LUKE PORWOL
"The Metaverse is a paradigm of blending digital and physical reality through an interconnected infrastructure."

Dr Lukasz Porwol (Luke Porwol or Dr Luke) is E-Gov Unit Leader and Research Fellow at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, University of Galway, Ireland.
Dr Porwol is also an SFI Research Fellow at Fidelity Investments and the Head of Sponsorship at MIT Reality Hack, Boston, USA.
His research area is the application of convergent emerging technologies such as Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and AI to support digital public and business service innovation. He focuses on effective communication through better engagement, collaboration, and co-creation, particularly in e-Participation.

Lukasz is an experienced leader, coordinator, senior researcher, lecturer, data analyst and consultant and has worked with politicians, decision-makers and business representatives on various e-Participation initiatives. Lukasz has over 14 years of experience working and coordinating work in different European Commission-funded international projects.

He runs projects in Digital Public Service Innovation, Metaverse / XR / AR /VR,  Open Data and Media Convergence. He is currently the research lead at The Public Link and INNOCAP, EC-funded projects on digital public service innovation through VR, AR and AI technologies. He investigates business cases and data visualisations for XR in business. He is a PI responsible for XR international collaborations, XR ethics, IPR and Governance at the upcoming Openverse EU project. 
Lukasz was a two-term board member and the secretary at Digital Government Society, a global eGov organisation based in CA, USA. He is a registered ODI (Open Data Institute, London) trainer and Medley (Elsevier) Advisor. Lukasz has been the sponsorship lead for MIT Reality Hack – World’s largest XR hackathon hosted at MIT. He also co-chaired the Reality Fest, the VR spin-off of MIT RH.
Lukasz was on the board of founding directors for the Computer & Communications Museum of Ireland Limited. His background combines solid engineering and scientific knowledge (Eng. in Information Technologies, MSc and PhD in Computer Science) with excellent management and PR skills. His knowledge of social psychology complements his comprehensive computer science background.