Philip Lelyveld

Los Angeles, CA, USA

Philip Lelyveld runs the Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality Initiative at the University of Southern California’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC@USC), a think tank within the School of Cinematic Arts. The ETC@USC is funded by the six major Hollywood studios plus related service, technology, telco/internet, and consumer electronics companies to advise them on emerging technology-related opportunities, connect them with start-ups and communities of interest, help accelerate adoption of promising technologies, and work to drive standardization and avoid format wars.

His VR/AR Initiative studies and works to influence the creative, technical, social, and business issues that will shape this new, emerging art form. Phil is currently working on the rapidly evolving ecosystem that includes immersive media, IoT, AI, and blockchain. He has produced events that brought communities of hands-on practitioners together to discuss and document the current states of ‘the emerging language of VR storytelling,’ ‘live VR production workflow,’ ‘the business of VR,’ and ‘Spatial Audio,’ as well as AR Salons. He presented ‘The Dark Side of AR’ at 2017 Augmented World Expo, ‘Legal Questions Raised by Immersive Media’ at the Law and Culture in Virtual Worlds Conf. at Case Western Law School, and Entertainment Technology and ‘fake news’ before the European Union at their 2018 commission hearing; “Preserving Democracy in the Digital Age.”

Prior to joining the ETC@USC Mr. Lelyveld spent 10 years coordinating multi-business unit and multi-studio efforts related to entertainment technology including technical lead in major negotiations as Disney’s corporate VP of Digital Industry Relations. He has a BS in Civil Engineering (Tufts), an MS in Applied Geophysics (Stanford), and an MBA (UCLA).