Digital Catapult welcomes Aurelien Simon as Head of Immersive

At a crucial point for immersive technologies, Aurelien will play a pivotal role in Digital Catapult’s mission to support market growth in the UK.

23 March, 2017 – Digital Catapult has announced today that Aurelien Simon has been appointed as Head of Immersive. In his role, Aurelien will lead Digital Catapult’s drive to grow this emerging market by identifying how immersive technologies can disrupt businesses, sectors and the wider economy.

Aurelien Simon was previously Head of VR at Innovation studio UNIT9 where he led Immersive projects for the likes of Google, Microsoft, Samsung and Oculus Rift. Simon’s impressive portfolio includes being a SXSW Innovation Awards finalist for his work on Samsung: Bedtime VR Stories, which brings night time stories to life. He also gained recognition for his work in immersive films “Backwater” and “Real Memories” for MINI that looked to push the boundaries of film narrative in VR by taking viewers on immersive journeys.

With a background in the creative and media industries, Aurelien brings a wealth of experience to Digital Catapult and a fresh approach to innovation. His focus will be to help harness new technologies in the immersive field and apply them to the latest business challenges across a number of markets, prioritising the creative industries, digital manufacturing and digital health and care.

Aurelien said: “We’re getting close to the next wave in immersive, where hardware improvements, price reductions and more sophisticated content will strengthen the overall experience and make it easier for people and organisations to engage. For immersive technologies to really take off, it is vital that content creators fully understand the language of VR and AR and create content with relevance, either that is fitting to a consumer audience or relevant to a specific business or market need. Digital Catapult is uniquely placed to facilitate interactions across all parties and become the innovation hub for the industry in the UK. The opportunity to play a part in that is hugely exciting.”

Dr Jeremy Silver, CEO, Digital Catapult said: “We are delighted to welcome Aurelien Simon to Digital Catapult. His previous work at Unit 9 was exemplary and his appointment is the latest in our drive to hire great talent across our focus areas. Aurelien’s wealth of expertise will add tremendous value to our ongoing work in the immersive sector. We are helping to make the UK the best place in the world to create content and applications for Immersive experiences and Aurelien is already contributing significantly to this effort.”

Following Digital Catapult’s recently launched strategy, immersive appears alongside intelligence, connectivity and data, as areas of focus to support businesses of all sizes to use digital technologies to grow, export and increase productivity. This will not only encourage innovation, but it will enable the UK to thrive in our increasingly technological world.