Just a list:

Oculus Rift and every other VR and Controller Tech: Obvious. Helps escape into virtual worlds via more direct methods (control, vision, sound, etc).

Space Research: Escape earth to go amongst stars, planets, etc. Working on living on other planets.

There's been research on mind control and reading. And creating visuals out of thoughts. Again, directly ties in with the VR stuff, as well as extracting thoughts to examine them.

There's weapon research, which is just faster ways of removing people. Which is changing the world because you don't like the current one.

Travel: basically escaping the current location and going somewhere else faster.

Then there's computers, phones, etc: which are all being tied into our massive virtual world we call the internet. Which is drastically different than the "real" world.

There's a lot more as well, but that's to give you a basic idea. Most research tends to be towards the escapist side of things. Though I'd imagine there'd be research that doesn't do that as well (none that comes to mind though).