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 Virtual Environment Testing Area (IVETA). She earned her PhD 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 IVETA, an immersive VR-based experimental research lab at the NIH Clinical Center. Dr Persky splits her effort between providing leadership for the IVETA and conducting her programmatic research which investigates the communication of new knowledge about the role of genomics in common health conditions.

Dr Persky has published extensively in the areas of virtual reality research applications, health communication, and genomics. She is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Virtual and Augmented Reality and has presented her work in venues such as the Smithsonian Institution and at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.