inventing the future

Founder & Director of SMARTlab 

Prof Lizbeth Goodman (BA, MA, MLitt, PhD, FRSA)

Dublin, Ireland & New York, USA 

Lizbeth Goodman is Chair of Creative Technology Innovation and Full Professor of Inclusive Design for Engineering and Education at University College Dublin (Ireland), where she directs the Inclusive Design Research Centre of Ireland at UCD (IDRC) within the College of Engineering and Architecture, in collaboration with SMARTlab, which she founded in 1992 under its first impact imprint in the UK.

She is Programme Director for  the Practice-based Thematic PhD in the College of E&A as UCD"s only fully interdisciplinary PhD spanning all 8 colleges and disciplines across the Colleges of Engineering, Arts, Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities, Medicine, Business and Education. She is also developing new Masters offerings in Inclusive Design, Creative Technology Innovation and XR for Sustainability in collaboration with global academic, third sector and industry partners.

She has held a Personal Chair in Creative Technology Innovation, with a focus on interdisciplinary practice-based research into the future of Inclusive Interdisciplinary Research and Cross-sectoral Impact, since 2005. She was Academic Chair of the Marie Curie ASSISTID Programme for the DOCTRID Research Institute: the first top tier research institute bridging the Republic and Northern Ireland. Also, on behalf of UCD and the national universities network, she was elected to Chair the Social Sciences Panel of the Royal Irish Academy in 2012. In 2018 she created the Academy4theFuture, and began major collaborations towards the BeEarth VR Experience of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals,  with XR Impact and the UN IGO for Sustainability. In 2019 she was asked to direct the European WEF Women’s Leadership Panel, after being named Woman of the Decade in Innovation by WEF. In April 2020, she was elected to Chair the Women’s Leadership Taskforce for the Intelligence in Science Forum in partnership with the European Parliament and European Commission.

Previously she led Research for Futurelab, and served as Chair of Judges for many international foundations and research councils. She has written/published 14 books, extensive academic papers, and supervised over 52 PhDs through to successful completion. She is PI and co-PI on numerous major research projects in Education Futures, Technology for Good, Connected Health and Women’s Leadership.

Fulbright Program 

Prof Harriet Mayor Fulbright

Global

Harriet Mayor Fulbright was the former Executive Director of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities under President Bill Clinton. More recently she has served as President of the Harriet Fulbright Center. In addition, she serves as a Board President of Harriet Fulbright College. Harriet Mayor Fulbright is the second wife, and widow, of United States Senator J. William Fulbright of the Fulbright Commission for intercultural educational exchange. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Radcliffe College in 1955. In 1975, Fulbright earned her MFA from the George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

Harriet Fulbright serves as an “unofficial ambassador” for the Fulbright Program and is often invited to speak at events that range from university commencements to milestone anniversaries for Fulbright Commissions around the world who are celebrating the presence of her late husband’s educational exchange program in their respective countries

As a result of her status as an international figure of peace and education, she has received many awards and honorary degrees. She currently sits on the advisory board of the Alliance for Peacebuilding. In 2006, she created the J. William & Harriet Fulbright Center, a non-profit dedicated to promoting peace through international education and furthering her late husband’s legacy. She currently serves as president of the organisation.

Fulbright is also known as an artist and cultural expert, historian and excellent mentor and supervisor. Fulbright has received numerous honours and accolades throughout her career including several Honourary PhDs, and most recently, the prestigious Ulysses MEDAL from University College Dublin. The UCD Ulysses Medal is the highest honour that the university can bestow. It was inaugurated in 2005, as part of the university’s sesquicentennial celebrations, to highlight the ‘creative brilliance’ of UCD alumnus James Joyce. It is awarded to individuals whose work has made an outstanding global contribution.

Co-Director, XR Faculty of the Future Programme

Dr Jacquelyn Ford Morie (Jacki Morie)

Los Angeles, USA

Dr. Jacquelyn Ford Morie has spent 25 years researching and creating Virtual Reality (VR) to deliver meaningful, enriching personal experiences. Her work focuses on skillful combinations of multi-sensory, perceptual techniques for VR that predictably elicit emotional responses from participants.  With her company All These Worlds , she has been active in social VR, creating mindfulness applications, storytelling, stress-relief experiences for veterans, soldiers and future astronauts.

