Prof. Mel Slater is one of the most revered early pioneers of research on the use of virtual realities in social and psychological domains. He co-founded Kiin.tech S.L., coordinates the European Metaverse Research Network and is the Co-Director of the Event Lab (Experimental Virtual Environments for Neuroscience and Technology). He is a Distinguished Investigator at the University of Barcelona in the Department of Clinical Psychology and an active member of the Institute of Neurosciences. He was at ICREA between 2006-2017. Mel’s background is in computer science, specifically computer graphics and virtual reality. He was at the Department of Computer Science at UCL where he founded the Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics group. Mel’s research has been supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the EU FP7 and Horizon programs, as well as the European Research Council Advanced Grants. Mel was an Immersive Fellow with London’s Digital Catapult in 2017 and 2018. He is a Research Award Winner of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2021), and was elected to the IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Academy in 2022.