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.

Well known as the “Cyber Guardian,” founder & CEO of the XR Safety Initiative (XRSI), Kavya Pearlman is an award-winning cybersecurity professional with a deep interest in immersive and emerging technologies. Kavya is a pioneer of the novel XRSI Privacy Framework for the Immersive Technologies and Spatial Computing Domain, security awareness in the metaverse, and various baseline security and privacy standards for XR.

Nathalie Mathe is a pioneer virtual reality (VR) creator and a globally recognized consultant, educator, and public speaker. A former NASA AI scientist and visual effects artist, she combines her artistic passion with a solid scientific and technical background to explore new frontiers in VR storytelling and embodiment. She is the founder of NativeVR, an independent VR studio in California, where she focuses on creating immersive experiences with a transformative and social impact, generating a more diverse and equitable future.

Owing to its ability to immerse its user in a sensory real-life experience, immersive virtual reality (IVR) has been proposed in literature as a promising technology for medical empathy training by allowing its users to virtually “step into the patients’ shoes”. Given that perspective-taking is a core component of empathy, it is not surprising that VR experiences have been shown in literature to enhance empathy in its users by enabling them to embody another person in a virtual realistic environment.

Dr. Ghazi MD, FEBU, MSc, received his medical education from Cairo University, Egypt in 2000, where he also completed his surgery training and Urology residency 2001-2005. Following his training he completed a series of worldwide fellowships in state-of-the-art minimal invasive Urological surgery, in Paris and Austria (2009-2011), where he received his accreditation from the European Board of Urology. He completed an Endourology and robotic surgery fellowship at the University of Rochester Medical Center, New York (2011-2013).

David Glowacki is originally from Milwaukee. He has appointments as a Royal Society Research Fellow, Philip Leverhulme award holder, and ERC grantee at the University of Bristol where he founded a research group called the ‘Intangible Realities Laboratory’ (IRL) joint between the Centre for Computational Chemistry and the Department of Computer Science. The IRL develops open-source immersive technology software projects at frontiers of scientific, aesthetic, and technological practice.