Head, Health Communication and Behavior Unit
Director, Immersive Simulation Program
National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)

Associate Investigator and Director of Virtual Reality Lab
National Institutes of Health / National Human Genome Research Institute

Dr. Susan Persky is an associate investigator and unit head within the Social and Behavioral Research Branch, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health (NIH) where she directs the Immersive Simulation Program (ISP). She earned her Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara where she studied at the Research Center for Virtual Environments and Behavior. In 2006 she founded the ISP, an immersive technology-based experimental research facility at the NIH Clinical Center. Dr. Persky splits her effort between providing leadership for the ISP and conducting programmatic research on clinical and public health translation of emerging genomics technologies. She has written and presented extensively on methodology, applications, and evaluation of immersive technology in healthcare and behavioral science contexts. Dr. Persky has presented this work in venues such as the Smithsonian Institution and at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.