Navigating Cultures, Connections, and VR Therapy: Lessons from Villa Azzurra

Ciao! My name is Tiya Madhavan, and I am a rising junior at the University of Michigan majoring in Biomedical Engineering and minoring in Art and Design. For the past five weeks I’ve had the outstanding opportunity to intern at Villa Azzurra, a rehabilitation center located in Cercola, Naples.

Throughout my internship, I have grown both professionally and personally, and after living in Sorrento since June, I barely recognize the person I was before coming to Italy. My work experience gave me invaluable insight into working in a different cultural environment, furthered my knowledge and interest in biotechnology innovation, and much more that I’m excited to share with you.

Villa Azzurra specializes in cognitive and motor therapies for patients with neurodevelopmental disorders such as Autism Spectrum Disorder and ADHD. I contributed to the clinic’s progression of IamHero, a virtual reality headset device that acts as an engaging and trackable therapeutic tool for these patients. The VR headset targets cognitive skills such as perceptual reasoning, working memory, processing speed, and verbal comprehension in children’s brains through different games.

In the beginning weeks, I conducted several literature reviews on therapeutic intervention strategies, neurobiological treatment technologies, regulatory pathways, and global VR therapy applications. I then conducted exploratory data analysis on simulated results from a VR-based cognitive assessment modeled after the WISC-IV test through methods such as correlation matrices, heatmaps, Cronbach’s Alpha, exploratory factor analysis, regression modeling, and cluster analysis to identify patterns in data to improve the VR experience. I also got to experience first-hand the VR headset and seeing how this device was applied in real-life therapeutic settings was eye-opening and definitely opened up a new career option for me in rehabilitation engineering.

Earning the micro-credential in Working Across Cultures was a significant part of why I was able to get so much out of this experience. As I progressed through my work experience, the micro-credential helped me adjust to the vastly different workplace culture of Italy. In the U.S., work is very structured and deadlines are enforced but in Villa Azzurra, I got used to an environment that was more fluid and less rigid in terms of scheduled tasks. There was a bigger emphasis placed on self-paced and directed work which required flexibility, adaptability, and self-motivation – skills that the micro-credential helped me master. The cultural context it provided me with made the transition into my internship a lot smoother and helped me keep an open mind in the workplace.

Reflecting on the Experience

My greatest success during the internship was my ability to take initiative, ask questions, and seek clarification when needed. Because of the independence of our work, my colleague and I had to consistently keep in contact with our supervisor if we were running into any issues or had questions about tasks, research topics, or patient data to make sure we were on the right track.

On the same note, my biggest challenge was combating language and cultural barriers. Villa Azzurra provides a unique advantage because there are patients, clinicians and therapists, and researchers present in the building but I couldn’t communicate in Italian with them.

As my time at Villa Azzurra comes to a close, I am grateful to have furthered my technical knowledge about the intersection between virtual reality methods and neurodevelopmental disorder therapy strategies. But just as importantly, furthering my cultural knowledge about Italian workplace norms and getting to know the Cercola area through the two-hour long commute to and from Sorrento was extremely valuable. I’m leaving this internship with a strong sense of cultural awareness and the ability to work in unfamiliar environments, all of which are essential for working in healthcare settings in my future career.

Learn more about studying engineering abroad here!