Newton Lee is CEO of Newton Lee Laboratories LLC, President of the Institute for Education, Research, and Scholarships (IFERS), Adjunct professor at Woodbury University’s School of Media, Culture & Design, and Editor-in-Chief of Former ACM Computers in Entertainment(CiE)(2003 to 2018). Previously, he was a Computer Scientist at AT&T Bell Laboratories, senior producer and engineer at The Walt Disney Company, and research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses. He was founder of Disney Online Technology Forum, creator of Bell Labs’ first-ever commercial AI tool, and inventor of the world’s first annotated multimedia OPAC for the U.S. National Agricultural Library. Lee graduated Summa Cum Laude from Virginia Tech with a B.S. and M.S. degree in Computer Science, and he earned a perfect GPA from Vincennes University with an A.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and an honorary doctorate in Computer Science. He is the co-author of Disney Stories: Getting to Digital; author of the Total Information Awareness book series including Facebook Nation and Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity; coauthor/editor of the Digital Da Vinci book series including Computers in Music and Computers in the Arts and Sciences; and Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics and Games.

His research interest includes computer graphics, games, artificial intelligence, information science, and media technology.

Carol Luckhardt Redfield, Ph.D., joined St. Mary’s in 1998 after having been in her industry for more than a dozen years. Including summer jobs at Bell Labs, LLNL and IBM, she worked in artificial intelligence as a Senior Research Engineer at Southwest Research Institute and as a Senior Scientist at Mei Technology Corporation. She has taught mathematics and computer science since 1980 at various universities, including the University of Michigan, University of Texas at San Antonio and St. Philip’s College.

Computer Graphics, Computer Gaming, Artificial Intelligence, E-Learning

He is currently designated Director of Innovation Center for Educational Resources (ICER) and Professor at Kyushu University Library, Research Institute for Information Technology, Cyber Security Center, Kansei Center for Arts and Design, Graduate School of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University, Japan.

His research in 3D Graphics and Computer Animation, Human Interface and Virtual Reality, Network Collaboration, Development Technologies for Video Games, Data Broadcast Contents and Educational Materials, and Presentation Technologies in Museums.

Dr Qingde Li received the BSc in mathematics from Beijing Normal University in 1982 and PhD in computer science from the University of Hull in 2002. He has been a Lecturer in Computer science at the University of Hull since 2001. Previously he was a professor and the deputy head of Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Anhui Normal University, China. He was a visiting scholar in the Department of applied Statistics at the University of Leeds from Oct 1990 to May 1992, and in the Department of Computing at the University of Bradford from Sept 1996 to Aug 1997. Before he joined the University of Hull, his research interests were mainly with fuzzy sets and random sets. His most current research interests are in the area of 3D graphics, such as shape modeling, medical image processing and visualization, GPU-based scientific simulation and special graphics effects.

His current research interests are in the areas of computer graphics and mixed reality technology, with a particular focus on high precision geometric modelling of real objects.

Marina L. Gavrilova holds Full Professor with Tenure appointment at the Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Canada. Her publication list includes over 150 journal and conference papers, edited special issues, books and book chapters, including World Scientific Bestseller of the Month (2007) – “Image Pattern Recognition: Synthesis and Analysis in Biometric,” Springer book (2009) “Computational Intelligence: A Geometry-Based Approach” and IGI book (2013) “Multimodal Biometrics and Intelligent Image Processing for Security Systems”. She has received support from CFI, NSERC, GEOIDE, MITACS, PIMS, Alberta Ingenuity, NATO and other funding agencies. She is an Editor-in-Chief of Transactions on Computational Sciences Springer Verlag Journal series and on Editorial board of seven journals. She also directs the two laboratories Biometric Technologies Laboratory (BTLAB) and Spatial Analysis Research in Computational Science Lab (SPARCS). She received numerous awards and her research was profiled in newspaper and TV interviews, most recently being chosen together with other five outstanding Canadian scientists to be featured in National Museum of Civilization, National Film Canada production, and on Discovery Channel Canada.

