The vibrancy of the UK’s creative industries is an international success story and a vital component of our economy.
The CDE was created to help extend the R&D capacity of businesses in this sector encouraging innovation through a supported programme of collaboration with academia.
This investment will also develop the technology leaders of tomorrow giving young researchers the experience of working on real industrial problems in a company environment.
The CDE works across animation, games, VFX and other organisations that need creative technologies. Our partners are internationally famous brands, sector leaders, innovative SMEs, medical organisations and cultural organisations.
Please click on the logos below for more information.
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Charlotte Hoare
BBC engineers have been at the forefront of developments in broadcast technology since the founding of public service broadcasting in the UK. Based in research labs in the North and South of the UK, the department is made up of around 200 highly specialist research engineers, scientists, ethnographers, designers and producers, working on every aspect of the broadcast chain, from Audiences, Production and Distribution right through to the Programmes themselves.
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Chris Lewin
Ieva Kazlauskaite
Electronic Arts Inc. is a leading global interactive entertainment software company. EA delivers games, content and online services for Internet-connected consoles, personal computers, mobile phones and tablets.
âThe EngD-programme gives Electronic Arts a great opportunity to collaboratively pursue research topics with academia that can bring competitive advantage to our games. We are very happy to be part of this scheme to develop high calibre candidates for the future of the industry.
[The impact the]⦠guys have had is in bringing energy and a broader interest in research and pulling in ideas from outside the team to impact our work⦠this is a great motivational benefit for our team.â
Dr. Mike Bassett, Head of UK Development, Electronic Arts
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Anamaria Ciucanu
Fat Pebble is a young and creative Brighton-based development studio. All of their games are handmade and hand animated using stop motion techniques.
“Anamaria’s project to digitise stop motion animation, is a great opportunity for us to invest in Fat Pebble’s unique handmade technology whilst getting great practical support from the CDE”
Iain Gilfeather, Co founder and CTO of Fat Pebble
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Padraig Boulton (Paddy)
Babis Koniaris
Disney Research was launched in 2008 as an informal network of research labs that collaborate closely with academic institutions such as Carnegie Mellon University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH). They work on a broad range of commercially important challenges, view publication as a principal mechanism for quality control, encourage engagement with the global research community, and their research has applications that are experienced by millions of people. Theyâre honoring Walt Disneyâs legacy of innovation by researching novel technologies and deploying them on a global scale.
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Daniela De Angeli
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Jake Hobbs
WÃNKY Films are an award-winning full service, high-end animation company that creates content for multiple platforms. They specialise in design and animation, covering 2D, CG and stop motion animation as well as graphics. Clients include broadcasters, advertising, digital and PR agencies e.g. Channel 4, BBC (theyâre a BBC roster agency), The British Council, UNICEF, Bristol City Council, AMV BBDO, Proximity London, GT and Hyper Happen. Recent projects have meant developing award-winning and BAFTA-nominated content for TV, online, mobile and outdoor.
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Lisa Haskel
The Arts Catalyst commissions new artists’ projects that engage with the discoveries and territories of science and technology.
For over 20 years, they have produced vibrant, risk-taking art and science projects to spark dynamic conversations about our changing world. They work with artists, scientists and other experts to generate new ideas and alternative perspectives in science and culture.
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Alex Gouvatsos
Hibbert Ralph Animation (HRA) is an award-winning animation production company based in Soho. It is one of the UK’s top animation studios producing television and cinema commercials, idents, logos, special effects, website animations and promos.
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Sameh Hussain
Dhana Frerichs
Tristan Smith
Javier Dehesa
Ninja Theory was formed in 2004 by four partners, including current Directors Nina Kristensen (Chief Development Director), Tameem Antoniades (Chief Creative Director) and Jez San OBE (Non-Executive Director). The studio pride themselves on striving for the highest production values and continually pushing the boundaries of technology, art and design to create evermore exciting video game experiences.
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Sean Soraghan
Jack Brett
ROLI are a design-led technology start-up based in Dalston, London. Founded in 2009 by Roland Lamb, we make hardware and software products and services designed to increase the bandwidth of interaction between people and technology.
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Ralph Potter
Codeplay are internationally recognized experts in advanced optimizing technologies, compilers and programmable graphics. We have been providing acceleration solutions that optimize performance for graphics semiconductor designers and AAA game developers since 1999.
