EuroXR President Dr. Patrick Bourdot: Honorary Conference Co-Chair, Keynote Speaker and Panelist at CGI 2026
EuroXR President Dr. Patrick Bourdot: Honorary Conference Co-Chair, Keynote Speaker and Panelist at CGI 2026
London, UK — July 06–10, 2026
EuroXR President Dr. Patrick Bourdot, Research Director at CNRS (Université Paris-Saclay, France), served as Honorary Conference Co-Chair ofComputer Graphics International 2026 (CGI 2026), which took place at the University of the Arts London, following an invitation from the conference’s General Co-Chair, Prof. Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann.
During the conference, he especially delivered a keynote and joined a panel discussion, sharing his perspective on Extended Reality with the audience at one of the leading international gatherings in the computer graphics community.
The keynote: “Working Together in XR - Challenges and Opportunities for Immersive Collaboration”
In his keynote, Dr. Bourdot presented an overview of research conducted with his team on immersive collaboration using Extended Reality technologies, spanning environments ranging from multi-stereoscopic CAVE-like systems to VR and AR/MR headsets.
The talk examined the opportunities and challenges of working together in both co-located and remote immersive settings, addressing key research questions such as user co-habitation, dual presence, spatial consistency, workspace partitioning, engagement, and attention.
These challenges were illustrated through concrete applications, including immersive training for assembly tasks, immersive analytics of complex data, and remote immersive learning. The keynote concluded with a discussion of the outcomes and limitations of this research, as well as the most promising directions for advancing XR-based immersive collaboration.
More information about the CGI 2026 keynotes: https://www.cgs-network.org/cgi26/keynotes/
The panel: An XR Perspective on Generative AI in Computer Graphics
Beyond his keynote, Dr. Bourdot was one of the invited scientists taking part in a panel discussion addressing the question “Has Generative AI Changed the Core Research Agenda of Computer Graphics?”, chaired by Prof. Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann (University of Geneva).
The panel also featured Prof. Daniel Thalmann (University of Geneva, Switzerland), Prof. Jianjun Zhang (Bournemouth University, UK), and Prof. Mick Grierson (University of the Arts London, UK).
The discussion explored how the rapid rise of generative AI is reshaping research priorities in computer graphics, with Dr. Bourdot highlighting some of the key issues and challenges posed by generative AI for related fields such as XR and immersive technologies.
A Long-Standing Contribution to Extended Reality
As Research Director at CNRS, Dr. Bourdot is also the founding leader of the VENISE team, a Virtual and Augmented Reality research group established in 2001 at Université Paris-Saclay.
His research spans virtual navigation, 3D reconstruction, multimodal and collaborative interaction, and the associated challenges in perception and cognition, with applications in design and engineering, bioinformatics, computational fluid dynamics, science education, and autism spectrum disorder research.
A founding member of EuroVR/EuroXR, Dr. Bourdot has played a central role in building the European XR community. He has been a member of the Advisory Board since the creation of the Association, held the position of Vice-President of EuroXR from 2016 to 2021, in charge of Academic issues, Conferences, and Special Interest Groups, and has been President of EuroXR since 2021.
His participation in CGI 2026 reflects the broader contribution of EuroXR members to international scientific exchange and highlights the growing connections between computer graphics, Extended Reality, and immersive collaboration.