Her research interests lie in the areas of machine intelligence, bio-metric recognition, image processing, pattern recognition and GIS.

Kate Edward is the CEO and Principal Consulatant of Geogrify and is the former Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). In addition to being an outspoken advocate and industry leader, she is an applied geographer, write, and corporate strategist. She is better known for her leadership and culturalization work in the video game industry, including her most recent role as Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) from 2012 - 2017. Formerly as Microsoft’s first Geopolitical Strategist in the Geopolitical Strategy team she created and managed. She also co-organizer of the Game Localization Summit at GDC, and is a regular columnist for MultiLingual Computing magazine. In October 2013, Fortune magazine named her as one of the “10 Most Powerful Women” in the game industry. In December 2014, she was named by GamesIndustry.biz as one of the six “People of the Year” in the game industry.

Her interest in subject matter expertise in geopolitics, cartography, content culturalization, policy making, corporate cultures, negotiation with governments, crisis management, geopolitical training, cross-cultural competence, advocacy, political engagement, video games, game industry.

Newton Lee is CEO of Newton Lee Laboratories LLC, President of the Institute for Education, Research, and Scholarships (IFERS), Adjunct professor at Woodbury University’s School of Media, Culture & Design, and Editor-in-Chief of ACM Computers in Entertainment(CiE). Previously, he was a Computer Scientist at AT&T Bell Laboratories, senior producer and engineer at The Walt Disney Company, and research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses. He was founder of Disney Online Technology Forum, creator of Bell Labs’ first-ever commercial AI tool, and inventor of the world’s first annotated multimedia OPAC for the U.S. National Agricultural Library. Lee graduated Summa Cum Laude from Virginia Tech with a B.S. and M.S. degree in Computer Science, and he earned a perfect GPA from Vincennes University with an A.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and an honorary doctorate in Computer Science. He is the co-author of Disney Stories: Getting to Digital; author of the Total Information Awareness book series including Facebook Nation and Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity; coauthor/editor of the Digital Da Vinci book series including Computers in Music and Computers in the Arts and Sciences; and Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics and Games.

His research interest includes computer graphics, games, artificial intelligence, information science, and media technology.

Dr. Edmond Prakash is a Professor and Head of Creative Technologies at the University of Westminster. Prior he was Professor in Computer Games Technology, Bournemouth University, UK and Department of Computer Science and Technology at University of Bedfordshire. He has also held positions at Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom; Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He has also held visiting positions at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Cali Colombia; State University of New York-Stony Brook, USA; University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA; and Beijing Normal University, China. He has over 150 publications in journals, conferences and monographs. He has also published 5 books.

His research interests are in Games Technology, Games AI, Mobile Games, Mobile Apps, Facial Animation, Visual Computing, Volume Visualisation, Cloud Computing and High Performance Computing.

Christel Chamaret is Principal Scientist at Technicolor Research & Innovation in Rennes, France. She is working in different projects related to VFX workflow. She received the Ph.D. degree from University of Rennes in 2016, completed in parallel of her activities. Her research interest deals with any technologies related to Human Perception and more recently using deep learning approaches. She has previously worked on visual attention models and quality metric. She has also designed and conducted a number of user studies to validate computational models and image processing algorithms.

Her main interest deals with image processing and computational modeling. More precisely, She is working on visual attention model, emotional impact model and aesthetic metric. She have previously contributed to image retargeting and attention-based application dedicated to stereoscopic content. She have interest in experimental protocols: quality assessment, eye-tracking and physiological signals.

Professor David Xu is tenure associate professor at Regent University, specializing in computer 3D animation and movie special effects. He got MFA Computer Graphics in 3D Animation from Pratt Institute in NY. He has served as a senior 3D animator in SEGA, Japan; a senior CG special effector in Pacific Digital Image Inc., Hollywood; and as a professor of animation in several colleges and universities where he developed the 3D animation program and curriculum. He has been a committee member of the computer graphics organization SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater, where he was recognized with an award for his work. In 2011, he published the book "Mastering Maya: The Special Effects Handbook" invited by Shanghai People's Fine Arts Publishing House.

