Anita Havele
Web3D Consortium
General co-chair
Anita Havele has over 15 years of experience in computer graphics and a strong background in technical marketing of open standards in 2D/3D graphics. She has developed strategic roadmaps to build and deliver next-generation new media 3D successfully and has extensive experience in developing and managing programs for promotion and adoption of standards.
- Currently the executive director of the Web3D Consortium implementing strategic plans for the global growth and adoption of the Consortium’s standards and open 3D technologies.
- Responsible to the Board of Directors for executing the duties and responsibilities to accomplish Consortium’s goals and objectives. Offering technical and business support to Consortium members while developing outreach programs that include Conferences, Tech-Talks, Panel session, Dev Camps, Contests, Tutorials, and Hackathons.
- Coordinates and works with other standards organizations such as W3C, IEEE, HL7, OGC, DICOM, ISO, and Khronos developing strategic partnerships to converge Web3D standards.
- Before joining the Web3D Consortium her standards work extended to the automotive industry as part of a leading group at GM/EDS standardizing the design engineering processes. The nonconformance and revenue loss at GM lead to her strong support of open standards for the advancement of emerging technologies. After leaving EDS she continued her involvement in standards, developing methodologies and standards procedures in Finite Element Analysis (FEA) for the automotive design analysis industry.
- She is a member of ACM, IEEE Computer Society, and the Web3D Consortium. She holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Marquette University, USA.
Nicholas Polys
Virginia Tech
General co-chair
Dr. Nicholas F. Polys is Director of Visual Computing with Virginia Tech Research Computing Group and Affiliate Research Professor in the Department of Computer Science. He has developed interactive 3D graphic content and systems since 1998.
- Research interests lie at the center of graphics and Human Computer Interaction: the intersection of visualization, virtual environments, and perception.
- After his undergraduate research in Cognitive Science at Vassar College (1996), he jumped into the networked information space of the WWW developing audio, visual, and 3D assets and software.
- His doctoral work at Virginia Tech (2006) examined perceptual cues and layout behaviors for Information-Rich Virtual Environments for desktop to immersive platforms.
- He is an ICAT fellow and member of ICAM, a member of ACM, IEEE Computer Society, and the Web3D Consortium.
- Co-author of the international standard (ISO) Extensible 3D (X3D), elected Director and President of the Web3D Consortium, and Chair of the User Experience Working Group.
Athanasios Malamos
Hellenic Mediterranean University
Program co-chair
Athanasios G. Malamos is Professor and vice-rector of the Hellenic Mediterranean University.
Since May 2002 is assistant, associate and full professor in the field of Multimedia Technology and Services. Prof. A.G. Malamos is also head of the Media working group of HMU, and he has worked as researcher or project coordinator to many EU and National (Hellenic) funded research projects.
- Active member of the WEB3D community.
- Member of the web3D Consortium spatial sound and semantics group and as W3C community representing the consortium in the Audio Work Group.
- His laboratory team contributed in the spatial sound, the Humanoid, the Physics libraries and streaming in X3D platforms.
- Has served as Guest and special issue Editor in International Journals. Moreover he has served as program and organizational committee in IEEE and ACM international conferences and workshops.
- Regular reviewer of IEEE, Springer as well as other international journals. Prof A.G. Malamos is honored with the ACM Recognition of Service Award and by the WEB3D consortium with recognition of his efforts in the organization of web3D conference.
- Research interests include online multimedia services, Web3D and Virtual Reality.
Osvaldo Gervasi
University of Perugia, Italy
Program co-chair
Osvaldo Gervasi, PhD, Associate Professor at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Perugia.
He has served since 2019 as Deputy Director of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science.
- Director of the Professional Degree course “Programming and Management of Information Systems”.
- Teaches Computer Networks Architecture and Virtual Reality Systems at the Bachelor in Computer Science; High-Performance Computing at the Master in Computer Science; and Computer Networks and Internet at the professional degree in Computer Science of Perugia University.
- His research interests span Parallel and Distributed Computing, Cloud and High-Performance Computing, GPGPU Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Virtual and Augmented Reality, and e-learning.
- Published more than 150 papers in scientific Journals and peer-reviewed international conference Proceedings.
- Edited more than 100 books of international conference proceedings.
- Was invited seven times to deliver a Plenary Lecture at International Conferences.
- From 2007 to 2013, he was President of the open-source Competence Centre (CCOS) of the Umbria Region (Italy), established under Regional Law 11/2006.
- President of the Not-for-profit organization ICCSA ETS, which manages the International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications (https://www.iccsa.org).
- Served on the Board of Directors of The Document Foundation (TDF), which released the popular open-source Office Suite LibreOffice, from 2016 to 2020.and now from 2024 to 2026.
- Project Leader of the open-source e-assessment platform LibreEOL (https://www.libreeol.org/info).
- Senior Member of IEEE and ACM and a member of the Internet Society.
Ronald Haynes
University of Cambridge
Program co-chair
Ronald Haynes is Senior Computer Officer and Regent at the University of Cambridge, Bye-Fellow of Darwin College, strategic consultant for 31 Colleges, University Library, University Church, Continuing Education, the Fitzwilliam Museum, and other University GLAM institutions.
- Researches collaborative XR and immersive technologies for cultural heritage, also researches impacts of the Neo-Platonic spiritual tradition, co-leads a collaborative Darwin 3D project, and is consultant for the AHRC-DFG-proposed 3D in Art and Architectural History project.
- Co-chairs the IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) 3D Community and Technical Specification Groups, expanding existing APIs to introduce 3D scenes, annotations, and immersive aspects of open web technologies.
