Mel Slater became Professor of Virtual Environments at University College London in 1997 in the Department of Computer Science. He was a UK EPSRC Senior Research Fellow from 1999 to 2004 at UCL, during which time he worked on the virtual light field approach to computer graphics, and he set up the virtual reality Cave system at UCL. Twenty two of his PhD students have obtained their PhDs since 1989. In 2005 he was awarded the Virtual Reality Career Award by IEEE Virtual Reality "In Recognition of Seminal Achievements in Engineering Virtual Reality". He holds a Senior ERC grant entitled "Transcending Reality: Activating Virtual Environment Responses through Sensory Enrichment (TRAVERSE)". His main work is in the area of understanding how people respond to experiences in immersive virtual environments and associated technology in computer graphics and human-computer interaction, and also representation of self in immersive virtual environments. Since 2006 he has been part-time at UCL and is otherwise at the University of Barcelona.