3D Animation and special effects, Christian-themed, 3D movies, Maya

Petyo Vasilev Budakov graduated from the New Bulgarian University of Sofia, Bulgaria in December 2012 with PhD in Visual arts (3D in graphic design). He is a faculty in the Department “Cinema, advertising and show business”. As a chief assistant professor, most of his doctoral research has been devoted on the 3D Digital media, lighting and renders engines, brand identity development as well as designing and delivering effective presentations. In 2016, he was awarded with a DAAD scholarship grant, and currently he is a visiting researcher in Germany. He is a co-founder of the online learning vocational training school – Adacademy®.

3D Digital media, lighting and renders engines, brand identity development, Computer Graphics, 3D, 3D in graphic design

Francisco J. Perales is a researcher and full professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of (UIB) and he is the Head of the Computer Graphics and Vision Group. He obtained his BS & MS in computer science at the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) in 1986. In 1993 he obtained a Master of Digital Image Processing at the UAB. He received a PhD degree in Computer Science at the University of Balearic Islands in 1993. He has published more than 120 research papers in the field of computer vision, user interfaces and neuroscience. He has 3 years of research and accreditation to CU in 2013. He actively participates in the development of national and European R & D projects in the field of multimodal interfaces and intelligent agents. Reviewer of international journals is affiliated to ACM-SIGGRAPH, IEEE, IAPR and EUROGRAPHICS. He is Senior Member of the IEEE and General Co-chair of the AMDO (Articulated Motion and Deformable Objects) of the AERFAI / UIB that is organized biannually.

He is a specialist in the area of graphics and computer vision and its applications. His research interests cover several topics such as human-machine interaction, artificial intelligence and their applications.

Nickolas S. Sapidis is a Professor at the University of Western Macedonia, Kozani, Greece. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Rochester, USA in 1993. He has been pursuing/supervising research on “Computer Graphics”, “Computer-Aided Design (CAD)”, “Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE)”, “Geometric Modeling”, “Virtual Engineering” and “Mechanical Design”. He is the author of more than 70 papers on the above subjects. He is a member of the Editorial board of more than ten international scientific journals in the fields of Computer Graphics, Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Product Lifecycle Management and Engineering Informatics.

Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality, 3D Reconstruction, 3D Image Processing, Image Segmentation, Computer-Aided Design, Image Processing, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Vision, Pattern Recognition, 3D Vision, Visualization

Dr Dimitrios Makris is assistant professor in the Department of Interior Architecture, Decorative Arts and Design at the Technological Educational Institute (T.E.I.) of Athens. He is founding member of the Research Laboratory "Advanced Research Technologies for Investigation and Conservation - ARTICON" TEI of Athens. He holds a PhD in Informatics from Université de Limoges, France (2005), a MSc in Architecture, (Computing and Design) from the East London University, UK (1999) and a Diploma of Interior Design from T.E.I. of Athens, Greece (1995). He coordinates teaching and research on "CAD Methodology", "Digital techniques of three-dimensional imaging". He is a visiting scholar in the Department of Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Art. He was a visiting scholar in the Athens School of Fine Arts.

His scientific interests focus on research within scientific fields of design methods and informatics. In particular, his research interests lie in the area of Computer-Aided-Design, computing and interior design, declarative scene synthesis, aesthetic style modelling, and applied artificial intelligence (genetic algorithms – genetic programming). His most recent research work is in the development of methods for declarative scene modelling based on theatrical texts, literature novels based augmented reality, and cultural heritage 3D digital restoration and display.

Dr Qingde Li received the BSc in mathematics from Beijing Normal University in 1982 and PhD in computer science from the University of Hull in 2002. He has been a Lecturer in Computer science at the University of Hull since 2001. Previously he was a professor and the deputy head of Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Anhui Normal University, China. He was a visiting scholar in the Department of applied Statistics at the University of Leeds from Oct 1990 to May 1992, and in the Department of Computing at the University of Bradford from Sept 1996 to Aug 1997. Before he joined the University of Hull, his research interests were mainly with fuzzy sets and random sets. His most current research interests are in the area of 3D graphics, such as shape modeling, medical image processing and visualization, GPU-based scientific simulation and special graphics effects.

