Web3D 2026 is honored to feature an exceptional lineup of keynote speakers whose leadership continues to shape the future of open 3D standards and immersive technologies.
Prof. Joaquim Jorge
Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, Portugal
Web, Lies and Videotape: What Collaborative Extended Reality Needs From the Open Web
Collaboration in extended reality rests on one requirement. Two people who are apart must agree on what “there” means. The field has long pursued fidelity, on the assumption that closer to reality means better performance. Twenty years of building systems for surgical telementoring, immersive radiology, virtual endoscopy and remote training taught us otherwise. We warp gestures and displace avatars, and pointing survives the crossing. We redirect walking and bend portals, and people move through spaces that are not there. We fake touch through pseudo-haptics, because real force feedback needs a millisecond and will never cross a network. The distortions are doing the work. Reference between collaborators lives in a slow enough band to cross continents, but a pointing act sent without its moment arrives designating the wrong thing. Meanwhile our representations are drifting from structure toward capture, ever more like reality and containing nothing that can be named, addressed, validated or cited. I will argue that the open web is the only place where addressability, provenance and a temporal model of reference can survive that drift. And I will end with a question. Which of these useful lies can open standards carry, and which will each of us keep reinventing alone?
Prof. Joaquim Jorge is a Full Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, where he founded the Computer Graphics, Human-Computer Interaction and Extended Reality research group at INESC-ID. He holds the UNESCO Chair on Artificial Intelligence and Extended Reality, has served as Editor-in-Chief of Computers & Graphics for nineteen years, and is President-Elect of the IEEE Computer Society, assuming the presidency in 2027. He has held leadership roles at IEEE VR, ACM IUI and Eurographics, and was General Chair of IEEE Virtual Reality 2021. His work develops multimodal systems combining eye-gaze, gestures and haptics to support collaboration and training in clinical and industrial settings. Recent projects include MAGIC and SPARC, on remote collaboration in virtual reality, and XAVIER, which applies artificial intelligence to multimodal input for diagnosis and training. He has authored over 378 peer-reviewed publications, attracting more than 14,000 citations, and appears on the Stanford top two percent researchers list. He is an ACM Distinguished Member and Speaker, an IEEE Distinguished Contributor and Visitor, a Fellow of the IEEE and of Eurographics, and a member of the IEEE VR Academy.
Patrick Cozzi
Chief Platform Officer at Bentley Systems and the founder and former CEO of Cesium.
3D Tiles: The Open Standards Journey and What’s Next
Twelve years after 3D Tiles was first introduced as just an idea at the Web3D 2014 Geospatial information on the Web workshop, 3D Tiles has become a widely used open standard for massive heterogeneous 3D geospatial scenes with a vibrant ecosystem of open source and commercial implementations of runtime 3D engines, data pipelines, and content. This talk tells the story of collaboration within and across standards organizations, including Web3D, Khronos, and The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) that facilitated the connecting ecosystem of X3D, glTF, and 3D Tiles. We look back at the inflection points and, importantly, look forward with an emphasize on how cross-industry collaboration will continue to be essential in the next chapter of semantic 3D scenes at scale for consumption by humans and AI.
Patrick is the Chief Platform Officer at Bentley Systems and the founder and former CEO of Cesium. He has authored, edited, or contributed to 10 books, including 3D Engine Design for Virtual Globes, OpenGL Insights, and WebGL Insights. Patrick has received multiple industry awards for his contributions to geospatial and 3D computer graphics open standards including 3D Tiles and glTF. He is the co-founder of CreateAccess, a nonprofit that increases technology opportunities for young people in under-resourced communities through exposure to 3D creation education. Patrick earned a Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where he also taught GPU Programming & Architecture for almost a decade.
Prof. Yeliz Yesilada
Computer Engineering at Middle East Technical University Northern Cyprus Campus (METU NCC) and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester.
Pearls and Web Users: Accessibility as an Engineering Principle
Just as every pearl forms with its own unique contours, every user experiences the web through a distinct combination of abilities, preferences, and technologies. In this keynote, we examine what web accessibility can teach us about engineering for human diversity. We will review key accessibility principles and standards, consider challenges, and explore how these lessons apply as the web becomes increasingly 3D, spatial, immersive, and multimodal. Accessibility should not be a requirement added after development; it should be a foundational engineering principle that shapes design from the beginning. We conclude with a roadmap for building emerging inclusive web technologies, rather than excluding certain abilities, preferences, and technologies.
Prof. Yeliz Yesilada is Professor of Computer Engineering at Middle East Technical University Northern Cyprus Campus (METU NCC) and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), specifically user behavior modelling, web accessibility, eye-tracking, and AI-driven applications. A leading researcher in web accessibility, Prof. Yesilada received multiple best-paper awards and co-edited a leading research book on web accessibility. She co-founded the International Web for All Conference (W4A), contributed to the work of W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), and consults internationally with governments on web accessibility frameworks and training. Further information about Prof. Yesilada is available at yelizyesilada.info.