Dr Morie’s other research interests include use of personal avatars and how they affect our human selves. Dr Morie received her Ph.D. on the topic of Meaningful Embodied Immersive Experiences in 2007 from SMARTlab at the University of East London. She is currently a Member of the Board of Directors at the Virtual World Society, and also serves as a Senior Adviser to the XPRIZE Foundation.

She taught innovative game design classes at UCLA 2007-09 and Co-Founder of the game research group Ludica & member of IDGA, and WIGI. Frequent speaker on VR, AR and VWs. and expert in the health, training and social applications of new media and online worlds. 

Currently teaching the Senior Projects class at Otis College of Art and Design and responsible for designing the first combined technical and artistic year-long training program for incoming computer animators at Walt Disney Feature Animation on the new technologies group for Disney Studios.  Between 1994-1997 she developed similar training for the visual effect industry at VIFX and Blue Sky as well as for the Oscar award winning Rhythm & Hues. 1997-2000.  

Director, XR Impact Programme

Ylva Hansdotter

Stockholm, Sweden

Founder & Director XR Impact, Researcher at SMARTLab, Fellow of the Global Future Council on VR & AR for the World Economic Forum. 

Ylva is the founder and director of 'XR impact', a non-profit organisation that leverage Extended Reality technologies such as  VR and AR to extend human sensory and cognitive experiences with the ambition to inspire positive global action towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals. She is also a Ph.D. Candidate at SMARTlab (UCD/Mechanical and Materials Engineering) and she focuses her research on the use of positive and immersive storytelling to stimulate pro-social actions.  

Ylva Francisco, is where she also initiated and directed "VR for Impact", a multi-year program providing grants to VR projects in support of the Global Goals helped create the world’s first VR app store while working with HTC Vive in San Francisco. 

In 2018, she was invited to become a fellow of the prestigious World Economic Forum ’Global Future Council of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality’, to contribute to an interdisciplinary knowledge network dedicated to promoting innovative thinking to shape a sustainable and inclusive future for all.  

Co-Director, Interactive Media &  Indigenous Creativity Team Leader

Cheryl L'Hirondelle

The Land Now Known as Canada 

Cheryl L’Hirondelle is an award-winning and community-engaged Indigenous (Cree/Halfbreed; German/Polish) multi- and interdisciplinary artist, singer/songwriter, curator and critical writer originally from the land now known as Canada, whose creative practice investigates the dynamism of nêhiyawak cosmology in a contemporary time-place continuum. Her Masters of Inclusive Design (IDRC/OCAD University, Toronto) introduced and expounded on Indigenous concepts of radical inclusivity and sonic survivance and is further expanding these theories in inclusive practice at SMARTlab as part of her PhD, which is in its final year. She holds a prestigious IRC EPS Postgraduate Award for this work.

Since the early 1980’s, L’Hirondelle has created, performed and presented work in a variety of artistic disciplines, including: music, performance art, theatre, spoken word, storytelling and redundant & new media. In the early 90’s, she began a parallel career as an arts consultant / advisor and programmer, cultural strategist / activist, and director / producer. Cheryl’s various activities have also found her working in the Canadian independent music industry, national artist-run centres, educational institutions, the Canadian prison system, First Nations bands, tribal councils and governmental funding agencies, at the municipal, provincial and federal levels.

L’Hirondelle’s art and musical practice is regularly discussed in a variety of exhibition publications, periodicals, peer-reviewed journals and doctoral theses. In 2004, she was the first Indigenous artist invited to present work at DAK’ART Lab, at the 6th Edition of the Dakar Biennale for Contemporary African Art, Senegal. In both 2005 and 2006, Cheryl was the recipient of the imagineNATIVE New Media Award for her online net.art projects: treatycard.ca, 17:TELL and wêpinâsowina.net. Her 2008/9 Songlines project nikamon ohci askiy (songs because of the land) was recognised as an Official Honouree of the 13th Annual Webby Awards in the Net Art category. She has been awarded several music related honours: Prairie Music Award (nomination for Nikamok, 2001), Canadian Aboriginal Music Award (for M’Girl, 2006 & 2007), KM Hunter Music Award (nomination for solo songwriting, 2011), Canadian Juno Award (as part of Buffy Sainte Marie’s Power in the Blood, 2015). In October 2020 she was honoured by WEF Women, with her award announced at the UNDP. In February 2021 she was awarded a Canadian Governor General’s Award for her work as an interdisciplinary artist.