His current research interests are in the areas of computer graphics and mixed reality technology, with a particular focus on high precision geometric modelling of real objects.

Khalid Djado is an Associate Professor at the Montreal Computer Science Center, University of Sherbrooke, Canada. He is a CEO of ItemsLab Inc. which established in May 2016. He was also a game developer at Amusement Cyanide in Montreal. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics from the University Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah in Morocco, and a master’s degree in modeling, simulation, and optimization from the University of Bretagne Sud in France. He has been a member of ACM Siggraph since 2006. He also a member of Montreal ACM Siggraph Chapter.

His research interests include computer graphics, augmented reality, image recognition, realtime gesture recognition and advanced 3D mesh processing and analysis.

Yulin Wang is a full professor and PhD supervisor in International School of Software, Wuhan University, China. He got PhD degree in 2005 in Queen Mary, University of London, UK. Before that, he has worked in high-tech industry for more than ten years. He has involved many key projects, and holds 8 patents. He got his master and bachelor degree in 1990 and 1987 respectively from Xi-Dian University, and Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), China. In recently 10 years, Prof. Wang has published as first author 3 books, 40 conference papers and 45 journal papers, including in IEEE Transactions and IEE proceedings and Elsevier Journals. He served as editor-in-chief for International Journal of Advances in Multimedia in 2010. He served as reviewer for many journals, including IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, IEEE Signal Processing Letters, Elsevier Journal of Information Sciences. He served as reviewer for many research funds, including National High Technology Research and Development Program of China ( ‘863’ project). He was the external PhD adviser of Dublin City University, Ireland during 2008-2010. He was the keynote speakers in many international conferences. He has been listed in Marcus ‘who’s who in the world’ since 2008.

His research interests include digital rights management, digital watermarking, multimedia and network security, and signal processing.

Newton Lee is CEO of Newton Lee Laboratories LLC, president of the Institute for Education, Research, and Scholarships, adjunct professor at Woodbury University’s School of Media, Culture & Design, and editor-in-chief of ACM Computers in Entertainment. Previously, he was a computer scientist at AT&T Bell Laboratories, senior producer and engineer at The Walt Disney Company, and research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses. He was founder of Disney Online Technology Forum, creator of Bell Labs’ first-ever commercial AI tool, and inventor of the world’s first annotated multimedia OPAC for the U.S. National Agricultural Library. Lee graduated Summa Cum Laude from Virginia Tech with a B.S. and M.S. degree in Computer Science, and he earned a perfect GPA from Vincennes University with an A.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and an honorary doctorate in Computer Science. He is the co-author of Disney Stories: Getting to Digital; author of the Total Information Awareness book series including Facebook Nation and Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity; coauthor/editor of the Digital Da Vinci book series including Computers in Music and Computers in the Arts and Sciences; and editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics and Games.

His research interest includes computer graphics, games, artificial intelligence, information science, and media technology.

Darius Burschka is Associate Professor and Head of the Machinve Vision and Perception Group (MVP) in Technische Universität München, Germany. He completed his PhD in 1998 from Technische Universität München, Germany. He is Senior Editor for Journal of Intelligent Vehicles and other conference journals. He received best paper award at ICSTCC 2014, Intelligent Vehicles Conference 2010 and MICCAI 2005.

His principle areas of research are sensors for mobile systems and Human Computer Interfaces. Focus of his research is on vision-based navigation and three-dimensional reconstruction from sensor data.

