Speakers

Prof. Vali Lalioti, is Professor in Creative XR and Robotics at University of the Arts London (UAL) and Director of Programmes at the Creative Computing Institute (CCI). A pioneering designer, computer scientist and innovator, Vali holds a PhD in Computer Science, an MRes in Design from the Royal College of Art, and an MBA. She has extensive international experience in Silicon Valley, Africa, China, Japan, and Europe. Vali researches the interaction of converging XR/Robotics and society, designing robotic movement and embodied experiences for societal applications in performing arts, well-being, and healthy ageing. Her work has been widely published, won numerous innovation awards, and she has been featured in WIRED, Dezeen, BBC Horizon, and the UK press. Vali helped develop the world’s first Virtual Reality (VR) systems in Germany and built a cross cultural VR research centre, as a professor in post-apartheid South Africa. She developed the first ever BBC Augmented Reality production in 2003, which won the Royal Television Society judges award. As Director of Programmes at CCI, she introduced UK's first Creative Robotics programmes and has significantly grown the Institute. 

Dr. Timothy Chung is the General Manager of Robotics and Autonomy at Microsoft, within the Strategic Missions and Technologies Division, which focuses on next-generation technology solutions in advanced autonomy and applied robotics for government and commercial applications. Prior to joining Microsoft, Dr. Chung served as a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Tactical Technology Office, where he led the OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics program and the DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge. Previously, Dr. Chung served as an Assistant Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and Director of the Advanced Robotic Systems Engineering Laboratory (ARSENL). Dr. Chung holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University. He also earned Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology.

Prof. Nikhil Deshpande is Associate Professor of Robotics and AI in the School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham, with his primary affiliation with the Cyber-physical Health and Assistive Robotics Technologies (CHART) group. With over 15 years of experience in Robotics and AI covering all aspects, including navigation, manipulation, mechanism design, machine learning, computer vision, and mixed reality, he has focused on applications in surgical robotics, telerobotics, therapy, and occupational training, among others. Prior to joining CS @ Nottingham, he was a Researcher, non-tenured (2018-2023), at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), Genova, Italy, leading the VICARIOS Mixed Reality and Simulations Lab, where my research focused on mixed reality (MR) for immersive remote telerobotics in hazardous environments, which touched on topics including 3D vision and semantic scene understanding for real-time visualisation in MR, haptics and MR for training, control simulations for novel robotic devices, etc. He has worked closely with stakeholders, including firefighters and construction workers, and demonstrated the project outcomes in public dissemination events, including to the President of Italy in 2022.