Simon Chaput is the founder and President of Boréas Technologies Inc., a company developing novel miniature low-power piezoelectric actuator drivers for the haptic market based on its proprietary CapDriveTM technology. CapDriveTM was invented by Mr. Chaput during his Ph.D. at Harvard University. Over the years, Boréas Technologies built an internal team of mechanical engineers to develop novel system integration solutions for piezo actuators. In 2019, Boréas Technologies introduced SmartClik, a buttonless concept phone. In 2021, Boréas released the Boréas Piezo Haptic Engine and NexusTouchTM. Mr. Chaput holds a B.Eng (2011) and an M.A.Sc. (2013) from Université de Sherbrooke.
Jas Brooks (they/them) is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the University of Chicago. Their research expands the computer interface to engage with the chemical interactions of our bodies and investigates what this paradigm enables. These chemical interfaces have given rise to new I/O methods (e.g., low-power thermal/tactile experiences and stereo-smell) and are uniquely situated to help with smell and taste disorders. Jas has published work at top Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) venues, including ACM CHI and UIST, of which 2 received Best Paper Awards. Their work has also been awarded an Honorable Mention in the Fast Company Innovation by Design Awards for Experimental Design and covered in media publications like WIRED, Fast Company, Digital Trends, and IEEE Spectrum. Jas is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and a UChicago Media Arts, Data, and Design Graduate Fellow.
During their free time, Jas documents the history of scent technologies and media. They are currently revisiting the story of Behind the Great Wall in AromaRama, conserving the last known Smell-O-Vision system and Scent of Mystery fragrance from 1960, and interviewing stakeholders from companies like DigiScents, Inc. Their curatorial work has been recognized internationally.
Vicky Smalley has extensive experience working with AI and a passion for big data, working at companies including Sony, Climax, Kuato Studios and If You Can.
She started her career specializing in Artificial Intelligence for PC and Console titles and in 2011 took a change in direction, switching platform to mobile and focusing on the educational sector.
She is a strong technical lead with a history of managing teams who can deliver complex products to ambitious timescales while maintaining high production values. She is passionate about using cutting edge VR and haptic technology to deliver immersive training that will improve surgical outcomes.
Richard has 20+ years’ experience of building international businesses and has throughout his career sought opportunities for positive market disruption through technological application.
It was this desire that led him to co-found FundamentalVR to help address an age-old problem for the medical market; how to create safe, realistic, measurable spaces to learn and develop skills.
In his role as CEO Richard is responsible for building a world class team of medical, learning and technologist who together can realise the company’s ambition of creating the world’s first global, haptically enabled, low cost ‘flight simulator for surgeons’.
Peter Cooney is the founder of SAR Insight & Consulting. Peter has been tracking, analysing and commenting on technology markets for over 15 years. In that time he has headed practices at a number of leading analyst firms, managing teams of analysts across the world.
Peter has covered a diverse range of markets including audio & voice technologies, MEMS sensors, microprocessors, haptics, and wireless connectivity ICs.
Peter has been widely quoted in the press and has serviced a wide range of clients including most of the top 20 largest semiconductor companies and many others, including numerous citations in client press releases as an industry expert.
He holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Sheffield, his intial career was as a process engineer, responsible for the CVD process for production of DRAM for a major electronics company.
Nicholas Colonnese is a Research Science Manager at Facebook Reality Labs Research, working on novel interfaces for mixed reality. He leads a multi-disciplinary team which includes researchers with expertise in haptics, soft robotics, computer vision, machine learning, estimation, optimization, and functional garments and textiles. His research interests center on how the intersection of a broad range of academic disciplines: from haptics, to sensor fusion, to human computer interaction paradigm design, can define and then improve mixed reality interaction in the coming revolution of augmented and virtual reality. He holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Stanford University.
