Monique Morrow, Chief Technology Strategist
Monique has a track record of co-innovating with customers that has transcended the globe from North America, Europe and Asia. Monique’s current focus in on the intersection between research in economics and technology to portfolio execution (e.g. Circular and Exponential Economies) along with defining mechanisms and marketplace scenarios for cloud federation constructs to include security. Monique is passionate about the humanitarian use of technology, in addition to exploring the use of AI/VR to create a people neutral system that is both experiential and ethical without losing the beauty of randomness in human behavior. She is focused on developing the use of blockchain to create identity as a service, applying humanistic and purposeful values in an organization, and creating modes of privacy that are understood by all members of our ecosystem.
Jay Iorio, Director of Innovation
Jay Iorio is the Director of Innovation for the IEEE Standards Association. He focuses on virtual environments – virtual worlds and mixed reality – and how they will integrate with the larger environment of wearables, sensors, and an intelligent built environment. Jay has spoken at AWE, South by Southwest, MIT, the University of Southern California, the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds, and elsewhere on the topics of mixed reality, virtual environments, technology convergence, and the crucial role of artists in this new technology landscape.
Steve Mann, Chairman + CEO, Mannlab
Prof. Steve Mann, PhD (MIT), P.Eng. (Ontario), is widely regarded as "The Father of Wearable Computing" [IEEE ISSCC 2000]. His work as an artist, scientist, designer, and inventor made Toronto the world's epicentre of wearable technologies back in the 1980s. In 1992 Mann took this invention from Toronto to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founding the MIT Media Lab's Wearable Computing project as its first member. In the words of the Lab's founding Director, Nicholas Negroponte: "Steve Mann is the perfect example of someone... who persisted in his vision and ended up founding a new discipline."
Mann also invented the smartwatch videophone (wearable computer) in 1998, which was featured on the cover of Linux Journal in 2000, and presented at IEEE ISSCC2000, 2000 February 7, where he was named "The Father of Wearable Computing".
Some of Mann's other inventions include HDR (High Dynamic Range) Imaging, now used in nearly every commercially manufactured camera, and the EyeTap Digital Eye Glass which predates the Google Glass by more than 30 years.
In 2013, Mann brought together the world's leading thinkers in cyborg ethics, veillance (surveillance and sousveillance), and HI (Humanistic Intelligence), for the IEEE ISTAS, resulting in the world's first set of ethical principles for transhumanistic intelligence and metasensory augmentation.
More than 40 years ago, in his childhood, Mann invented the Sequential Wave Imprinting Machine, combined with wearable augmented reality to measure the speed of sound and the speed of light, and, more importantly, to cancel the propagatory effects of sound waves and radio waves and make the waves be visible sitting still as augmented reality overlays, as shown in the headshot picture.
Mann also invented metaveillance: using sousveillance to see surveillance (using video feedback to sense sensors and visualize their capacity to see).
Steve received his PhD from MIT in 1997 and then returned to Toronto in 1998, creating the world's first Mobile Apps Lab (1999) as a part of his wearable computing and AR course at University of Toronto, where he is a tenured full professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering with cross-appointments to Computer Science and MIE (Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, teaching the world's first Inventrepreneurship (Invention + Entrepreneurship) course. Mann is a Visiting Full Professor at Stanford University Department of Electrical Engineering (Room 216, David Packard Building, 350 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305), and is the Chair of the Silicon Valley Innovation & Entrepreneurship Forum (SVIEF).
He is also the Chief Scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab at Rotman's School of Management. Mann holds multiple patents, and has founding or co-founded numerous companies including InteraXON, makers of Muse, "The Most Important Wearable of 2014", and Meta, a California-based startup, bringing wearable AR glasses to a mass market (built on Mann's gesture-based wearable computing inventions [IEEE Computer, volume 30, number 2, pages 25-32, February 1997; USPTO 61/748,468, 61/916,773, and 20140184496]).
Alan Smithson, CEO MetaVRse
Alan’s purpose in life is to inspire and educate the next generation of young entrepreneurs to think and act in a socially, economically and environmentally sustainable way.
Alan is the CEO of
MetaVRse, a global leader in vCommerce (Virtual & Augmented Reality for Retail and eCommerce). MetaVRse is also building the XR Learning Centre and was recently accepted to the Museum of the Future Accelerator in Dubai. Alan is a LinkedIn VR/AR thought leader with millions of views of his articles and videos.
Alan is a founding member of the VR/AR Association, IEEE Mixed Reality Ethics Committee member, Mentor for a youth entrepreneurship program called 'The Knowledge Society' (TKS) and a mentor for Techstars Toronto and is on the SXSW Pitch Advisory Board for XR.
Prior to MetaVRse, Alan invented Emulator, the world’s first touchscreen DJ System; used by Linkin Park, Armin Van Buuren, Microsoft, Sony, Heineken and more.
