Damien is a creative technologist, digital archivist, and augmented reality (AR) artist and developer. He is the founder of Black Terminus AR, a camera app and no-code AR art studio in your pocket that helps bring archives to life. He aims to make AR easy for artists, brands, and museums. Black Terminus AR allows user to view and create 2D and 3D AR projects using just a phone or tablet. Its drag and drop interface empowers users to create AR content without learning a ton of code or buying a bunch of gadgets. It saves artists and curation teams time and money.

Dr. Haddas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Orthopaedics Center for Musculoskeletal Research at the University of Rochester. He specializes in the care of patients with musculoskeletal and neurological disorders.

Michael J. Murdoch is an Associate Professor and Director of the Munsell Color Science Laboratory at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he teaches topics including colorimetry, psychophysics, lighting, and imaging. He leads a research project on color appearance in augmented reality (AR) funded by a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and additionally conducts research on displays and temporally dynamic LED lighting. A recipient of a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award, he spent Fall 2023 in Ghent, Belgium, for collaborative research with K.U. Leuven.

The Ferryman Collective is a passionate group of creative and technical professionals dedicated to bringing groundbreaking live, immersive narratives to life in virtual reality. Their company was born of the desire to explore what storytelling, interaction, immersion, and entertainment can be rather than what it has been, to define a new generation of media with live performance in XR. They are a new kind of virtual reality studio, paving the way forward in this brave new world.

Co-presented by Studio X, Goergen Institute for Data Science, and the Institute of Optics

Dr. Sylvia Xueni Pan is a Senior Lecturer in VR at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has a BEng in Computer Science from Beihang University, an MSc in Graphics and PhD in Virtual Reality from UCL (funded by the EPSRC). Before coming to Goldsmiths, she worked as a research fellow in Computer Science at UCL and at the same University’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (ICN). Her research interest is the use of virtual reality (VR) as a medium for real-time social interaction, in particular in the application areas of training and therapy.

John Haddick is a Distinguished Engineer with the Lenovo Intelligent Devices Group, which focuses on developing technologies for the ThinkReality commercial AR/VR portfolio of solutions. As the CTO of ThinkReality, John is a leading strategist for AR/VR product design and development for the company.

Prior to joining Lenovo, John was the CTO of the Osterhout Design Group, a company pioneering AR technologies, where he was in charge of new product innovations and long range product strategy across the company.

Scott McEldowney, Ph.D. is a Director, Research Scientist for Reality Labs Research, Meta in Redmond, WA. His research spans areas from novel imaging systems to exploration of emerging concepts in near to eye display. Scott was the founding member of the optics research team within Reality Labs.

David Chalmers is a leading philosopher of consciousness and philosophy of the mind. He is Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University. He is the Co-Director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness. He is also Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University and Co-Director of the PhilPapers Foundation. He studies the foundations of cognitive science, physics, and technology, as well as philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology, and many other areas.

Muhsinah L. Holmes Morris, Ph.D., is the Director of “Morehouse in the Metaverse,” a VR Project at Morehouse College and Assistant Professor of Education for the Morehouse Center for Excellence in Education (ECEE). She is an alumna of Clark Atlanta University (BS) and Emory University (MS, PhD). She teaches her chemistry courses in VR on Morehouse’s digital twin campus created by VictoryXR on the Engage Platform.