Mark Pesce

Inventor, Author, Educator, Broadcaster, Entrepreneur

Mark Pesce

Inventor, Author, Educator, Broadcaster, Entrepreneur
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Biography

Mark Pesce is an inventor, author, educator, broadcaster and entrepreneur.  In 1991 he founded Ono-Sendai Corporation, the first consumer virtual reality startup, inventing a orientation sensor (US Patent 5,526,022) for low-cost virtual reality applications, adopted by Sega Corporation for their Virtua VR head-mounted display.

In 1994, Pesce co-invented the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), the first standard for interactive 3D graphics on the World Wide Web.  While running the VRML Architecture Group, a consortium of industry and academic stakeholders furthering VRML standards development, Pesce founded BlitCom, the first startup to use VRML to deliver streaming entertainment.

In 1998, Pesce was invited to found the Graduate Program in Interactive Media at the University of Southern California’s world-famous School of Cinema-Television, teaching the next generation of creative professionals how to master emerging technologies for storytelling.  In 2003, Mark was invited to Sydney to establish the Program in Emerging Media at the Australian Film Television and Radio School, and continues to work with students through his Honorary Appointment in the Digital Cultures Program at the University of Sydney and his recent appointment as Honorary Adjunct at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Pesce writes fortnightly a column for the internationally respected tech publication The Register, and for seven years was a panelist and judge on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s hit series The New Inventors, celebrating Australia’s newest inventions and inventors. He currently hosts This Week in Startups Australia, the nation’s leading tech podcast.

In 2016, Pesce launched an initiative to create Mixed Reality Service (MRS, mixedrealitysystem.org), an Internet-wide standard to connect geospatial coordinates with relevant metadata. MRS has applications in many areas including gaming, autonomous vehicles, affordances for the disabled, and safety.