh and feel how different is the sensation using all these different kinds of kind of devices to provoke a more intense sensation of presence in the virtual environment, which is very important because I'm trying to translate a sensor integration room to an immersive virtual environment. And the sensor integration room is a very embodiment, the the activities have to be very intense in terms of swinging, in terms of jumping. The kid does a lot of mother work during the uh during the therapy. So to translate that to virtual reality is not very easy because uh some things we can mimic, but some things has to be more like a visual illusion, uh like jumping. Like jumping super high is a visual illusion. The kid is not actually jumping super high in the virtual environment. And that's where we are going to test in the next phase when I go back to Brazil, we're going to do tests with kids. To see if the efficacy is similar when we create this kind of illusion because it's a mix of illusion and a mix of real tasks with real embodiment and virtual reality. So I have to make sure if that comparison is efficient enough to provide clinical results for the children. But uh we work one of the main points, I guess, it was the multiplayer connection. We are having trouble doing the multiplayer connection because the machine, the computer to do this had to be a very, very good computer because all the programs that we use for the virtual environment plus the multiplayer uh technology are very heavy. So the computer doesn't handle open the two environments at the same time to make them work together. And here we're we were able to make it and to transform into an app to use in the head-mounted display. So I think I'm not sure because we cannot say about things that didn't happen, but I feel that if I haven't come here, this couldn't be possible. And this is the main part of the therapy because I don't want a fake therapy inside of the virtual reality. I don't want an avatar in the virtual reality. The whole point is the therapists being able to be connected with the child remotely. Like a meeting uh that we do, we do telehealth already, everybody in like different places, but connecting through a computer. But for children's therapy, for child therapy, is this doesn't kind of work. Adolescence works a little bit, but that child doesn't stop and talk to the therapist in front of the camera. And we also need the activities. So the whole point is meeting inside the virtual environment, the kid and the therapist remotely. And uh to do this, we need a multiplayer environment, and that was our main difficulty there that we could solve in here.

Ralph Ford 23:52

And did you have our students working with you? I mean, so what's a typical day look like that you're up there working and doing research in this the VARA lab?

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 24:00

Yeah, I have students working with me. I had students from Dijit working with me. Uh, I also had a Brazilian student that came for a summer internship in here because I was here, he was able to organize this and come here too. So he was also able to. We have this major in Brazil that's called informatics biomedic. So it's specific for anything related to technology, but for health sciences. So it's a very focused course. So I had this student helping me here too. And what I did extra is that I would work in a clinic. My program ends in May. So now, like April and May, I have

Publishing, Students, And Project Momentum

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 24:41

been working a lot with writing mainly. So my usual daily now is writing. Before it was more like testing the environments and making the modifications and checking and testing if it's working or not, and testing with the other devices, but now it's more the writing part because we need to publish.

Ralph Ford 25:01

You're writing the results up. You're writing up.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 25:03

Yeah, I'm writing preliminary results. Uh, we are now we submitted four, me and Chris together. Since I'm I'm here, we submitted three papers, and we are finishing now. There is one in preparation to be submitted hopefully next month. So we'll be four. So I'm kind of writing everything that we've been doing together and some of what how we did in Brazil and how we did in here to share this with the world.

Ralph Ford 25:32

So if you're writing the writing it up, you must have found some interesting results. Like, what's the top two or three things you learned uh in your research here?

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 25:40

Uh-huh. So no, we are still in the development phase because my visa doesn't allow me to do data collection in here. That's why the data collection of children will be in Brazil. So we're writing about how we translated this, what our rationale was, how we compared this visual illusions and how we hope this can be effective based on the other feedback that we're creating with um auditory, visual, and vibrational elements. Uh, what I'm working now to, besides the writing of the papers, is to keep writing some grants for our collaboration to continue. So we have two different things that we want to do because Chris has a lab and he Chris has other students that I have been working with uh from Psychology Master also because the digital students help in all this technology part, but I also have uh psychology students interested in the clinical part. So what we wrote was a parallel work that will involve data collection, but I would not be involved in that because my visa doesn't allow. But we're kind of using the methodology that I'm going to use in my return to Brazil to keep this work in here so we have data from both countries. Um just to make clear we talk with export control to make this very like ethical and IRB approved too.