Minhua Eunice Ma is Professor of Digital Media & Games in the School of Art, Design and Architecture at University of Huddersfield, and she is Director of Internationalisation and Acting Head of Department of Art & Communication. Professor Ma obtained her MSc in Computer Science from Newcastle University and PhD in Computer Science from Ulster University, and worked there as a Post-Doc Researcher on virtual reality games for stroke rehabilitation. She joined University of Derby as a Senior Lecturer in Computer Games Modelling and Animation in 2007 and was promoted to Reader in 2009. She was the Head of Academic Programmes at the Glasgow School of Art since 2010 and became a Professor of Computer Games Technology in 2013. She joined University of Huddersfield in September 2014.
Professor Ma is a world-leading academic developing the emerging field of serious games. She has published widely in the fields of serious games for education, medicine and healthcare, Virtual and Augmented Reality and Natural Language Processing, in over 100 peer-reviewed publications, including 6 books on serious games with Springer. Eunice has received grants from RCUK, EU, NHS, NESTA, UK government, charities and a variety of other sources for her research on Virtual Reality and serious games for stroke rehabilitation, cystic fibrosis, autism, medical education and Holocaust education.
As Director of Internationalisation, Professor Ma is responsible for leading the Internationalisation agenda for the School, contributing to the development and implementation of School Strategy in general and the Internationalisation strategy in particular, establishment and development of international teaching and research collaborations, bidding for funding and directing cultural change, coordinating international admissions and being responsible for international student experience in the School.

Digital games technology, serious games for education, medicine, and healthcare, 3D visualisation, medical visualisation, Virtual reality, Augmented Reality, HCI, embodied virtual humans, haptic interface, natural interface, Natural Language Processing, Computational Semantics.

Nickolas S. Sapidis is a Professor at the University of Western Macedonia, Kozani, Greece. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Rochester, USA in 1993. He has been pursuing/supervising research on “Computer Graphics”, “Computer-Aided Design (CAD)”, “Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE)”, “Geometric Modeling”, “Virtual Engineering” and “Mechanical Design”. He is the author of more than 70 papers on the above subjects. He is a member of the Editorial board of more than ten international scientific journals in the fields of Computer Graphics, Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Product Lifecycle Management and Engineering Informatics.

Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality, 3D Reconstruction, 3D Image Processing, Image Segmentation, Computer-Aided Design, Image Processing, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Vision, Pattern Recognition, 3D Vision, Visualization

Susan Johnston, known as a Media Futurist, is President of Select Services Films, Inc. an award winning production company which is also certified DBE, has a casting division and is Founder/Director of New Media Film Festival. As a kid, Susan was on the set of the 1st Great Gatsby where she met Robert Redford while her father was handling the antique cars. From there, she worked on every production she could garnering experience in every department of filmmaking. Her first film a 35mm color film noir short Room 32 which won two awards, received distribution and was requested by Spiderman 3 for their production team. Susan founded the critically acclaimed New Media Film Festival ® in 2009 to honor stories worth telling in the ever changing landscape of media, New Media. Legendary judges cull over the content for the annual festival in Los Angeles that offers screening, competition ($45k in awards) and distribution opportunities. Currently there are over 600 titles in their library. Johnston has a background in the traditional film and TV industry, but has also become known in recent years as a pioneering new media producer including Stan Lee’s Comikaze Expo panel for Independent Creators, Co-Producing Feature Film Dreams Awake & currently producing the Marvel Comic feature Prey: Origin of the Species. While the Industry was changing from standard def to HD Johnston produced the 1stseries for mobile, Mini-Bikers the 1st live stream talk show on HD with a Panasonic Varicam and tested the Panasonic DVX100 which led to some changes on the DVX100A and was on a committee to develop the SAG Internet contract with Pierre Debs of SAG. Currently a Professor Emeritus in New Media, on New Media steering committee for The Caucus, an advisory board member for SET Awards (Entertainment Industry Council), Board Member Computer & Animation Society and Miss America NY judge. In 2012 LinkedIn announced Susan Johnston was one of the top 10% profiles looked at out of 20MM. With over 80,000 on the monthly newsletter elist and over 2 million across social media, Susan Johnston has been touted as a Social Media expert and lent her expertise to Los Angeles Social Media Week, IFFS, Jackson Hole Science Conference, Moviola, A Brasov Romania conference & is proud to have spoken at such high level conferences as American Film Market, NAB & NATPE about new advancements in the social media/crowd funding space. In November 2016, Susan will keynote the 3rd Annual Computer & Animation Expo in Vegas. Winner of Best Women Owned Film & TV Production Company CA 2016. Prior to relocating to Los Angeles in 2000, Susan Johnston, a New England native, worked with the Providence & Rhode Island Film Commissions over 5 years to build the infrastructure used by the Farrelly brothers, as well as by director Michael Corrente, NBC's hit TV series Providence, and the New England Screenwriters Conference. She developed Context Media Studios International production capabilities as well as garnered funds before Senate Committee hearings and helped facilitate the 25% tax incentive for investors of films in Rhode Island.

