Simon Birrell


Simon Birrell is a British entrepreneur, technologist and film maker. He was part of the team that invented ambient intelligence and who, with Eli Zelkha, coined the term.

Biography

Early life, education and career

Born in 1966 in Bristol, UK. He graduated from Cambridge University in 1988 with a degree in Natural Sciences.
He has been a founder or co-founder of three companies. Euro-Profile/i-Profile – a business intelligence company based out of Silicon Valley which was acquired by Virgo Capital, Vemm Brazil, a publisher of consumer advice websites in Brazil which was acquired by QuinStreet and Silicon Artists, a Madrid-based entertainment technology company funded by Silicon Valley-based Tandem Computers.

Ambient intelligence

In 1998, Birrell was part of the team at Palo Alto Ventures that invented and developed the ambient intelligence concept and who, with Eli Zelkha, coined the term.
It was presented by Roel Pieper of Philips at The Digital Living Room Conference on 22 June 1998.
Since its invention in 1998, Ambient Intelligence labs have been formed at leading universities and ambient intelligence has become part of the core strategies of many of the world's leading technology companies, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon and IBM.

Robotics and deep learning

Birrell is researching deep learning and robotics at Cambridge University. He is the author of the blog Artificial Human Companions.

Video games, virtual reality and other activities

He developed some of the very first video games for Richard Branson's Virgin Interactive in 1983. These included Bug Bomb – BBC Micro, Microbe – BBC Micro, High-Rise Horror – Commodore 64, Strangeloop – Commodore 64, Shogun – Commodore 64 / Amstrad.
From 1993 to 1995, Birrell was the CTO of an early virtual reality company in Spain called Realidad Virtual S.L. At Realidad Virtual, he developed Pandora – the first Spanish online virtual reality platform for the Internet.
Mundo de Estrellas was a distributed virtual reality environment for hospitalised children in Andalucia created by his company Silicon Artists.
He is also a film maker and writer. As a film maker, he has directed two shorts and collaborated with cult filmmakers Jess Franco and Jose Ramon Larraz.
Birrell authored a chapter in an MIT book on Information Design and co-authored a book on videogames.