Inside the CATCH_VR Bootcamp: three weeks of immersive technology at GIK Institute

The CATCH_VR Bootcamp ran as a residential programme at GIK Institute, Topi, from 3 to 20 August. Demand was high enough that we split the intake into two cohorts running in parallel, each following the same schedule so that lab time stayed usable rather than crowded.

The structure was deliberately simple: theoretical expert sessions in the first half of the day, hands-on practical training in the second. Participants worked across immersive technologies (AR and VR), IoT and Digital Twin, with mentors drawn from both industry and academia.

Splitting into cohorts turned out to matter more than we expected. Headsets, workstations and mentor attention are finite, and a smaller room means every participant actually gets to put the headset on rather than watch someone else use it. We have kept the same model for the cohorts that followed at GIK Institute, Lahore, Karachi and Sukkur.

Photographs from both cohorts, along with the full schedule and venue details, are on the event pages for Cohort 1 and Cohort 2.