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Phil Wilkinson
The Isle of Portland Aldridge Community Academy opened in September 2012, bringing together five Portland schools, the Grove, Brackenbury and Underhill, Southwell and Royal Manor Arts College.
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David Gillespie
National Museums Liverpool is a group of museums and galleries. Their collections are among the most important and varied in Europe and contain everything from Impressionist paintings and rare beetles to a lifejacket from the Titanic.
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David Greer
NaturalMotion was established in 2012 to develop ground breaking social games on mobile platforms. Fusing a fresh, start-up culture with NaturalMotionâs advanced technology and expertise, the studio is working on innovative projects with the aim of redefining mobile gaming.
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Daniel Finnegan
“We really enjoy our graduate’s rigorous academic approach within our creative product development”.
Nicky Birch, Head of Products
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R&D is at the heart of everything Samsung does. Ongoing investment in their collaborative global research network plays a critical role in their ability to innovate products today that will enrich peopleâs lives tomorrow.
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Fabio Turchet
The Moving Picture Company has been one of the global leaders in VFX for over 25 years, with industry-leading facilities in London, Vancouver, Montréal, Los Angeles, New York, Amsterdam, Bangalore and Mexico City.
Some of their most famous projects include blockbuster movies such as Godzilla, the Harry Potter franchise, X-Men, Prometheus and Life of Pi.
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Milto Miltiadou
Against a backdrop of global change and for the benefit of society, the objective of Plymouth Marine Laboratory is to develop and apply world-leading, integrated marine science towards the sustainable future of the ocean.
This objective is delivered through excellent research, people, international and national partners, sharing our knowledge and engaging with stakeholders.
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Tom Wrigglesworth
Imperial War Museums is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London.
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Naval Bhandari
Hashim Yaqub
BMT Defence Services Ltd delivers independent complex engineering and design capabilities for UK and international defence customers.
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Lindsey Howell
Four-times Oscar winning studio behind Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Creature Comforts, Chicken Run, Morph and many more. A British animation studio based in Bristol, United Kingdom.
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Elena Marimon Munoz
Detection, imaging, laboratory services, and informatics solutions serving the needs of scientists, clinicians, and patients.
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Our Research Engineer, Owen O’Neil, is working with the Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust.
In the UK, over 150,000 people experience a first time stroke each year. It is the most common cause of severe adult disability, and data from 2012 suggests that there are around 1.1 million survivors in the UK suffering from a wide spectrum of both physical and psychological disabilities including loss of language, memory, use of limbs and depression. The impetus of Stroke research is to explore avenues that may improve treatment, patient care and preventative measures.
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Michal Gnacek
Ifigeneia Mavridou
Emteq is merging Artificial Intelligence with Wearable Devices to deliver a Virtual Reality that can respond to emotional state.
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Andreea Bizdideanu
Since 1989, OPTIS is the leader in optical and lighting simulation, and also offers the most outstanding and innovative virtual reality, ergonomics and perceived quality software, putting the best of its know-how and technological expertise at your service.
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Kwamina Edum-Fotwe
Cityscape Digital is a leading visualisation studio located in the heart of Londonâs Silicon Roundabout, producing the highest quality visuals, film and interactive products in the industry. They work with the worldâs most renowned architects and biggest property developers in London and internationally.
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Oliver Gingrich
Musion is the global leader in the development, marketing, production and broadcasting of realistic, life-sized, interactive 3D holographic video shows and effects.
MusionâÂÂs patented 3D technologies and imaging systems create spectacular, immersive, multi-media presentations with 3D holographic images so real that they are indistinguishable from the live performers and presenters appearing alongside them.
Exclusive immersive telepresence technology makes it possible to simultaneouslybroadcast multiple live events to multiple venues located anywhere in the world.
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Rahul Dey
Lazaros Michailidis
SCEE R&D are technical experts on topics relating to any of the PlayStation platforms. The group is unique in that they report directly to both SCEE Central as well as the Tokyo-based SCEI R&D Organisation that designs PlayStation hardware. they do not create games ourselves; however, they supply the raw technical materials that game developers need to create games.
They collaborate actively with our counterparts in our sister companies in Japan, USA and Korea – SCEI, SCEA, and SCEK respectively.
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Garoe Dorta Perez
Anthropics Technology Ltd is a software research and development company with a proven track record for cutting edge innovation in graphics and animation. We create disruptive, effective technologies, centered around human beauty with a special focus on facial analytics. Our extensive experience and codebase provides realistic and flexible facial rendering and body warping. We leverage advanced machine learning methods for accurate face detection and intelligent image annotation.