Speaker 27:15

I know you probably had IRB approved control, but we'll mark that as done.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 27:20

Exactly. So we're kind of, I think it's interesting to compare like cultural perspective. So we're trying to do something similar to that. We also partnered with uh Dr. Erica Edwards that works with the EEG, and uh

Adding EEG To Measure The Brain

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 27:37

we're trying to make uh methodology, and we're test. I I mean I'm working on that, on that part of the um how can I say setup the equipment uh so they can test in the future with um with participants too to see how can we collect brain waves and this electric uh part of the brain to see together with head-mounted displays uh display to see if we can have more physiological data from that. I never worked with EEG in Brazil because we also don't have that in my lab. And uh that was really interesting because all of the methodology that I have been working with was more questionnaires and evaluations, and this gives us clinical and qualitative analysis, but the physiological analysis this really helps your brain to make new collections. I never worked with that, so I have been working with this part here too, and try to create because the EEG that we have here is not to be used with a head mounted display originally, so we have to make a new setup and make sure that it's not causing any interferences that would bias this study. So I that's also part of my work. I have been in her lab for a while testing. Now I'm writing what I uh figure out about which points are more suitable for data collection with the EG so we can in the future, and also Chris will probably receive another Brazilian student, not from Fulbright, but from um uh Capis, which is the institution in Brazil, and he's also interested in that. So it's kind of we're continuing working with others.

Ralph Ford 29:26

You know, as I said, uh you know, I was a Fulbrighter and I still work and do you know interesting things with people I made connections with years ago. So that's the whole point. And uh well, let me ask that you know, one of the things I'd like to really understand is you know, you're doing all this great research, you're building the professional connections. That's what a Fulbright is about. But tell me about the cultural things, that's part of it too. Like you're

Making Friends And Learning Local Life

Ralph Ford 29:50

here to learn the culture. Hopefully, you got to see some interesting things and understand something about our students. So, what are your observations? What have you what have you done?

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 29:58

So, we have this belief in Brazil that American people are more closed. So I was kind of afraid because as I told you before, when I was in New York, I have this Brazilian students that went with me, and we kind of, and I think that was a very important thing for me to observe alone here because I felt that time, I felt that was real, that Americans were closed, and I couldn't really go uh deep in a connection with American people, and we stayed together as this Brazilian community of students. Uh, and actually, my my best friends from that time are all Brazilians, so I didn't really connect with any people from abroad. But now that I'm here alone, I see that it's very easy to just go to what is already known for you. So it was easier for me at that time to just be with people that speak my own language and have the same thoughts. And here I was forced to get out of this box. And now I'm questioning myself is if American people in Long Island were really cold, or if I didn't give the opportunity to really connect, because here I really connect with a lot of people. I'm very impressed uh with how welcome. So I arrived here in the end of August, and my birthday, I was I turned 30 in September 6th. So my birthday was the next week, and the whole lab they organized a birthday party for you. Yes, surprise birthday party. I was so happy. I I never had a surprise birthday party before. Uh and Chris has a uh he has a lot of students working in the lab. So I made a lot of connections with all the students. Uh, some of my best friends now are from the master program of psychology. And in October, I was already hanging with them and getting to know the city and getting to know uh so one of the main things I love Halloween. We don't celebrate too much in Brazil, and we always celebrate in the clinic that I work. We go dress up with uh costumes, but here is very big, people really put effort on decoration, and I was really concerned, like, ah, can't what I'm going to do on Halloween. I really want to do something. And when I was in New York, there was this huge parade. So I had the experience of going to the streets in New York City with all these people, and it was very fun. And I thought I'm pretty sure there's no parade in Erie. So I thought, what am I going to do? And then the girls invited me to uh just go to their house and do and receive the kids that were asking treat or treats.

