Emergency response teams —police, firefighters, and medical— must effectively coordinate their actions in high-stress situations. Current training programs primarily focus on technical skills and rigid communication protocols, yet maintaining or flexibly adapting coordination under stress is equally critical. By using a novel multi-channel approach that synchronizes video-coded coordination behavior and physiological measurements across three contexts, I examine complex coordination dynamics in high-stress scenarios. Insights from this research will inform the development of intervention and training methods to support teams in maintaining effective coordination under stress.

Virtual reality and serious games offer new opportunities to enhance training for suicide crisis intervention. Both technologies provide an immersive and scalable alternative to traditional role-playing exercises for investigating and training high-stakes interactions. This study addresses two underexplored areas: the lack of scientific evidence for effective de-escalation methods, and limited understanding of how technology design choices influence users’ social engagement. By comparing VR and serious games and analysing how factors including spatial presence, stress, and relationship-building with virtual agents affect performance, this research contributes to more effective training technology design and a deeper understanding of high-stakes social interactions.

Grand societal challenges cannot be captured by one discipline. Nor is it up to academics alone to come up with solutions. That is why it is important that students learn to cooperate with students from other disciplines and with various stakeholders. It is crucial that they learn to tackle societal challenges in a transdisciplinary and responsible manner. But how do you learn to do that and how can teachers help? This project develops and tests educational tools with which teachers can provide support for students and practitioners to learn to work in a transdisciplinary way and shape responsible futures.

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Lack of research reproducibility, fake news, and restricted access to scientific knowledge in the public domain can negatively affect trust in Science and the relation between Science and society. This project aims at teaching students the required knowledge and skills to address these challenges by teaching them Open Science principles and practices. Open Science is a movement aiming at making research activities and results more open, more inclusive, and more accessible within the public domain. Additionally, Open Science promotes public engagement of (scientific) experts within society, and greater citizens’ involvement in Science.