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Adam Boulton
Brighton-based digital development studio specialising in realtime interactivity and 3D graphics.
PaperSeven specializes in realtime interactivity and high-quality rendering across all platforms.
They make games, apps and digital content – offering creative, media-rich experiences that enhance brand engagement.
Their roots lie in technically complex AAA video games. Their is using these skills across all connected platforms.
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Joanna Tarko
Alexandros Rotsidis
We are a commercial innovation and technology business. We help our clients engage with shoppers and customers, with creative smarter solutions for a connected world.
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Mark Moseley
Victoria Education Centre, is a non-maintained, Ofsted-Outstanding special school in Poole, Dorset offering specialised, high quality education, therapy and care for young people aged 3-19. In addition to this we now offer a residential transition service for 18-25 year olds.
Victoria is an exciting, innovative and dynamic place. Our vision is clear – we are a centre where successful learning and high levels of achievement prepare children and young adults for fulfilling future lives.
The students who attend Victoria have physical disabilities or complex medical/neurological conditions and many have additional needs including communication difficulties, learning difficulties and sensory impairments.
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Asha Ward
Three Ways School is an Academy Trust, operating as a generic Community Special School. It opened in September 2007 on our existing site, prior to 2007 there were three separate Special Schools in Bath that amalgamated in September 2005.
The school provides for 207 children with a wide range of Special Educational Needs.
Three Ways is divided into 3 departments to enable curriculum delivery and expectations that are age appropriate to all pupils.
Primary Department- 4yrs-11yrs
Secondary Department – 11yrs-16yrs
Sixth Form – 16yrs-19yrs
The school is a Specialist School for Physical and Sensory. It is also a School of Creativity.
We offer the full National Curriculum as a basis for curriculum development and add to this a wide range of additional activities for personal and social growth.
All pupils are encouraged and supported to access learning and achieve the highest possible standards.
Our team of staff and therapists offer a wide level of expertise, enhanced by excellent facilities and resources.
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Bristol-based creative studio and technology startup focusing on volumetric virtual and augmented reality.
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Thomas Joseph Matthews
AiSolve is a technology provider and creative production house specialising in the design and the development of intelligent and responsive digital media solutions. We are market leaders who harness latest technologies and combine them with the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to deliver unique interactive, immersive and intelligent solutions.
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Tom Matko
We are a regional water and sewerage business serving 2.8 million customers across the south west of England including Dorset, Somerset, Bristol, most of Wiltshire and parts of Gloucestershire and Hampshire.
The Bristol and Bath area in the north west has a population of around 750,000 and in the south east the Bournemouth and Poole area has about 300,000 residents.
The region’s landscape is varied, ranging from the Mendip Hills and the levels of Somerset to the cliffs of Dorset and Wiltshire’s Salisbury Plain.
The two coastlines have a number of popular holiday resorts such as Weston super Mare and Minehead on the north coast and Bournemouth, Poole and Weymouth on the south coast.
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Catherine Taylor
Marshmallow Laser Feast are a London-based design studio always looking to create ground-breaking experiences that immerse and amaze in completely unexpected ways.
We employ a wealth of creative disciplines, from photo-real virtual reality to robotic performance and realtime mapping, pushing boundaries, redefining expectations and exciting audiences worldwide.
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Azeem Khan
Lewis Ball
Ubisoft is a leading creator, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment and services, with a rich portfolio of world-renowned brands. The teams throughout Ubisoft’s worldwide network of studios and business offices are committed to delivering original and memorable gaming experiences across all popular platforms.
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Matthew Thompson
Sysemia offer intelligent solutions to complex linked data problems. They develop and integrate innovative and elegant bespoke software solutions for joined up, coherent processes that improve business performance. Specialising within the Aerospace and Advanced Engineering industries they have decades of experience in research and capacity building within large, corporate environments.
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Thomas Williams
Zack Lyons
Designability is a national charity joining expertise and knowledge to enhance people’s lives.
They are engineering and design experts with a passion for creating life-changing assistive technologies. We conduct original research and develop commercial products that meet real needs.
They advocate better technology for everyone. And believe inclusive design is the only way forward. So they work with end-users, carers and health professionals to help us understand the problem, find a solution and test it in real life situations.
They create great looking, easy-to-use products that go beyond basic functionality. And they partner with industry to help as many people as they can – they’ve transformed over 250,000 lives in the last 50 years.
