Judges for the Awards

Meet our judging team! Comprised of our Advisory Board and Academic Working Group spanning UK universities to organisations including Meta, Soluis, ARCADE, Wales Millennium Centre, Arup, Imagination, Venice Immersive, Belfast XR Festival…

Judges

Sean Evins
Director of Public Policy, AR/VR & AI Experience, Meta

With over 15 years of experience in global affairs, public policy, technology, strategic communications, and international relations, I am passionate about shaping the future of digital transformation, emerging technology & the public sector. As Director of Public Policy Experien...

Ottilie Thornhill
Senior Consultant, Arup

Ottilie’s work explores the human experience across global cultural contexts. She is passionate about meaningful audience engagement and the sustainable use of materials. Her past experiences include content production for visual and performing arts organisations and digital tr...

Olivia Hinkin
Client Services Director, ARCADE

I'm Client Services Director at ARCADE, an internationally acclaimed XR and AI agency that focuses on connecting people to place through play. With over 5 years of experience in immersive project management and certifications in PRINCE2 and Agile, I’m passionate about deliv...

Liz Rosenthal
Curator, executive producer, Venice Bienniale

Curator, executive producer and pioneer of immersive and interactive creative media. Liz is Curator of Venice Biennale’s International Film Festival's Official Selection and Competition programme Venice Immersive, Executive Producer of immersive content accelerator programme...

Martin McDonnell
CEO & Co-Founder, Soluis

Martin is a pioneer in serious gaming and the production of 3D immersive content. He founded Soluis Group in 2000, which has grown to be one of the largest immersive engagement studios for real estate.

David Edge
Director and Experiential Environments Practice Lead, Arup

I am the creative lead for Arup’s visualisation studio. My expertise – and the studio’s work – sits at the intersection of advanced visualisation, human/computer interactions, extended reality and gaming design. The high-fidelity, virtual environments we create give clien...

Tracy Spottiswoode
Director, ARCADE

Tracy is a three-time BAFTA Cymru award winning filmmaker who started her career in the creative industries as an actor and stage designer before moving into writing and directing for theatre, radio, animation, film and immersive XR. From 2010-2017 Tracy was Ffilm Cymru Wales' D...

Yinka Danmole
Creative Director, Abandon Normal Devices

Yinka Danmole is a cultural producer with expertise in delivering public realm projects and cultural programming. Yinka's work aims to unlock the potential of people and places by creating fertile ground for artists, communities, researchers, and creative practitioners to realise...

Violeta Tsenova
StoryLab, Anglia Ruskin University

Dr Violeta Tsenova is a participatory design researcher with expertise in cultural heritage, public history, interaction design and film. Her research focuses on community-led interpretations, immersive experiences, and storytelling for transforming cultural venues.

Taran Singh
Chief Technical Officer, Birmingham Open Media

Taran Singh is the Chief Technical Officer at Birmingham Open Media (BOM) and a highly accomplished business leader with over 20 years of experience. He has achieved remarkable success in his entrepreneurial journey, building a thriving business under Taran3D and making significa...

Tara Collingwoode-Williams
XR Lecturer/Researcher, Goldsmiths University

Tara is an XR Lecturer/Researcher at Goldsmiths University, teaching Unity-based XR experience development. She is also a Speaker, the founder of BlackXRNetwork(BXRN), and a PhD student in the Intelligent Games/Game intelligence program with a focus on Avatar Embodiment and Medic...

Sylvia Pan
Professor of Virtual Reality, Goldsmiths, University of London

Prof Sylvia Pan is a Professor of Virtual Reality at Goldsmiths, University of London. She co-leads the SeeVR research lab including 10 academics and researchers. She holds a PhD in Virtual Reality, and an MSc in Computer Graphics, both from UCL, and a BEng in Computer Science fr...

Sarah Atkinson
Professor of Screen Media, King's College London

Sarah Atkinson is Professor of Screen Media at King's College London, Editor of Routledge Resources Online: Screen Studies, and co-editor of Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. Sarah has published widely on the film, cinema and screen i...

Oluwatosin Ogunyebi 
Head of Community, SwiftXR

Oluwatosin is a game developer with a knack for the extended reality spectrum(Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality). He believes games would have a great impact across Africa in years to come and he is currently working on various projects to help this dream beco...

Muki Kulhan
Chief Innovation Officer

A familiar and friendly face as part of the Innovate UK family, Muki is in demand on the global XR scene as an Award Judge, professional MC/Moderator and Keynote Speaker via her career as a multi-award-winning CIO, Executive XR Producer and Creative Technologist with over two dec...

Maite Frutos
Senior Lecturer, DMT Lab

Dr Maite Frutos-Pascual is a senior lecturer and active researcher at DMT Lab. She specialises in Human Computer Interaction (HCI), immersive technologies (Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality AR/VR), usability, user analysis, interactive systems and sensor data analysis and int...

Jon Meggitt
CEO & Co-Founder, ARCADE

My background is in architecture and digital design, with more than 15 years of experience in the industry. I co-founded and ran FUSE, a leading digital agency that built multi-million pound digital platforms and sites for some of the world’s largest organisations. I also helpe...

