InterDigital
VRT
Disney Research
University of Bristol
University of Southampton IT Innovation Centre
ETH Zurich Game Technology Centre
Coordinator Comment
“Multimedia will dominate the next generation of Internet systems driven by citizens’ increasing participation and use of pervasive technologies to have fun, learn and understand the world. Success depends on establishing transformative media ecosystems that benefit everyone from consumers and content providers through to the operators of communications, transport and building infrastructures. Events like FLAME’s Urban Hacking are critical as they bring everyone together in a place where we can build our future together.”
Dr Hamid Falaki is a telecommunications consultant at Smart Internet Lab, providing technical services for coordination, delivery, operation, maintenance and expansion of the 5GUK Test Network at University of Bristol. This service provides a test network as an experimentation facility for research projects under Smart Internet Lab.
He has more than 20+ years’ experience in the telecoms technology sector, and prior to that 10+ years from the energy sector. His Current interest is creation of new business opportunities through rich communication services, networks measurements & monitoring. He also has interest in neutral hosting of communication networks giving rise to a range of new business opportunities for vertical industries operating their own network slice and niche services within the upcoming 5G networks. Among his achievements are many international patents within the telecommunication industry as well as leading several technical activities towards public engagement and delivery of 5G show cases through Bristol University.
Prof. Michael Boniface is the Head of the IT Innovation Centre, Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton and the Project Coordinator of the FLAME project.
He has an international reputation as thought leader pioneering the evolution of information technologies for tackling important business and societal challenges and long term interests in the areas of user experience, interactive media, service-based systems, software defined infrastructures and digital innovation.
Nikolay Stanchev is a research assistant and software developer at the IT Innovation Centre, Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, working on the FLAME project while also finishing his software engineering degree at the University of Southampton.
His main fields of interest are distributed systems development and cyber security in web services. He is a keen Python enthusiast with a passion for solving complex problems through the application of efficient algorithms and data structures.
Dirk Trossen is a Senior Principal Engineer at InterDigital Europe, the European branch of InterDigital Inc. Dirk has more than 15 years of experience in network architectures, services and wireless technology. His main contributions can be found in the area of inter-domain networking as well as seamless handovers and new service concepts for operators. He is currently technical leading the European efforts FLAME, performing ICN research with the goal of evolutionary introduction of ICN concepts in upcoming 5G networks. Prior to joining InterDigital, Dirk was co-founder of TecVis LP, a UK-based software solution company in the mobile, context-aware solution space and he held prior positions as a Senior Researcher with Cambridge University, Chief Researcher with BT Research and as a Principal Scientist at Nokia Research. He is also a research affiliate with the Advanced Network Architecture group at MIT CSAIL. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Technical University of Aachen, Germany. He published more than 75 peer-reviewed papers in international conferences and journals and has currently 32 international patents.
Dr. Sebastian Robitzsch is with InterDigital Europe, Ltd. working as a staff engineer on ICN-related Horizon 2020 funded projects. His recent research efforts focus on the softwarisation of network functions following existing SDN and NFV paradigms in order to allow a decoupling of infrastructure, service and content providers for a more versatile communication network. He is currently responsible for integration of the InterDigital's FLIPS platform into the H2020 FLAME platform efforts. In the past he has been with Dublin City University, Ireland, T-Systems, Germany, Fraunhofer FOKUS, Germany, and Nokia Research Centre, Finland, working on research issues spanning from interference and self-configuration techniques in 802.11-based multi-antenna mesh networks, heterogeneous access networks to system architecture design for trace analytics and recommender systems in next-generation OSSs. Sebastian received his Ph.D. from University College Dublin, Ireland, in 2013 and an M.Sc. equivalent (Dipl.-Ing. (FH)) from the University of Applied Sciences Merseburg, Germany in 2008.
Dr. Fabio Zünd is the Managing Director at the Game Technology Center (GTC) at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He received his Bachelor and Master degree from ETH Zurich. With a focus on computer graphics and wireless technology, Fabio started his PhD at Disney Research Zurich in collaboration with the ETH Laboratory for Software Technology, developing real-time wireless video streaming technology. Moving to the ETH Computer Graphics Lab under the supervision of Prof. Robert W. Sumner and Prof. Markus Gross, Fabio concentrated his research on game technology, augmented reality, and storytelling technology, and finished his PhD in 2016. His work includes computer-assisted authoring, interactive narratives, Augmenting Creativity, as well as see-through and projected augmented reality research and applications. Since then, Fabio leads the research efforts on game design and technology at the GTC.
Dr. Steven Poulakos is an Associate Research Scientist at Disney Research. He received a B.S. degree in Engineering Physics and M.S. in Library and Information Science, both from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from ETH Zurich for his contributions modelling visual perception of stereoscopic images and video. Steven has participated in the EU-funded project REVERIE (REal and Virtual Engagement in Realistic Immersive Environments), utilizing stereoscopic technologies to enable realistic human interaction in shared virtual spaces. Steven’s research focus has evolved into the space of computational narrative, which includes computer-assisted generation of interactive narrative and experience management. He is participating in the EU-funded project FLAME (Facility for Large-scale Adaptive Media Experimentation), developing technologies to utilize smart city infrastructure to experience interactive narratives. Steven’s main research interest is in developing intelligent systems at the intersection of story, autonomous characters, and user experience.
Marc Godon recently joined the Innovation Center of VRT. Here he explores new roles for the public broadcaster in relationship to future Smart Cities. He received the degree of Master in the Industrial Sciences in 1983 in Antwerp (BE) and finalized a degree in Monumental Arts at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp (BE) in 2013. He has thirty years of experience in telecommunication system development, innovation, and research. His research work, at Nokia Bell Labs Antwerp Belgium, focused on future media and communication tools for the creative networked society (application and interaction research, IOT, user participation, etc.). He likes to combine his multidisciplinary skills of being artist, engineer, and creativity coach to enhance the creative process. He co-authored an extensive set of papers and patents. He is a big fan of DIY culture and online learning programs. The overall moto in his work is: “share your creativity”.
Sandy Claes is a design researcher at the innovation department of the Flemish public broadcast company VRT. She holds a PhD in engineering science (2018) from the KU Leuven university in Belgium. In her research work, she focuses on the overlap between media, technology and public space. Her research work has been published at international, peer reviewed conferences concerning the human factor of interactive technologies, such as CHI and DIS. Sandy has a background as a master in audio-visual arts (2005). Her audio-visual work has been awarded on several international film festivals (such as I Castelli Animati in Rome, The international short film festival of Leuven), and exhibited at several international venues (such as LABoral, Madrid and Museum M, Leuven). With this mixed background of science, engineering and arts, Sandy approaches research projects from a multi disciplinary viewpoint.
Klaas Baert is a researcher and creative developer at VRT innovation. He has a history in live music production and software development, after obtaining his BA in applied information technology at the University College of Ghent in 2003. Inspired by the DIY ethics in certain music scenes he became a strong supporter of the DIY culture.
He joined VRT in 2017 to help to research new media innovations in a social smart city. One of his focuses is on enabling maker communities around broadcast media. Moving from user-generated content to user-generated formats. He is also project lead for VRT on the H2020 HRADIO project where he works on several use-cases around interactive radio.