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Kyle Reed
Cubic Motion is a world leader in real-time model-based computer vision and digital animation, and is renowned for achievements in performance-driven facial capture. With technology and processes developed by a large team of award-winning PhD scientists, animation specialists and producers, the company licenses products and services for real-time visual tracking and animation in video games, films, and virtual and augmented reality.
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Alastair Barber
Stephen Willey
Richard Jones
Founded with a team of just 30, Double Negative (Dneg) has grown to become one of the industryâs success stories and is now one of the worldâs largest providers of visual effects for Film with facilities in London and Singapore and a third opening shortly in Vancouver.
Through steady and constant growth the Company has always sought to retain both the creative drive and involvement of its artists through all projects and a close collaborative working relationship with clients. This approach ensures films both small and large receive the same high standard of creative and technical service. This has proved a winning combination resulting in awards recognition from the Visual Effects Society (for Inception and Sherlock Holmes), BAFTA (for Inception and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2) and the Academy® Awards (for Inception).
Recent work includes Man of Steel, Thor: The Dark World, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Transcendence, Godzilla, Jupiter Ascending, Hercules and Interstellar.
âWe have been delighted with our work as part of the CDE Programmeâ¦the team at CDE have been realistic and pragmatic in recognising the flexibility we require as a company to make this working relationship a success and thus far it has proved a positive experience for all those involved.â
Jeff Clifford, R&D Manager, Double Negative Visual Effects
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John Raymond Hill
Holovis is a unique company at the cutting edge of delivering transformative experiences with immersive systems. We work with the world’s leading brands and companies in the entertainment, industrial, corporate, leisure, retail and military sectors.
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Rory Clark
Katarzyna Wojna
The future is a place where infinite worlds are at your fingertips. One where you interact naturally and in 3D. One where you don’t need controllers or touchscreens.
Ultraleap was formed when Leap Motion and Ultrahaptics came together in May 2019.
We’ve brought together the world’s most powerful 3D hand tracking with the only haptic technology able to create the sensation of touch in mid-air.
We have a team of nearly 150 spread across the world, with locations in Silicon Valley and Bristol, UK. Our team includes world-leading experts in interface design, acoustics, machine learning and computer vision.
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Neerav Nagda
Since its inception in 2004 Absolute has been committed to exceptional client partnerships, believing that together, quality, exceeded expectations and a little magic are everyday events.
From our home in London’s Soho our hugely talented artists, producers, ops and engineers deliver stunning visuals for commercials, film and television to an audience around the globe. And thanks to the AbsoluteCTRL centre, we’re able to work from pretty much anywhere we like!
As well as working with some of the world’s top Brands, Directors and Artists – we’ve begun to author our own journey through our animation studio BlindPig. Providing creative direction as an end to end service that is enjoyed by production companies, agencies and brands alike.
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Marcia Saul
We help children, youngsters and adults improve brain regulation, whether you have symptoms of brain dis-regulation, including learning difficulties, and other physiological and mental conditions including brain injury, or whether you want to improve your brain’s performance for other reasons.
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Robert Kosk
The HUMAIN team have created digital humans, fantasy creatures and digital doubles for many of the top entertainment and technology companies around the world.
We draw upon many years of experience in film, video games and episodic television to deliver unique character services for our clients.
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We’re Thud Media, an award winning development studio making games, apps and experiences for various platforms. We are specialists in Unity with several game releases to our name for PC and mobile, as well as studio (TV) and installations. In addition they have created over twenty HTML5 games for browser and mobile platforms since the company began.
We develop standout interactive content and experiences, animated games for all ages, including specialised preschool content. We build websites that meet our high design expectations and have created interactive ebooks, quiz show apps, second screen experiences and more for a variety of projects and clients.
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Ben Snow
From the dense habitats of South America to the frozen seas of the Arctic in every corner of the globe there is a need to access areas conventional craft cannot reach. By flying over ground and avoiding the hazards of debris and rock at high speeds, up to 1.8 metres off the ground, hovercraft thrive in transitional environments where others fail. By leading the world in hovercraft development since their conception we provide states and companies the means to connect everything that is needed to where it is needed, fast.
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Valentin Miu
An independent, employee-owned technology company with bases in both the UK and US, BeautyLabs is pioneering the future of enhanced reality in the beauty and wellness industries.
Consumer expectations are rapidly changing as they look for brands and products that engage and problem solve in a personalised and interactive way.