Ralph Ford 32:45

Sure, the trick or treats.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 32:46

And it was so much fun. All of the kids knocking with different costumes, their parents in the car following them around. It was a completely different experience and much, I think, much more real because I think that one in New York City was more like a party thing. And here I got to experience the real experience of Halloween. And because of these girls that invited me and reset me as a friend, and we're already like talking, when are you going to visit me in Brazil? Let's go there. So I think this cultural thing of thinking that Americans are more cold is not actually true, or maybe I just found the right persons. I don't know.

Ralph Ford 33:28

I guess it's just a bit of both. First of all, you know, your other experience was your first time in the US. Yeah. When you come with people you know, you'll tend to stick there. Uh-huh. And there are there are differences in terms of you know how long it takes people to open up based on where they are geographically. In Western PA, an area, it's a pretty friendly place. Like we're like the Midwest here. So probably a little combination of both, my guess.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 33:50

Oh, okay.

Ralph Ford 33:51

Yeah. But it's really great to hear. And I think that that's characteristic of what you see here. I had a couple more questions before we wind up the conversation. I'm really curious. Is any of the work that you've done have you been able to bring let's go back to your brother?

Access For Underserved Families And Autism

Ralph Ford 34:06

Do you see how to apply this to help him, or have you thought about that, or are there applications, you know, because that's how you really started in this whole field? Yes, the experience with your brother.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 34:15

Uh-huh. So my brother now, though he's 32, he's pretty fine. He was able to do college since his problem was mainly physical, and he was diplasic, so it's basically only the legs. We were able during all these years as a family to support him and being his being autonomous and independent. So he drives, he has an adapted vehicle, he's very fine. He has his own family, he has two kids already.

Speaker 34:43

Oh, awesome.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 34:44

Yeah, he's doing really fine. So my focus now is to get to the skids because my brother was I think thankfully to my mom that she made all the possible and impossible to go after everything that we had at the time to make him to develop. But I know that so my family has good financial conditions, and my mom and my dad they had this possibility to provide this to my brother. And also, we lived in a very big countryside city in Brazil, so we we have people around to do this all this development, and also they travel, so they travel to another state in Brazil for a while to spend some time there to do his rehabilitation. So I I'm pretty sure that he is very successful now in terms of development because they did everything. But I know that a lot of families in Brazil don't have these conditions because this requires a lot of money, a lot of time. My mom sacrificed her life, her career. And I don't think that's the point, like having people sacrifice things for the development. I think we should be able to, everybody should be able to have a good life and to have access no matter where they are, no matter how they have conditions or not. So, what I'm planning to do is of course first test this and see if the clinical outcomes are really good. And we have a public health system in Brazil, and I'm from a federal university, so it's all uh government funding, and I was planning to maybe talk. I really don't know exactly what the path would be, but maybe uh make it free for people to use it uh in a very ethical way, as I told. It has to be a therapist, that it has to be like correct training on that to work with that. But so the whole thing started about this accessibility thing. I mean, not started, but became more intense, is when I decided to move to Porto Alegre because I lived in this countryside with my family, countryside city that is big, and then I moved to a small city, smaller city to work as an OT. And after that I moved to another one, and in both of them, there was a lot of people needing an OT, but only me. Yeah, and then I decided to move to Porto Alegre because of the PAGA, so I have to move. And once I moved, the other city, the first city still have OTs, but the other one, the people that stay there, there's one OT that stay, but after two or three months, she also left. So professionals don't really stay in these small cities. Uh so people that end up to be underserved.

