Ria Gualano

she/her

Graduate Student, Department of Communication

About

Ria studies the communication of disability through projects on inclusive virtual reality (VR) avatars, disability and neurodiversity arts, and higher education accessibility. A member of the Virtual Embodiment Lab (VEL), she aims to produce actionable guidelines for enhancing the inclusivity of social, educational and work environments in virtual and non-virtual spaces.

She is particularly interested in participatory research methods and organized the Spring 2024 "Invisible Aspects of Disability and Neurodiversity" arts exhibition. As a 2025 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellow, she is organizing a Spring 2026 disability and neurodiversity arts exhibition that will integrate extended reality (XR) technologies.

At her undergraduate institution, she led projects on the psychological effects of social media use and collaborated with teams on research related to memory, interpersonal relationships, and well-being.

Education

B.A. (with Honors), Psychology, Johns Hopkins University

Interests

Accessible technology, computer-mediated communication, disability and neurodiversity arts, disability representation, higher education accommodations, inclusive avatars, invisible disabilities, virtual reality

Awards & Honors

Graduate School Founder’s Dissertation Fellowship, Cornell University (2026)
Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship (2025)
Exemplary Leadership & Service Award for Early Career Students, Graduate School Office of Inclusion & Student Engagement, Cornell University (2025)
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, Cornell University (2025)
Glass Family Fellowship, Department of Communication, Cornell University (2025)
Best Poster, XR Access Symposium (2024)
Glass Family Fellowship, Department of Communication, Cornell University (2024)
Dean’s Excellence Fellowship, Graduate School Dean’s Scholar, Cornell University (2022)

Courses Taught

COMM/INFO 2450 Communication and Technology (Summer 2024 and 2025)

Contact Information

rjg322 [at] cornell.edu

Additional Links

Conference Presentations

Gualano, R. J., Leonard, C., Zhang, Y., Paek, A. J., Trost, Z., Azenkot, S., & Won, A. S. (2025, June). Designing disability-inclusive avatars: Representing chronic pain through social VR avatar movement and appearance. Paper presented at the 2025 XR Access Symposium. New York, NY, USA.
Gualano, R. J., Halegoua, G. R. & Campbell, S. W. (2025, June). Disability and AI in smart cities: Centering accessibility in conversations around hybrid spaces and urban design. Paper presented at the Mobile Communication division of the 75th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association. Denver, CO, USA.
Gualano, R. J., Leonard, C., Zhang, Y., Paek, A. J., Trost, Z., Azenkot, S., & Won, A. S. (2025, June). Representing invisible disabilities and chronic pain through social VR avatar movement, appearance and apparel. Paper presented at the International Communication Association’s Second Disability, Communication, and Media Preconference. Boulder, CO, USA.
Gualano, R. J., Leonard, C., Zhang, Y., Trost, Z., Azenkot, S., & Won, A. S. (2024, December). Representing Chronic Pain in Immersive Social Contexts. Poster presented at the Immersive Media in Medicine Symposium. Ithaca, NY, USA.
Leipzig, S. B., McLeod-Daphnis, S. I., Gualano, R. J., Turman, M. L., Emrich, M., Difede, J. & Won, A. S. (2024, December). Scoping review of customization and personalization in VR for trauma-related conditions. Poster presented at the Immersive Media in Medicine Symposium. Ithaca, NY, USA.
Li, X., Ni, N. K., Born, S., Gualano, R. J., Lee, I., Bellana, B., and Chen, J. (2024, October). Agency personalizes naturalistic event memories. Poster presented at Neuroscience 2024 (Society for Neuroscience). Chicago, IL, USA.
Martinez, K. T., Gualano, R. J. & Stevenson Won, A. (2024, August). How do we embody our narratives? Paper presented at the second annual Newhouse Impact Summit “Advances and Opportunities in Immersive Storytelling Technologies” at the Syracuse University Newhouse School of Public Communications. Syracuse, NY, USA.
Gualano, R. J. (2024, June). “Invisible Aspects of Disability and Neurodiversity”: Reflections on curating a disability arts exhibition, representation, and participatory research. Paper presented at the International Communication Association’s Inaugural Disability Communications and Media Pre-Conference 2024: Emerging or Emerged? Gold Coast, Australia.
Gualano, R. J., Leonard, C., Zhang, Y., Trost, Z., Azenkot, S., & Won, S. A. (2024, June). Representing pain as identity, advocacy, or accommodation?: Transforming movement into behavioral representations of chronic pain conditions through social VR avatars. Poster presented at the 2024 XR Access Symposium. New York, NY, USA.
Gualano, R. J. (2024, March). Re-thinking time, energy, and “accommodation”: Celebrating neurodiversity and disability in higher education. Poster presented at the Neurodiversity Research Poster Session during Cornell University’s Celebration Week 2024. Ithaca, NY, USA.
Gualano, R. J.*, Jiang, L.*, Zhang, K.*, Won, A. S., & Azenkot, S. (2023, June). Expanding Inclusive Avatar Design: Understanding Invisible Disability Representation and Disclosure on Social VR Platforms. Poster presented at the XR Access Symposium. New York, NY, USA.
Leipzig, S. B., McLeod-Daphnis, S. I., Gualano, R. J., & Won, A. S. (2022, October). Therapeutic Holodeck: A Scoping Review on Customization in XR Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy. Poster presented at the Cornell University XR Retreat. New York, NY, USA.
Gualano, R. J. & Bowen, J. (2022, February). Online, offline, or somewhere in between? A within-subjects examination of a domain-contingent self-concept. Poster presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s Annual Convention. San Francisco, CA, USA.
Gualano, R. J. & Bowen, J. (2021, October). Are our identities segmented in the digital age? The self-concept in online and offline domains. Poster presented at the Sixth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies. Toronto, Canada.
Gualano, R. J. & Bowen, J. (2021, September). Personality and web 2.0: Social media’s longitudinal impact on the self-concept. Poster presented at the Seventh International User Conference of the German Family Panel pairfam. Bremen, Germany.