Multimedia, Computer Graphics & Games

Jean Sequeira has been a “Full Professor” at the Aix-Marseilles University since 1991 (he has the status of “Exceptional Class Professor” since 2010). In 1994, he created a research group on “Image Analysis and Computer Graphics” and then, in 2001, he participated in the creation and the direction of the LSIS Laboratory (Systems and Information Sciences Laboratory). Since 2001, he has been developing an important international activity, especially with China where he supervises research works in the field of Remote Sensing at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He also set partnerships with Peru, Algeria, Burkina Faso and Canada. In 2006, he participated in the creation of an international organization, ISDE (International Society for Digital Earth) of which I had been an Executive Committee member for ten years; he also participated in the creation of an international journal, IJDE (International Journal of Digital Earth – Taylor & Francis Edition).
Jean Sequeira published 135 papers, about 40 of them in Journals. He organized International Conferences, he is in the Scientific Committee of several Journals and International Conferences and he is a IEEE “Senior Member” (since 2009). He was the Scientific Director of 28 PhD research works.

His research activity deals with image analysis, geometrical modeling and image synthesis. The goal of the research groups he created (LXAO and then SimGraph) was to perform data fusion from images, to extract information from these data, to integrate it into a model and to display it in a way that communicates the relevant information to a specific end user.

Athomas Goldberg is the President of Lifelike and Believable Animation Design Inc. In 1994, he received a patent for the Improv Animation system he invented alongside Ken Perlin (NYU Professor most famous for creating the Perlin Noise). He then launched Improv Technologies, Inc., for which he received the Year 2000 Innovation award for Orchestrate3D, a non-linear animation production tool. Since that time, he has collaborated on projects with Relic Studios, Microsoft, and oversaw the development of EA's internal animation studio (ANT). He has worked with an incredible variety of game engines and tools, and is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to the gaming and animation world.

Bringing 20+ years experience in the interactive entertainment industry to provide creative and technical leadership and support to studios developing emotionally-engaging, character-driven games and experiences for console, PC and mobile platforms.

Yonghuai Liu is a senior lecturer at Aberystwyth University since 2011. He started in September 2001 as a lecturer at the same university and obtained his first PhD degree in 1998 from Northwestern Polytechnical University, P.R. China and second PhD degree in 2001 from The University of Hull, United Kingdom. From April to September 1999, he worked as a research assistant at The University of Hull. From March 2000 to September 2001, he worked as a research fellow at Sheffield Hallam University. He is currently associate editor for the international journals: Pattern Recognition Letters and Neurocomputing, an editorial board member for American Journal of Educational Research, the international journal of ISRN Computer Science, ISRN Artificial Intelligence and Journal of Education, Informatics, and Cybernetics, and a guest editor for a number of international journals. He has been serving as programme committee member and referee for more than 70 international conferences and journals. He has published more than 160 papers in leading international conference proceedings and journals.

His current research interests lie in 3D imaging, machine vision, image registration, robust motion estimation, object recognition, reverse engineering, Makov process, constraint formalization, image processing, uncertain reasoning, machine learning, artificial intelligence, computer graphics, and intelligent systems.