Ralph Ford 37:26

Um happens all over the world. Yeah.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 37:29

So if it were to be remote therapy, uh, maybe OTs in Porto Alegre could uh treat this patient in these different parts. Because a head-mounted display is not so cheap, but it's cheaper than a whole room therapy. And also, it doesn't matter if you have the room therapy there if you don't have the professional. So I think it's a way, it's not the solution from our problems, all of the problems, but it's a way to minimize these underserved areas. So that's my plan, my goal with all this study and with all this development. Also, for autism, even when you are, so I worked once with a kid that never left home, he was very reactive to everything, and he never left home, so I had to go there to the house. But not everybody wants to do the therapy at the patient's house, so there's another way, even if you're in the same city and the kid cannot leave home because of some symptoms or some conditions, you can start a therapy remotely. And this kid, especially, was the kid that made me believe that autism and head-mounted display could go together because a lot of people don't really work in this area. Because since autism uh people have sensibility, they tend to think that head-mounted display is not a good thing because it touched the face. Uh, but this kid he has um a very intense sensitivity. He wouldn't wear clothes, that's why he never lived home. Because he couldn't wear any clothes. When I was there, he was wearing his like I have to work with him wearing only shorts, because that's the most that he could do. But I had the head-mounted display because I was doing my masters, and I had the head-mounted display in my car, and he found out, and he was so amazed by that. And then he used it. I just put a random virtual environment of C because he liked it a lot of C creatures, and he was so amazed. And then he asked, he started asking, he he didn't talk verbally, but he would talk in the tablet. So her mom sent me videos of him asking me to go again to take the headset to him. So I think it's sometimes we don't do research or we don't believe the idea because we think it's not going to work, but actually we have to test to see what's going on. You gotta test it. That's right.

Ralph Ford 39:58

You have to see, and and sometimes it really surprises you.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 40:02

Yeah.

Ralph Ford 40:02

So your time at uh Behrend is coming to the end, and you're going back to Brazil soon. So what's next for you?

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 40:09

So I will go back to Brazil in June.

What’s Next And What She’ll Miss

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 40:12

I probably go back to the clinic I was working uh halftime and then halftime finished the PhD. I have to finish my PhD until January. So I will start some data collection right after I arrive, but probably not finish until the end of my PhD. So I'm already talking to my advisor in Brazil. We're probably going to keep the research going on after my PhD as a postdoctor. And really finish all the data collection to have robust um evidence. And um so this will take me probably two more years, and then I don't know.

Ralph Ford 40:56

I you want an academic career or you you don't know.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 41:01

I want, but I have I have this feeling that I don't want to leave the clinic too, and it's kind of hard to balance two things, two very different things. In my ideal world, I would work as a professor part-time and work as a OT part-time.

Ralph Ford 41:18

Maybe you can find a way to bring the both together. Yes. You never know.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 41:22

Yeah.

Ralph Ford 41:22

Well, here's my last question for you. What are you going to miss most about Erie, Pennsylvania?

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 41:28

I think the people that I met here, I have a really good relation with Chris, with all these students in the lab. Uh, we have this routine of uh going there, spending some time together. Sometimes when everybody's doing too much work, we just stop for a little while and we do stretching or we play something together just to release. Oh, Chris also has a massage chair. I don't know if you have been there in the massage chair.

Ralph Ford 41:57

I have not, but I'm aware. He's got all sorts of gadgets up there. Yeah.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 42:02

So we can we do these things, and I think this helps us bond together too. So it's not only work and only stress. We kind of balance everything. So I think I will definitely miss this routine and all these people that I met here and that are very meaningful for me right now. But at the same time, I know it's not uh goodbye uh for real. It's just see you soon.

Ralph Ford 42:27

My guess is you'll be back here, to be sure. And uh maybe we'll get some of our people to visit you in uh in Brazil.

Speaker 3 42:34

Yes.

Ralph Ford 42:35

This this has been a great conversation, really enjoyed it. And uh thank you for the time today.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 42:41

Thank you too.

Ralph Ford 42:42

Well, my guest today is uh Bibiana Mayer Steckel. She is a Fulbright scholar here, PhD candidate, visiting Penn State Behrend. Thank you for sharing your experience. We greatly appreciate it.

Bibiana Mayer Steckel 42:54

Thank you for having me.

Ralph Ford 42:55

Take care.