KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

We are delighted to be hosting three inspiring keynote speakers at this year’s TVX / IMX, from academic and industry thought-leaders from across the globe. 

Our first keynote will take place on Day 2 (Thursday, June 18th). The second keynote will be on Day 3 (Friday, June 19th). The third one has been canceled due to Covid-19.

The schedules will be confirmed later on.

Day 2 (Thursday June 18th)

Time: 13:30h – 14:30h

MEL SLATER

University of Barcelona

Keynote Talk: “Using Virtual Reality to Change Attitudes and Behaviour”

In virtual reality you can look around wherever you like, and still of course see virtual reality. What happens when you look down towards yourself or in a virtual mirror? If it has been so programmed you will see a life-sized virtual body replacing your own. You are likely then to have the perceptual illusion that the virtual body is yours, even though you know for sure that it is not. This is referred to as a body ownership illusion. Here I will describe this perceptual illusion, and give examples of how this has been used to address a number personal and social issues.

Mel Slater is a Distinguished Investigator at the University of Barcelona, and co-Director of the Event Lab (Experimental Virtual Environments for Neuroscience and Technology). He was previously Professor of Virtual Environments at University College London in the Department of Computer Science. He has been involved in research in virtual reality since the early 1990s, and has been first supervisor of 40 PhDs in graphics and virtual reality since 1989. He held a European Research Council Advanced Grant TRAVERSE 2009-2015 and has now a second Advanced Grant MoTIVE 2018-2022. He is Field Editor of Frontiers in Virtual Reality, and Chief Editor of the Human Behaviour in Virtual Reality section. His publications can be seen on http://publicationslist.org/melslater. He is one of the Founders of the company Virtual Bodyworks S.L.

Day 3 (Friday June 19th)

Time: 19:00h – 20:00h

NONNY DE LA PEÑA

CEO & Founder, Emblematic Group

Keynote Talk:  “Building the Volumetric Future”

Nonny de la Peña is the CEO & Founder of the award-winning innovation company Emblematic Group. Often acknowledged as “The Godmother of Virtual Reality,” she is a pioneer of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality and is widely credited with inventing the genre of immersive journalism. She’ll discuss her journey from working as a Newsweek journalist, premiering the first ever VR piece at Sundance with “Hunger in LA”, to now being at the forefront of the industry providing an easy XR creation and sharing platform, REACH.Love.

Nonny de la Peña is CEO & Founder of award-winning innovation company Emblematic Group. Often acknowledged as “The Godmother of Virtual Reality,” she is a pioneer of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality who is widely credited with inventing the genre of immersive journalism. In 2012, her piece “Hunger in Los Angeles” debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, marking it’s place in history as the first VR experience to be shown at the festival, and since then her work has continued to elicit global recognition at institutions and events such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, Brooklyn Museum, World Economic Forum and Venice International Film Festival. In 2017, Nonny was named one of CNET’s 20 Most Influential Latinos in Tech and most recently she received the 2018 WSJ Magazine Technology Innovator of the Year award. Under her leadership, Emblematic has built a critically acclaimed body of work that includes tracking the chaos of the Syrian civil war to working with AT&T on projects that leverage the future of 5G technologies and machine learning. Her newest breakthrough is Emblematic’s WebVR platform REACH which creates scalable distribution in the medium, democratizes content authorship and empowers new voices to share their stories.



CANCELLED DUE TO COVID-19

Day 2 (Thursday June 18th)

RIKA NAKAZAWA

Chief Strategy Officer, Ascent Robotics

Keynote Talk: “AR and 3 Ways the AI Super Vitamin Will Power Your Life”

AR made its first major foray into the mainstream through Pokemon Go – a phenomenon that gave people all around the world a glimpse into what it’s like to integrate a digital reality with the physical world.  Over the past 4 years since that launch, Augmented Reality has made inroads in other ways beyond entertainment and into the workforce across industries, and leapt from the mobile phone onto convenient head-worn devices.   More profoundly, advanced developments in Artificial Intelligence have given AR a whole new set of powers that will transform how we work, live and play. For example, combining visual data, with voice recognition and predictive analytics based on context and environment, means that if Pokemon Go were launched today – you’d be able to have a conversation with him, and have a hands-free experience that is more personal and immersive than ever before.  We’ll explore this and other scenarios where the powerful combination of AR + AI will impact our lives in 2020 and beyond.

 

Rika is a seasoned global executive, pushing business development at the intersection of the human, the digital, and the physical through innovative experiences. 

A frequent conference speaker, Rika is a technology strategy and marketing consultant, serving as interim Chief Strategy Officer at Tokyo-based AI Startup called Ascent Robotics, and is also the CEO of BoardSeatMeet, Inc. a Silicon Valley venture focusing on gender-balancing corporate board rooms by empowering women to build and leverage social capital with modern technology.  Born in Japan to a German mother and Japanese father, and trilingual in Japanese, German and English, Rika came to the U.S to attend Princeton University.

Rika has since worked internationally over two decades in senior executive roles in strategy, business development, and marketing with Fortune 500 companies (NVIDIA, Sony, Accenture, American Express) and disruptive technology startups. She has been a life long technologist and has served on multiple Boards of enterprises in Next-gen Computing (AR/VR) and Artificial Intelligence ecosystems, including the Accelerator board for South By Southwest.  Moreover, she is an active advocate for advancing women’s leadership in technology and business across industry verticals and global lines.

Rika’s work focuses on embracing the opportunity we have to shape the next 50 years of computing, and the way are transitioning from simply interfacing, to more deeply integrating, with all things digital.