Brief Biography
Mel Slater founded the Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics group at University College London, which currently has approximately 30 researchers. Since 1989 22 of his PhD students have obtained their PhDs, and he is currently supervising 6 students. He has carried out research both on graphics rendering algorithms, a virtual light field approach to real-time global illumination, and also on understanding people’s responses to their experiences in immersive virtual environments, especially social virtual environments that include interactions between real and virtual people. In particular he has pioneered research on presence in virtual environments including its application to psycho-therapy. He was a Senior Research Fellow of the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences (EPSRC) from October 1999 for five years working on the Virtual Light Field approach to computer graphics rendering. He led a European consortium (PRESENCIA) funded under the European FET Presence Research initiative from 2002 to 2005, and leads a follow-on European Integrated Project PRESENCCIA of 15 partners from January 2006 for 4 years. He was awarded a higher doctorate from London University (DSc, Computer Science) for his work on ‘Presence in Virtual Environments’. During 2005 he was a visiting scientist at the Instituto de Neurociencias de Alicante, Universidad Miguel Hernandez-CSIC. Since January 2006 he has been an ICREA Research Professor at the Technical University of Catalunya (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya) Barcelona, Spain.