University of California’s Digital Media Innovation Program (DiMI) Expands Forum and Introduces Silicon Valley and Hollywood Integrating Think Tank

Leading venture capitalists, creative talent and digital visionaries, along with cutting edge University of California research faculty from all nine UC campuses and three national laboratories, will meet to focus on maintaining and expanding California’s dominance in shaping the future of digital technology worldwide during the University of California Digital Media Innovation Program (DiMI) Technology & Content Forum.

This unique invitation-only gathering of global leaders in the fields of digital technology, media and communications will host such key players as Gordon Bell of Microsoft, Kevin Tsujihara, Executive Vice President, New Media, Warner Bros., and Phil Goldman, Co-Founder, WebTV. The forum will take place on October 11th, 2001 at the Microsoft Campus in Mountain View, CA.

“The DiMI Tech Forum embodies convergence, the congregation of some of the finest minds in industry and technology with California’s legendary educational and research institutions to exchange ideas and collaborate creatively to define and develop new businesses, research and development ventures,” said Dr. Steve Berman, DiMI’s Associate Director of Strategic Business Alliances & Convergence Technologies Development.

The DiMI Tech Forum is a unique environment which fosters new ideas and business and research opportunities among selected leadership from the digital information technology driven California industries. Such leaders emanate from entertainment, wireless, Internet, healthcare, communications, eCommerce, manufacturing and agriculture and increasingly depend upon innovative applications of digital media technologies. The opportunities created by the DiMI Tech Forum and needs for research partnerships that advance the frontiers of digital technologies are both immediate and substantial.

DiMI, through DIGIVATIONS and DiMI Tech Forums, seeks to cultivate partnerships, speed the development of new technologies, and generate new business opportunities to fuel California’s economy.

Some of the visionary speakers who will participate at the DiMI Tech Forum include:

• Gary Adelson, Partner, EastWest VentureGroup

• Gordon Bell, Visionary, Scientist, Entrepreneur; Senior Researcher Microsoft Research San Francisco Group, former Vice President of Research & Development, Digital Equipment Corporation

• Kwang-Ting (Tim) Cheng, Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of Computer Engineering, UC Santa Barbara

• Michael D’Zmura, Professor, Department of Cognitive Science, UC Irvine

• Charles L. Dages, Senior Vice President Emerging Technology, Warner Bros., New Media

• Tony Faustini, Director of Technology Management, TV Platform Division, Microsoft Corporation

• Ken Goldberg, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, UC Berkeley

• Phil Goldman, Co-Founder, WebTV

• Chuck House, Science Policy and Societal Impact Director, Intel Corporation

• Dr. Ramesh Jain, Professor Emeritus, UCSD; CTO, Praja; Founding Chairman, Virage

• Dominic Massaro, Professor, Department of Psychology and Computer Engineering, UC Santa Cruz

• Nelson Max, Professor, Department of Applied Sciences, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and UC Davis

• Geoff Mott, CEO McKenna Group

• Michael O’Donnell, President, Chief Executive Officer, Salon.com

• Stephen Pope, Senior Research Specialist, CREATE, UC Santa Barbara

• Hai Tao, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Engineering, UC Santa Cruz

• Mohan Trivedi, Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Director, Computer Vision and Robotics Research Laboratory, UC San Diego

• Kevin Tsujihara, Executive Vice President, New Media, Warner Bros.

• Susan Ustin, Associate Professor, Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, UC Davis

• Fabian Wagmister, Assistant Professor, Department of Film and Television, UC Los Angeles

• Daniel Werthimer, Chief Scientist, SETI@Home Program, UC Berkeley

DiMI Program Director Professor JoAnn Kuchera-Morin states, “DiMI integrates the nine University of California campuses and three National Laboratories to create an unbiased resource, enabling partnerships to fuel core technology development across multiple application areas.”

Representing the University of California research elite will be dozens of prominent faculty whose work centers around intelligent systems and environments, virtual reality, visualization, telepresence and wireless networks, and distributed computing, among others. Never before seen demonstrations will include systems involving robots and virtual reality; real-time 3-D human gesture tracking; intelligent sound and image processing software; and GPS and remote sensing for space and agriculture.

Program highlights and speaker information are available at the DiMI Tech Forum Web site (http://www.dimi.ucsb.edu/events/dimitechforum). Press registration is also available on the site.

DiMI Tech Forum is a continuation of the ongoing DiMI Technology Forums that have been hosted to date by QUALCOMM, Microsoft/WebTV, and Cisco, among others, as well as the upcoming Technology Forum to be held late fall, 2001 to be hosted by Warner Bros.

Participation at the DiMI Tech Forum is by invitation only, and is limited to approximately 200 convergence leaders whose participation is selected on a basis of factors such as each participant’s contributions to and influence in the fields of digital technology and media.

About DiMI

The University of California Digital Media Innovation Program (DiMI) is a matching grants program that partners California companies and UC systemwide researchers in research and education to advance digital media technologies. The DiMI Program also supports research that will accelerate the application of new digital media technologies to California needs. The DiMI Program produces new knowledge, technology innovations, and highly skilled professionals to sustain California’s leadership. It is part of President Atkinson’s Industry-University Cooperative Research Program, which accelerates UC contributions to California’s global digital technology economy. The DiMI Program has over $3.5 million to contribute in grants in the 2001-02 fiscal year, which will be matched at least $1:$1 by private sponsors. DiMI was launched in February 1998 with $1.5 million in annual base UC and State funds. In total, along with industry matching contributions, DiMI has enabled sixty new research partnerships with more than $21 million in funding. Almost two-thirds of the sponsoring companies are small businesses. UC faculty and students have generated substantial high impact intellectual property and created new industry paradigms through DiMI research partnerships with industrial sponsors.

For more information, contact Dr. Steve Berman at DiMI (805) 893-8798, fax (805) 893-5551, or consult the DiMI site: http://www.dimi.ucsb.edu

About EMbizImpact, Inc.

Continuing their principle mission of contributing to the growth of existing and evolving media entertainment and allied technology businesses, EMbizImpact and Founder and Chairman, Lee Helper, are strategic partners in the DiMI Tech Forum think-tank series. EMbizImpact ultimately is designed to be a one-of-kind, strategic business development and expansion planning partner.

For more information, contact Lee Helper at (310) 473-4147, email: lee_helper@embizimpact.com, or consult the EMbizImpact website: http://www.EMbizImpact.com