Dr Anne Bajart, Deputy Head of Unit, European Commission

Anne Bajart is Deputy Head of Unit for Interactive Technologies, Digital for Culture and Education at DG CONNECT. She previously was Head of Sector for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence in DG CONNECT. She has a PhD in Electrical engineering and worked as researcher, lecturer and project manager.

Sara Coppola-Nicholson, Head of Research Programme, Disguise

At interception between art and technology, Sara is an enabler of creative-led, highly ambitious innovations in production technologies. 

Sara has worked within the Creative Industries for over twenty years at international level, across business, creative and technical roles. She has been key to the inception and delivery of new technologies and workflows, cross-sectors collaborations and R&D partnerships including the collaborative research project “Dreamspace”, under EU Horizon FP7 Programme, awarded "Excellence for Technical and Management achievements" by the European Commission. Over the past decade, Sara has unlocked substantial opportunities for the Industry and the Academia, both in the UK and the EU, and secured backing from a major Hollywood entity to finance two years of production technology innovation in the US. 

Head of Research Programme at Disguise since 2020, Sara also acts as an adviser to private and public entities, supporting strategies to deliver ground-breaking innovations and tangible growth for the Creative Industries. 

Chris Ebeling, Beyond Horizons

Chris Ebeling, a world-class Animator, Creative Director, and Digital Artist, has contributed to Hollywood hits like The Lego Movie and The Great Gatsby. His expertise extends into VR/AR and games, shaping the future of digital entertainment. At the University of Technology, Sydney, he founded the Animal Logic Academy, mentoring in animation and visualization. Co-founder of Virtually Human Studio, Chris launched the pioneering blockchain game ZED.RUN. Now, as Chief Creative Officer at Behaviol, he's leading creative strategies for emerging tech in sports entertainment. Chris also heads Beyond Horizon, a consultancy advancing businesses in the digital era.

Marcus Korhonen, Operative Director, Aalto University

Marcus Korhonen is the director of Aalto Studios, the future media centre of Aalto University. Before Aalto he worked as an executive producer at the Finnish public service broadcaster Yle, where he was involved in international projects ranging from global sports events to drama productions. In addition to Finland, he has worked in different roles in the UK media industry, where he produced, directed, and consulted projects ranging from media art to adverts. Marcus Korhonen combines his creative background and experience with wide knowledge on technology and because of this unique combination he is often invited to industry seminars to talk about the intersection of creativity and technology. 

Niall Murray, Senior Lecturer in the department of computer & software engineering, Technological University of the Shannon

Niall Murray is a senior lecturer in the department of computer & software engineering in the Faculty of Engineering & Informatics in the TUS midlands campus. His main areas of research are Quality of Experience (QoE) evaluation of Immersive and Interactive multimedia experiences and Human Centric AI. He is a Science Foundation Ireland funded investigator in the  Adapt Centre. He is the coordinator of the Horizon Europe TRANSMIXR project (https://transmixr.eu/).

The TRANSMIXR project, funded by the European Union as part of the Horizon Europe Framework Program (HORIZON), under the grant agreement  101070109, is a collaborative effort of 22 partners from 12 countries with expertise in European research, media and innovation programs, in-depth knowledge of AI & XR and their application to the media sector. Partners also include representatives of key European application domains including News Media and Broadcast, Cultural/Education and Performing Arts. The focus of TRANSMIXR is to create a range of human-centric tools that enable the sourcing, creation and consumption of XR content through a range of TRANSMIXR innovations. The TRANSMIXR innovations employ AI-based tools for: content sourcing; understanding; segmentation; and 3D content creation. A key element of TRANSMIXR is also the development of Social XR solutions as part of the content creation process, for production, and to realise distributed and real time immersive experiences within news media and broadcast, cultural heritage and the performing arts. 

Nicolas Patz, Project Manager, DW Innovation

Originally from the Humanities, Nico PATZ has been working in collaborative research projects for more than 20 years with a focus on Innovation of Media and Journalism. The needs of journalists and content creators in the wide spectrum of content creation and interaction, in recent years especially in Immersive Experiences and Extended Reality, are a strong motivation. As Innovation Coordinator of the XReco Consortium, Nicolas thrives to connect the many loose threads in the XR Media Ecosystem in a challenging and ambitious new project.                     

XReco will pave the way for lifting the use of XR media content from being occasionally involved in media production to being regularly integrated in the media industry. The technologies provided in XReco’s B2B platform enable the creation of XR content faster and without the need for specific coding skills. The XR Media Ecosystem will support the creation of XR experiences as well as sharing them with interested content creators, including buying and selling, based on fair copyright management and monetization schemes.

Volker Helzle, Head of Research and Development, Animationsinstitut, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg

Prof. Volker Helzle is in charge of Research & Development at Animationsinstitut of Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. After graduating from Stuttgart Media University in 2000 he moved to California and worked at Eyematic Interfaces on the eve of marker-less facial tracking tools and content. In 2003 he joined Filmakademie to supervise Research & Development. He is the senior lecturer for the Technical Director course and FMX program consultant. In 2013 Volker received the honorary professorship of Filmakademie.

During the past 20 years Volker raised funding for a substantial amount of regional and European Union projects in the scope of Animation, VFX, Virtual Production and Immersive Media. The most recent projects are EMIL, the European Media and Immersion Lab (emil-xr.eu) and MAX-R (max-r.eu) . Being a C-64 kid of the 80ties, Volker's life was strongly influenced by video games and early computer graphics. To this day he is a passionate gamer but also finds interest in analog activities like mountain hiking, gardening or yoga. As of January 2019 an improved version of Volker is available that keeps him busy day and night.