Head of Olfactory Art and Design 

Dr Gayil Nalls 

New York,  USA

Gayil Nalls is an American interdisciplinary artist and theorist, based in New York. She earned a Ph.D. from the SMARTlab at the University of    East London. She has held various research affiliations with SMARTlab and is currently an Associate Adjunct Professor at University College of Dublin as well as a collaborator on the Fulbright Olfactory Health Project, creating a novel botanical scent language for kids with disabilities.

Nalls has a special interest in the biological, psychological and cultural experiences of olfaction and is best known for her world olfactory sculpture, World Sensorium. Nalls’ artwork is represented in major museum collections and is exhibited internationally. Her investigations unite various fields and disciplines in pursuit of forming new methods of understanding, both intellectual and emotional. 

Nalls writes regularly for Nautilus Magazine and Psychology Today. Recent book publications include her essays in “The Politics of Perfumed Objects” in “For the deeper meaning: Fragrance as medium in art, design and communication” (Germany, Spielbein Publishers), 2016 and “TOXIC: Coming to Our Senses” in “Paradise Paradoxe” (Zurich, Edition Patrick Frey, 2016).

Head of Sustainable Finance & ESG

Director at United Nations IGO, Be Earth

Founder of Impactforsdgs

United Kingdom & Global 

Nisaa Jetha is a global strategist, impact advisor, and trained solicitor with asset management experience across public and emerging markets.  She has driven and curated global impact strategy, been responsible for shaping metric build-out of mid-cap private equity deals against the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and separately launched initiatives inside UK Parliament, some within her personal capacity.   Nisaa is a current Director  (Board of Directors) at the United Nations Inter-Governmental Organisation (Be Earth) that has 12 Treatises with separate governments that engages at the highest Executive Level (Heads of State).  

Nisaa was part of the inter-agency working group for youth and gender equality globally with UN Women, nominated by the United State of Women Summit hosted by the White House and previously been placed with Canadian Senate where she worked directly with Canada’s previous Special Envoy to Darfur and instrumental in curating a focus event on climate change at The Conference of the Parties- 21 (COP21) which resulted in the Paris Agreement. She speaks in the UK Parliament on global governance alongside an increased presence of women in the political arena and been asked to represent the UK at the United Nations through the membership organisation she launched inside the House of Lords.

She holds degrees in International Development with a minor in Educational Psychology from McGill University, an LLB from the University of London with PGD from the University of Nottingham in International Law (dually qualified in Human Rights Law). She completed the UK Bar (LPC) from The University of Law. She was selected by the Harvard Kennedys’ School of Government developed in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and Center for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth to cultivate investment strategies into impact. 

Creative Futures Director & Chair of Team Leaders

Tara O'Neil

Niagara, Canada (SMARTlab Canada)

Tara O’Neil is a final year SMARTlab PhD candidate. Her work focuses on a novel innovation process that takes users to the future via Time Portals to help develop radical creative thinking to solve problems. This year Tara will launch SMARTlab in Niagara, Canada, where the SMARTlab PhD programme will be supported with a community learning lab, innovation consulting, a commercialization lab, a media lab, and a state-of-the-art tech lab. As part of the future of education, Tara will be faculty and provide expertise on innovation and creative thinking as Executive Director.

Before reigniting her pursuit of higher education, Tara was the Chief Creative Officer at a retail design and strategy studio in Toronto. Multidisciplinary teams created the user experience in retail globally. Teams were comprised of Architects, Interior Designers, Industrial Designers, Graphic Designers, Art Directors, Writers, Design Researchers, User Experience Designers, and Innovation Strategists. Together these powerful teams considered and delivered customer experiences across Omnichannel formats to financial institutions, grocery, home improvement and fashion, and other retail verticals. 

Community Engagement & Outreach Director 

Dr Bonita de Swardt   

Cape town, South Africa 

Bonita leads on Strategic Partnerships for Human Capacity Development in science, technology and innovation at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), and sits on the Women in Science, Technology and Innovation Taskforce, as well as leading the Taskforce on Skills Development for Capacity Building, EU-Africa. SMARTlab and the Academy4theFuture are developing a set of cross-cutting actions in these domains for the EU-Africa programmes of AERAP in collaboration with the European Commission, Parliament and African ministries.

She holds a PhD in Astronomy from the University of Cape Town and a Masters of Science in Astrophysics from Rutgers University, USA. 

Bonita is well-positioned to support the Academy  through scaling of training centres for young women and girls to feed the pipeline to democratise access of skilled jobs for women across Africa.