ALT Facial surgeon Dr. Charles Nduka was stuck. He needed a way to measure facial expressions to provide facial paralysis patients with real-time biometric feedback as part of their rehabilitation training. No suitable solution existed but a chance meeting with technology entrepreneur and triathlete Graeme Cox started a journey to invent a new biometric VR platform, emteqPRO. Researchers and developers can now measure heart rate, heart rate variability, stress responses, facial muscle activation, and emotional valence in VR. This talk describes the journey so far, and the launch of the 2021 emteq labs’ awards to help VR companies, content creators and academics advance research into the effects of VR on human behavior.