- He is a Cambridge Digital Humanities Associate, holds ACM, BCS, Computer Society, and IEEE membership, and is on Advisory Boards for DaSCH.Swiss, XRchiving.London, and 3DFrame (Arizona/Harvard IMLS project).
Aaron Bergstrom
University of North Dakota
Tutorial co-chair
Workshop co-chair
Aaron Bergstrom is the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Manager for the University of North Dakota (UND) where he leads the Computational Research Center (CRC), which provides high performance computing services to UND researchers. He also leads the CRC’s Laboratory for Digital Realism in Engineering and the Applied Metaverse (UND DREAM Lab), which focuses on research applications related to Digital Twin technologies and other VR/XR applications.
Prior to 2007, he served as the Computer Visualization Manager for the North Dakota State University (NDSU) Archaeology Technologies Laboratory where he developed a Java3D-based VRML viewer for the Digital Archive Network for Anthropology, RawKee X3D Exporter for Autodesk Maya, and a basic X3D loader for Unity3D.
In 2007 Aaron earned an MS in Social Science with an emphasis in Anthropology from NDSU. His graduate work focused on computer applications in anthropology, specifically on the use of 3D laser scanners and related interactive 3D technologies. In his current position, Aaron’s research interests include Digital Twins & AI, VR/XR/Metaverse applications, Motion Capture technologies, cloth physics, Exporter tools for Autodesk Maya, and issues related to workforce development for emerging technologies in Native American communities.
Ayat Mohammed
Virginia Tech
Tutorial co-chair
Workshop co-chair
As a Computational Scientist in Advanced Research Computing (ARC) at Virginia Tech (VT), Ayat Mohammed build a trust as a research-facing team member by helping VT faculty using ARC’s services such as high-performance computing (HPC) resources, large-scale storage, high-end visualization capabilities, and computational science expertise to the university’s research community.
- Conducted research in High-dimensional Data in Scientific Visualization, bioinformatics and health data analytics.
- Gained valuable experience as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) and at the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as being a researcher at the Ain Shams Virtual Hospital.
- My work focuses mainly on using HPC enabled techniques to design high throughput solutions for data analysis including AI and scalable visualization.
- Recent work with human brain cancer was featured as a visualization showcase in Super Computing 25 (The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis).
Johannes Behr
Threedy.io
Industrial co-chair
Marco Agus
Hamad Bin Khalifa University
Industrial co-chair
Marco Agus is an associate professor at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) – Qatar
Foundation in Doha, Qatar. He was previously a research engineer at King Abdullah
University of Science and Technology (KAUST), in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and a
research scientist at Center of Research, Development and Advanced Studies (CRS4),
in Cagliari, Italy.
- M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Cagliari, Italy
- Research interests span different domains in visual computing, from haptics and visual rendering for medical applications to real-time exploration of massive models, to machine learning methods for electron microscopy biology data and indoor environments.
- Published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers on these topics.
- Taught courses at several important visual computing venues, including CVPR, 3DV, ACM SIGGRAPH, and Eurographics, and he regularly acts as a committee member, reviewer, chair, and associate editor for top journals and conferences in the visual computing domain.
Mike McCann
MBARI
Finance co-chair
Andreas Zapf
Fraunhofer IGD
Web co-chair
International Program Committee
- Adão, Telmo – University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro
- Anastasovitis, Eleftherios – Pyrseia Informatics
- Aubrey, Andrew – 3dMD
- Behr, Johannes – Threedy GmbH
- Bergstrom, Aaron – University of North Dakota
- Bosch, Carles – Universitat de Vic – UCC
- Carmo, Maria Beatriz – Universidade de Lisboa
- Champion, Erik – University of South Australia
- Coelho, António – University of Porto
- Denis, Gracanin – Virginia Tech
- Dias, Paulo – DETI / IEETA – Universidade de Aveiro
- Echavarria, Karina-Rodrigues – University of Brighton
- Eduardo-Ruiz-Salguero, Oscar – EAFIT University
- Gdawiec, Krzysztof – Institute of Computer Science, University of Silesia
- Gonçalves, Alexandrino – CIIC – ESTG – Polytechnic University of Leiria
- Goswami, Prashant – BTH Sweden
- Guevara Lopez, Miguel Angel – School of Technology – Setúbal Polytechnic University
- Jessel, Jean-Pierre – IRIT – Université Paul Sabatier Toulouse
- Kanai, Takashi – The University of Tokyo
- Karaseitanidis, Ioannis – Institute of Communication and Computer Systems
- Magalhaes, Luis Gonzaga – University of Minho
- Marchetti, Vincent – Web3D Consortium
- Maria, Maxime – XLIM – University of Limoges
- Marroquim, Ricardo – TU Delft
- Marton, Fabio – CRS4
- McCann, Mike – MBARI
- Mendes, Daniel – INESC TEC, FEUP
- Meyer, Alexandre – Université Lyon 1, LIRIS
- Mohammed, Ayat – Virginia Tech
- Mourato, Fausto – Escola Superior de Tecnologia – Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal
- Mouton, Christophe – EDF DISC
- Pachoulakis, Ioannis – Hellenic Mediterranean University
- Perri, Damiano – Università degli Studi di Perugia
- Pintus, Ruggero – CRS4
- Ponchio, Federico – ISTI – CNR
- Reyes, Edel – CCG
- Rodrigues, Nuno – ESTG-Politécnico de Leiria
- Santos, Rossana – Setúbal School of Technology, Polytechnic University of Setúbal
- Silva, Frutuoso – University of Beira Interior
- Sousa, A. Augusto – University of Porto
- Ullrich, Torsten – Graz University of Technology
- Zapf, Andreas – Fraunhofer IGD