Ville-Veikko Mattila is the Head of the Multimedia Technologies at Nokia Technologies. He has over 30 years of experience developing breakthrough multimedia technologies through research, driving international collaborative standardization, and successfully productizing innovations across various Nokia units. Since joining Nokia in 1994, Ville-Veikko has held several management positions in multimedia technology, digital health, artificial intelligence, and user interfaces and interaction. He received his doctoral degree from Tampere University (TAU) in 2001 and serves as Adjunct Professor in the Department of Signal Processing at TAU. Ville-Veikko has authored over 50 scientific journal and conference papers and holds more than 80 patents and patent applications. His research teams have been recognized with six Technology and Engineering Emmy awards. Ville-Veikko’s research and leadership have been featured in outlets such as MIT Technology Review, New Scientist, The Economist, and The New York Times. He actively contributes to industry forums and serves as chairman of the Metaverse Finland Ecosystem and board member of the Digital Defence Ecosystem in Finland. Ville-Veikko lives in Tampere with his wife and three children.

Focused on Disaster Risk Reduction across Europe, Guillaume contributes to resilience efforts by designing digital twin model-based interoperable ecosystems that integrate human decision-making into disaster risk simulations. Built for the humanitarian, civil protection, corporate and industrial sectors defined in the 2022 CER Directive, the approach links operational modelling with structured exercises to assess preparedness, interoperability and cascading failure risk. Organisations gain visibility on cooperation limits, leadership under stress, and defensive blind spots. Simulation Exercises become data: coordination metrics, human performance indicators, and quantified residual risk that can be tracked over time.

Mel Slater, DSc, co-directs Event Lab (Experimental Virtual Environments for Neuroscience and Technology). Formerly Professor of Virtual Environments at UCL Computer Science. VR researcher since early 1990s, spanning VR tech and studies of presence, body ownership and agency. Supervised 41 PhDs. Humboldt Research Award (2021);IEEE VGTC VR Academy (2022). Editor at Frontiers in VR. Co-founder of Kiin.tech.