Digital Catapult welcomes Professor Mel Slater as Immersive Fellow

Professor Mel Slater will bolster expertise in immersive technologies

LONDON, UK. 7 February 2017 – Digital Catapult today announces that Professor Mel Slater has been appointed as Immersive Fellow. The appointment marks the centre’s ongoing focus on demonstrating just how emerging technologies, such as VR and AR, can be applied to different market sectors to help digitise the UK economy.

Slater is Co-founder of Virtual Bodyworks, a company that specialises in immersive virtual reality with applications in medical and social rehabilitation. He is also a research Professor at the University of Barcelona and the Catalan Institute of Research and Advanced Studies and provides support to University College London.

Having conducted academic research around the subject of virtual reality since 1991, Slater will bring his wealth of expertise in immersive technologies to the Digital Catapult ecosystem, which draws experts together from across businesses, Government, as well as public sector and academic institutions.

Dr Jeremy Silver, CEO at Digital Catapult said: “We are delighted to welcome Mel Slater to Digital Catapult. He is a hugely respected expert who has worked on cutting-edge research in the field of virtual reality and immersive technologies. Our role, with Mel’s support, is to continue to provide technical and business expertise to demonstrate novel immersive ideas. Access to industry leading expertise is the first step in our commitment to do just that.”

“Immersive technologies have been around for some time but we’re finally reaching a tipping-point where the technology is becoming accessible and computing power is such that the experiences they can deliver have the potential to be really life-changing,” comments Professor Mel Slater, Fellow at Digital Catapult.

“There are so many exciting opportunities we can realise with immersive technologies that go well beyond gaming, particularly in areas such as health and wellbeing. Virtual reality has a huge power to positively impact how we think, learn, even how we behave and see others. Demonstrating this and supporting organisations working in these applied fields will be vital if we want the use of immersive technologies to be taken seriously beyond gaming.”

By encouraging technological acceleration, Digital Catapult will help to build on the UK’s strength in creative and health industries, so UK companies can get a head start in the transfer of the technology to new verticals.