Davide Vigano – Co-founder and CEO of Sensoria Health, Inc. BIO: Sensoria designs, develops and produces bio-sensing wearable garments. The vision of the company is that the Garment itself will become the next ultra-personal, mobile computer. Davide is a former Microsoft partner level executive with over 25 years of sales, marketing and extensive product management experience. As an intern he started the international localization group for MacWorks and MacOffice in 1987. More recently, he served as General Manager of the Health Solutions Group where he was in charge of marketing and product strategy for both HealthVault and the Amalga product line. He acted as Vice President of the Worldwide SMSP Medium Business division which he grew 18% YOY to over $14B. Davide also managed the Italian Marketing, Business and Enterprise operations for five years and brought it to number one in the world for contribution margin, 6th largest Microsoft subsidiary in the world by revenues.
Margot Racat holds a PhD in Social Sciences from University of Lyon, France and she is professor of marketing at IDRAC Business School, Lyon. Her research focuses mainly on issues related to sensory influence on information processing in marketing contexts (e.g. mediated environments, customer experience) and management (e.g. entrepreneurial decision making in extreme contexts). She particularly gives interest to computer-mediated interactions and virtual environments for consumption and knowledge transfer. She publishes her work in academics journals and books (Technology, Forecasting and Social Changes, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Palgrave MacMillan, …).
My bio: Hong Z. Tan is an educator, scientist, technologist, and entrepreneur. She is best known for her research on haptics psychophysics, taking a perception-based approach to developing haptic interfaces. Throughout her academic career, Hong has kept a close tie with industry through her consulting activities, a four-year stint at Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, and currently as a lead haptics scientist at Google. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for her contributions to wearable haptics.
Hong received her bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Computer Science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After two years as a Research Scientist at the MIT Media Lab, she joined the faculty in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University in 1998. She holds concurrent courtesy appointments in the School of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University.
Dr. Manuel Kuehner is a Haptics Engineer at Toyota Research Institute (TRI) (Los Altos, California). At TRI, Manuel works on incorporating safety-related haptic feedback in partially automated driving systems to increase safety by enhancing human driving capabilities as a part of Toyota’s Guardian system.
He worked all his professional life - since 2008 - in haptics in the automotive industry with roles in research, pre-development, and series development. Before his current position at TRI in the US, Manuel worked for Audi and Porsche in Germany and Geely (Lotus brand) in China.
His previous roles focused on the technical specification of haptics and related topics for infotainment systems such as classical mechanical control elements (e. g., rotatory switches, push-buttons), touch-based user interfaces (e. g., touchscreens, touchpads, touch sliders, or touch buttons) with and without active haptic feedback (force feedback, mostly actuated with electromagnets), and control elements based on magnetorheological fluids (MRFs) to ensure the so-called “perceived quality” from the end customer point of view within the contractual relationship between the respective OEM and various tier-1 suppliers.
Named inventor or co-inventor of 80+ filed patents in different fields but mainly haptics-related. Audi currently uses several of these patents in mass production vehicles.
Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and a Diplom (FH) in Mechatronics
Guus de Hoog is a user-centred product designer with about 15 years’ experience in the overlapping fields of product, UX and service design. He has worked on consumer electronics, sports equipment, fitness trackers, medical devices, smart wearables & IOT projects. He strongly beliefs in wearable technology and the meaningful capabilities wearables can have to improve people’s lives. Haptic feedback wearables can help people live healthier, work safer or perform better.
Eric is a haptics enthusiast breaking the barriers for haptics to scale.
Eric designed the haptics architecture of Interhaptics, lead a team of engineers and marketing colleagues to the launch of the Haptics Composer: the first multiplatform Haptics Design tool on the market.
He co-founded Go Touch VR exploring skin indentation technologies for haptics applications in VR. Go Touch VR raised 2 m $ to create new technologies for XR.
Eric was the CTO of Hap2u in charge of the software team designing the rendering stack to drive surface haptics technologies at full capabilities. Hap2U raised 6 m $ from Daimler and it is going to revolution mobile haptics as we know it.
He published 20 + scientific papers on haptics and human-machine interactions and deposed 5 patents on haptics technologies and applications.
