Omar Niamut

Omar Aziz Niamut is Director of Science at TNO, the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, where he is responsible for a knowledgebase of key enabling digital technologies, such as AI, data sharing, digital connectivity and computing infrastructure, digital twinning and XR. He is TNO’s lead scientist in the field of social XR and zero-distance XR and has over twenty years of experience in media technology development, with a focus on shared interactive and immersive media delivery. He has 45 patent applications, some of which are used by Apple, Netflix and Youtube. He has made over 300 standardization contributions to ETSI TISPAN and MPEG. He advised and reported to the European Parliament and the European Commission on the harmonisation of mobile TV, and advised the Singapore government on the use of IPTV standards. He was the technical lead for one of the world’s first user trial of social TV services, led a joint effort with the BBC towards the world’s first live tiled streaming of UHD video to end users, and was technical lead for the world’s first live intercontinental transmission of Ultra Wide View video, from The Netherlands to Korea. His research on tiled streaming technology for ultra-high resolution and 360VR video led to TNO spinoff Tiledmedia. He is author of over 60 peer-reviewed ACM, IEEE and SMPTE journal and conference publications, and co-edited a book on Format-Agnostic Media. He recently was awarded a grant from the Meta XR Programs and Research Fund to study the impact of the metaverse on the future of work.