Our enhanced reality experiences put the customer first, embracing their sense of immediacy, leveraging the familiar, and keeping interactive moments short and assistive.
Renowned for our drive to innovate, we actively seek out new challenges to see how far we can push the industry with our immersive and intelligent solutions.
Our proprietary computer vision and deep learning technologies can be customised to power a wide range of experiences in a variety of sectors.
Contact us in the box below, to find out how we can enhance your customer experiences.
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Sydney Day
Axis Studios is an award-winning entertainment company, founded in Glasgow in 2000 by CEO Richard Scott, in partnership with Dana Dorian, Stuart Aitken and Graham McKenna.
It boasts an international team of directors, visual effects supervisors, designers, artists, animators, and producers, working across three studios, in Glasgow, Bristol and London. As well as being the largest studio in Scotland Axis also has one of the largest animation and visual effects teams in the UK.
Axis forged its reputation with the biggest video game publishers, producing many award-winning trailers such as the much-vaunted trailer for Dead Island (Deep Silver), which won a Gold Cannes Lions, The International Andy Award and many more.
Axis then moved into other areas of entertainment, such as television, film, and theme parks. Recent work in these areas has seen Axis win awards including a Daytime Emmy Award for Lost in Oz (Amazon Studios), an AEFA Award for Happy (SyFy/Netflix), a BIFA Award for visual effects on the feature film Earlyman (Aardman Animations/Studio Canal), and an Royal Television Society Craft Award for Kiss Me First (Channel 4/Netflix).
Axis is currently working on developing its own original content and has recently completed animation and visual effects work on the Helping Hand episode of Love, Death and Robots (Netflix) and season two of the series Happy(SyFy/Netflix).
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Philip Lorimer
Putting the power of robotics into the hands of creatives.
The company designs and manufactures a modular, fully stabilised, remote controlled dolly system that is the only one of it’s kind the M-Series. Having made its mark within the VR/360° market, Motion Impossible has now also introduced the AGITO – a system that can make recordable moves on the ground. With interchangeable wheels for use either on track or off-road with all the stabilisation you will ever need, the AGITO offers even more options for filming.
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Charisma.ai is an innovative platform that enables writers and artists to create interactive graphic novels. Using state of the art natural language processing techniques, the novel adapts to your inputs and changes how the story evolves, allowing the readers to journey inside the story, talk to characters and impact the narrative.
Our aim is to bring a new dimension to storytelling: replayable, interactive conversations with crafted characters.
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Kris Kosunen
The Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust runs the Royal United Hospital and, since January 2015, the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases. Both hospitals are on the same site in Bath, England.
The Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust provides acute treatment and care for a catchment population of around 500,000 people in Bath, and the surrounding towns and villages in North East Somerset and Western Wiltshire.
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Nick Lindfield
Aaron Demolder
VividQ is a deep tech software company with world-leading expertise in 3D holography, founded in 2017 in Cambridge (UK). The company offers its patented software to enable mass adoption of holographic display in AR/VR headsets, smartglasses, automotive head-up displays, and consumer electronics.
Technical co-founders of VividQ include engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists from the University of Cambridge, Oxford, and St Andrews. Collaboratively, they solved the biggest problem preventing commercial applications of holographic display in the past – the computational hurdle.
With seed funding, VividQ has grown its Commercial and Technical teams in Cambridge and London, made a full release of the software framework, and established the holographic display ecosystem through partnerships with chipmakers, display and hardware manufacturers in the US, Taiwan and Europe.
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Isabel Fitton
PwC has been helping businesses for over 150 years and now employs over 276,000 people in 157 countries. As part of our wide range of professional services, we have a dedicated practice that specialises in reporting on and implementing business applications of virtual reality and augmented reality. These technologies offer organisations across all industries an opportunity to work more efficiently and our in-house team of business consultants, creative technologists, and software developers bring theright combination of skills to these projects.
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06th December 2023
Our congratulations to CDE Research EngineerJack Brett Jack has successfully defended his thesis 'Respawning...
Find out more19th January 2023
In October 2022, CDE Research Engineer Michal Gnacek presented a paper at the Affective Computing and...
Find out more06th January 2023
CDE Research Engineer Aaron Demolder recently took part in the SPIE AR/VR/MR Webinar Series - Fireside Chat...
Find out more24th November 2022
Above Image: Stop-motion character model made by Jonathan Marchant for the Abotani film,...
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