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Barry Silverstein’s arrival at the University of Rochester underscores how emerging technologies such as extended reality—and increasingly, artificial intelligence—are shaping academic priorities.
The former senior director and chief technology officer of optics and display in Meta’s Reality Labs, and a UR optics alumnus, Silverstein has been hired to direct the university’s Center for Extended Reality, the university said last month.
For Silverstein, joining his alma mater is not just an alignment of career goals, but also reflects the state of the industry and UR’s readiness to engage in creating a future for extended reality, he says.
“I was ready for a change in having learned about this space over eight years leading inside of Meta, which continues to be the leading commercial driver for this space,” Silverstein says. “I had completed a technical roadmap that introduced the first products and probably out beyond 10 years of product for (augmented reality and virtual reality) displays. To go beyond that timeframe requires collaborative engagement with academic and industrial partnerships in a broader way.”
He says leading the Center for CXR offers the ability to do that.
“The University of Rochester environment enables consideration of all aspects of extended reality including hardware, AI and data management, personal and professional applications and the implications to society, mental and physical health,” Silverstein adds. “That’s beyond the scope of purely commercial entities.
Silverstein, who worked at ITT Space Systems Division and nearly three decades at Kodak before joining IMAX, views the Center for CXR as a connecting force.
“Five years from now, we’ll talk using the same language and work toward the same goals,” he predicts. “The tool set we’ll be focused on is AR/VR hardware and the bridge will be artificial intelligence.”
The Rochester Beacon posed a few questions to Silverstein as he planned his move to the area. His answers are below.
ROCHESTER BEACON: As you know, Rochester has deep strengths in optics, engineering, and imaging. What specific advantages do you think position the region to lead in AR/VR innovation?
BARRY SILVERSTEIN: The Rochester region is rich with capabilities inside and outside the university that are strong assets for CXR. In the display world, Rochester has an imaging heritage in image capture, vision sciences, and image creation as well as other disciplines such as audio, material, and chemical sciences, biomedical engineering, and perception. Each of these are important to create all-day wearable devices that enable a positive extended reality system. CXR is already connecting these pieces to create academic and industrial partnerships to build stronger research, education, and commercial community in Rochester. Having the foundation makes this much easier and faster to develop.
ROCHESTER BEACON: What near-term applications do you expect to emerge first from CXR’s work? And what would you point to as tangible outcomes for the public?
SILVERSTEIN: The first steps of CXR will be to create a collective understanding, vision, and mission for the University and Rochester’s CXR community, defining what we want extended reality to look like. This is the future of human-computer interaction; how will we use it, and what do we need to consider for it to serve individuals and society well?
Next is to engage interested researchers, students, and commercial partners to execute projects in support of this vision. CXR will be a hub for that work to occur in a collective, meaningful way. Extended reality is a system, not just separated technologies and applications. When we pull the pieces together, the outcomes become more meaningful and valuable. This supports education and economic development. CXR aims to position URochester as the leading academic institution in this field, which raises the status and recognition of its departments, as well as increasing the regional economic output through commercial development.
ROCHESTER BEACON: Extended reality depends on cross-disciplinary collaboration, including the humanities and social sciences. How will the center ensure those perspectives shape XR development?
SILVERSTEIN: Humanities, social sciences, education, and medicine will all play a prominent role in helping to form the center’s vision and mission. They will define both the applications and the approaches by which society can best benefit from this new technology. It’s critically important to consider and provide guidance on how these technologies can be used acceptably within our societies before such systems become prolific. Who better to do that than the experts and students who study history, society, psychology, and philosophy, along with the writers, artists, and musicians that understand human creativity?
ROCHESTER BEACON: It’s still early, but do you see potential for XR research to translate into jobs, startups, or new regional partnerships down the line?
SILVERSTEIN: The most valuable companies in the world are system integrators. Rochester has built an ecosystem which can be exercised to create startups based around CXR’s system integration approach, (a common vision) that will be based on research and development coming from departments through CXR. This vision is a practical ecosystem and therefore by definition builds economic opportunity. Working together as a community will yield the greatest value. CXR has already begun to develop corporate partnerships inside and beyond the Rochester region towards landing these opportunities inside our New York State region.
Smriti Jacob is Rochester Beacon managing editor.
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