Elisa is one of the founding members of GREWUS GmbH (2007). GREWUS develops and produces innovative acoustic components and haptic actuators for all industries and applications. Since 2017, she is not only Managing Director but also responsible for Automotive Haptic Key Accounts. Together with her team, Elisa supports customers in the integration of active haptics. She not only understands the market requirements on a commercial but also on a technical basis. She has been working in the international automotive industry for over 18 years. Furthermore, she was recently elected Automotive Chair of the Haptic Industry Forum.
As a recognized executive in the high-tech space, Francois has spent the last two decades building strategic relationships with leading OEMs and ODMs – increasing revenue and catapulting long-term growth for leading organizations. He has held senior level positions at UPEK, a fingerprint authentication company (ultimately acquired by Apple), and helped increase revenue to $50M+ in less than three years. Most recently, Francois was CEO for until its acquisition by KEMET in 2019. Prior to that, he was Senior Director of Sales for Cambrios Technologies, leading sales activities with top tier OEMs. He holds an Engineering Degree from ICAM France and an MBA from UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.
Brian has studied and contributed to the field of nonlinear acoustics for nearly 20 years. Starting with the conversion of sound to light in university (sonoluminescence) and following in industry by designing devices to turn ultrasound to audible sound (directional audio) and finally ultrasound to force (haptics). Well versed in both theoretical and practical approaches to array acoustics, he is currently the technical lead of the automotive haptic group at Ultraleap. He is the author of 11 academic publications in a variety of physics and medical journals and 30 issued or pending patents in the fields of signal processing, audio, ultrasound, and haptics. Brian hold a master's degree and PhD in Physics from The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Dr Lisa Bowers has a role as Accessibility Lead, alongside teaching and managing duties within the faculty of Engineering and Innovation. As an inclusive designer, Lisa has worked with the NHS, Kings Fund projects and various disability charities across the UK and Ireland. More recently Lisa has contributed to the OpenSTEM Laboratories portfolio at the Open University, trialling haptic facilitation for non-sighted undergraduate design-students, thereby overcoming sight-impairment barriers to learning in applied disciplines.
Philippe Guillotel is Distinguished Scientist at InterDigital Research & Innovation. His research interests include UX/user experiences (immersive experiences and user sensing), human perception technologies (vision and haptics), video compression (2D and 3D) and artificial intelligence (inc. robotics and machine/deep learning) for entertainment. He published 15 + scientific papers on haptics and human-machine interactions and deposed 20 + patents on haptics technologies. He currently leads a team of experts in the field of the digital human and how to make those virtual characters, or avatars, socially interacting with the users in a realistic way (including multi-modal interfaces). He holds a Ph.D. in signal processing and telecommunication from the University of Rennes.
Dr. Aadeel Akhtar is the CEO and Founder of PSYONIC, a company developing advanced bionic limbs that are accessible to all people with limb differences. Dr. Akhtar received his PhD in Neuroscience and MS in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2016. He received an MS in Computer Science in 2008 and BS in Biology in 2007 at Loyola University Chicago. In 2021, he was named as one of MIT Technology Review’s top 35 Innovators Under 35 and America’s Top 50 Disruptors in Newsweek.
Robert is an accomplished executive who has built and led successful teams in various industries. Highlights include senior positions with D-BOX Technologies Inc., Quebecor World/Worldcolor, Apple Canada and Transcontinental. Robert's skills include strategic planning, operations and business development. Robert has developed an extensive international network, which allows him to put the right people together at the right time, creating synergy and collaboration along the way. Robert has an MBA from Montreal's prestigious HEC.
Hao-Yen Tang is co-founder and CTO of UltraSense Systems Inc. He received his PhD degree from UC Berkeley where he developed a novel PMUT ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, which was licensed by InvenSense. At InvenSense, he led a multi-disciplinary system team for commercialization of a next generation ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, coordinating development from different fields including acoustics, MEMS, CMOS and software. From InvenSense, he co-founded UltraSense Systems, to develop unique HMI Solid-State Interface Solutions which combines MEMS, ultrasound, piezo-materials and Senor Fusion technologies. Dr. Tang currently holds 10 issued US patents and 20+ papers with 1500+ citations.