Publications

Gualano, R. J. (2025). [Review of the book Children, deafness, and Deaf cultures in popular media by John Stephens and Vivian Yenika-Agbaw (Eds.)]. International Journal of Communication, 19.
Martinez, K. T., Gualano, R. J. & Won, A. S. (2024). How do we embody our narratives? Newhouse Impact Journal, 2(1), 17-22. https://doi.org/10.14305/jn.29960819.2024.2.1.4
Gualano, R. J. & Campbell, S. W. (2024). Classrooms in the metaverse: educational applications and levels of learner interaction in virtual reality. Communication Education, 73(2), 212-225. https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2024.2312873
Engineer, A., Gualano, R. J., Crocker, R. L., Smith, J. L., Maizes, V., Weil, A., & Sternberg, E. M. (2021). An integrative health framework for wellbeing in the built environment. Building and Environment, 205, 108253. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2021.108253

Peer-Reviewed Conference Proceedings

Gualano, R. J., Leonard, C., Zhang, Y., Trost, Z., Azenkot, S., & Won, A. S. (2024). The Looking-Glass Avatar: Representing Chronic Pain through Social Virtual Reality Avatar Movement. In Proceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (pp. 1-5). St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. https://doi.org/10.1145/3663548.3688485
Gualano, R. J.*, Jiang, L.*, Zhang, K., Shende, T., Won, A. S., & Azenkot, S. (2024). “I Try to Represent Myself as I Am”: Self-Presentation Preferences of People with Invisible Disabilities through Embodied Social VR Avatars. In Proceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (pp. 1-15). St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. https://doi.org/10.1145/3663548.3675620
Gualano, R. J.*, Jiang, L.*, Zhang, K.*, Won, A. S., & Azenkot, S. (2023). "Invisible Illness Is No Longer Invisible": Making Social VR Avatars More Inclusive for Invisible Disability Representation. In Proceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (pp. 1-5). New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3597638.3614480

Ria in the news

News

November 19, 2025

COMM Updates - 11/19/2025

November 19, 2025 Invited Lectures Graduate student Ria Gualano delivered an invited talk titled “Virtual Reality Avatars and Storytelling” as part of Disability and Extended Reality Technologies: A Research Day at the University of Michigan’s...