James Taylor
Module Lead, Immersive Media, Cardiff University

As a Creative Technologist, James looks at the technology but also the creative processes involved, the artistry in its use, and the impact to the end user. Specializing in the application of emergent technologies across different sectors, including VR, AR, spatial computing,...

Deepa Mann-Kler
Director, Belfast XR Festival

Deepa Mann-Kler is Chief Executive of Neon; Director for Belfast XR Festival; Executive Producer for Virtual Production at Aura Studios; Visiting Professor in Immersive Futures at Ulster University, an award winning Artist and a member of Euromersive and BAFTA Connect. Neon harne...

David Massey
Senior Producer, Wales Millennium Centre

David is a Senior Producer and Curator with two decades experience leading digital experiences – from public programming in the arts to live broadcast specialising in XR storytelling. David is currently leading the Immersive Experiences team at Wales Millennium Centre where he ...

Conor Black
Associate, Arup

Conor is an Architect and Design Computation specialist within Arup.

Conor works on complex projects where parametric, computational & generative design is required to reveal better, more sustainable design outcomes.

Claire McGarry
Studio Director, Soluis

Claire is an experienced 3D artist and as Studio Director manages a large team of specialists and all aspects of production.

Christopher Nightingale
StoryLab, Anglia Ruskin University

Chris is StoryLab’s in-house real-time 3D developer, focusing on the practical development of experimental VR and XR projects such as Immersive Antarctica. Chris generalises across the development spectrum, including 3D asset creation, level design, UX, and program scripting. ...

Chris Freeman
AR/VR lead, Soluis

Chris has been at the forefront of immersive technology development, most recently as the AR/VR lead at the UK Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, in collaboration with Boeing, Rolls Royce & others. At Soluis Chris leads teams covering UI/UX, Engineering & Project Management...

Anton Christodoulou
Group Chief Technology Officer, Imagination

Responsible for overseeing Imagination's global technology strategy, project and service delivery execution; to deliver immersive, engaging and measurable, smart connected experiences to clients including Mastercard, Ford, Major League Baseball, Jaguar Land Rover and Shell. Anton...

Ali Asadipour
Academic Lead, Royal College of Art

Dr Ali Asadipour leads the RCA's Computer Science Research Centre, specialising in Immersive Experiences and AI. His international influence is amplified by holding Senior Visiting Fellowship positions at UNSW and KAIST, facilitating collaborations with esteemed global research l...

Amy Chao
Innovate UK Immersive Tech Network

I spearhead new initiatives, operations, strategy and community at Innovate UK Immersive Tech Network, the UK’s innovation network supporting growth of the XR industry (VR, AR, MR and spatial computing) consulting as part of the Digital team at Innovate UK KTN and Innovate UK, ...

Asha Easton
Innovate UK Immersive Technology Lead

I lead on the Innovate UK Immersive Technology network, helping guide organisations in the XR sector looking for funding for developing innovative products related to XR. I share insight into the market and use my network to help organisations create powerful connections. I s...

Damian Murphy – Chair of Academic Working Group
Professor in Sound and Music Computing

Damian Murphy is Professor in Sound and Music Computing at AudioLab in the Department of Electronic Engineering, University of York, where his research focuses on the development and creative application of immersive audio and virtual acoustic modelling. He is an active sound art...

Fabrizio Galeazzi
Deputy Director, StoryLab Research Institute, Anglia Ruskin University

Fabrizio is Associate Professor in Heritage and Creative Technologies and Deputy Director of the StoryLab Research Institute at Anglia Ruskin University. His research explores the combination of 3D interactive visualisation, immersive technologies (VR, AR, MR) and multimodal sto...

Matt Sansam
Head of Delivery, Innovate UK

Matt Sansam joined Innovate UK in 2010, where he is currently Head of Delivery for ‘Audience of the Future’, a £39m Industrial Strategy Challenge fund. Matt manages relationships with government departments, business, and academic communities, as well as scoping, planning, d...

Mona Bozdog
Designer and Lecturer in Immersive Experience Design

Mona is a designer and Lecturer in Immersive Experience Design at Abertay University where she acts as Programme Co-Lead on the TIGA-accredited BA (Hons) Game Design and Production. She completed her PhD: "Playing with Performance/Performing Play. Creating hybrid experiences at t...

Fridolin Wild
Professor at the Institute of Educational Technology

Fridolin Wild is professor at the Institute of Educational Technology of The Open University, also leading the Performance Augmentation Lab (PAL). Fridolin seeks to close the dissociative gap between abstract knowledge and its practical application, researching radically new form...

Dr Faisal Mushtaq
Professor of Cognitive Science and Director of the Centre for Immersive Technologies

Dr Faisal Mushtaq is Director of the Centre for Immersive Technologies, one of the UK's leading XR research centres, and holds a position as Professor in Cognitive Science at the University of Leeds. With a background in the cognitive neuroscience of learning, he has worked with...