He is currently designated Director of Innovation Center for Educational Resources (ICER) and Professor at Kyushu University Library, Research Institute for Information Technology, Cyber Security Center, Kansei Center for Arts and Design, Graduate School of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University

3D Graphics and Computer Animation, Human Interface and Virtual Reality, Network Collaboration, Development Technologies for Video Games, Data Broadcast Contents and Educational Materials, and Presentation Technologies in Museums.

Dr. Ines Boaventura graduate at Mathematics from Sao Paulo State University , UNESP, Brazil, master’s at Computer Science and Computational Mathematics and Ph.D at Electrical Engineering from University of Sao Paulo (USP). She has experience in Computer Science, focusing on Graphical Processing (Graphics), and acting on the following subjects: Biometrics, Image Processing, and Computer Vision. She is a full-time professor and head of the Department at Department of Computer Science and Statistics at UNESP, campus of Sao Jose do Rio Preto, Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 2011-2012 she was a visiting researcher at PRIP Laboratory –CSE –Michigan State University.

Biometrics, Image Processing, and Computer Vision

Inma Carpe works as visual development artist/ animator and teacher at the ALL, The Animation workshop in Denmark. She gives workshops and collaborate with other countries developing educational curriculums and studying Animation and affective neurosciences for self-development and communication, focusing on emotions and mindfulness based on productions. She eventually works at film festivals in Hollywood as production assistant. Her personal work in animation reflects an interest in collage, blending animation with fashion illustration, sciences and education. Her specialty in preproduction brought her to live in different countries working for short formats and independent studios.

Graphics design, animation and animation films

Dmitry Gaborak is Senior Digital Artist in Insomniac Games at Los Angeles, USA. Presently works on upcoming Spider-man video game exclusively for Play Station 4. He has been working for video-game and film industries for over 12 years: in-house with Industrial Light & Magic (Disney), Gameloft and as freelancer with Microsoft, Sony Computer Entertainment, Warner Bros. and HBO, to name a few. He had a honor to contribute to well-known titles such as "Evolve"-Game of the Year 2014, "Halo 5"-the fastest selling Microsoft game in the history, "Batman Arkham Knight", Warcraft film and many-many others.

3D modeling, animation, gamifications and digital artist, expert in Zbrush

Jiri Navratil received his PhD in Computer Science from Czech Technical University at Prague in 1984. He worked for 30 years at Computing and Information Center of CTU in different positions linked with High Performance Computing a Communications. During his several sabbatical leaves he worked in Switzerland, Japan and USA in the field of networking. Since 2006 he started work for CESNET - Czech Education a cientific Network as leader of group supporting special research applications using high speed Internet. In last years he participated on several multimedia performances organized in frame of large international cooperation in different fields.

His research interest in networking, video processing and multimedia.

Dr Qingde Li received the BSc in mathematics from Beijing Normal University in 1982 and PhD in computer science from the University of Hull in 2002. He has been a Lecturer in Computer science at the University of Hull since 2001. Previously he was a professor and the deputy head of Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Anhui Normal University, China. He was a visiting scholar in the Department of applied Statistics at the University of Leeds from Oct 1990 to May 1992, and in the Department of Computing at the University of Bradford from Sept 1996 to Aug 1997. Before he joined the University of Hull, his research interests were mainly with fuzzy sets and random sets. His most current research interests are in the area of 3D graphics, such as shape modeling, medical image processing and visualization, GPU-based scientific simulation and special graphics effects.

GPU based real time 3D medical image processing Computer graphics, Implicit surfaces for shape modelling and processing, Biologically-based geometric modelling, Heterogeneous solid modelling, Big data visualization

He recieved his Ph.D from Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey Campus Estado de México in 2014, where he was a full-time professor from 2012 to 2014. He was an assistant professor and researcher and has devoted most of his research work to crowd simulation and visualization optimization. He has worked at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center using general purpose graphics processors for high performance graphics. His thesis work was in Level of detail used to create varied animated crowds. Currently he is a researcher at Barcelona Supercomputer Center.

His research interests include crowd simulation, animation, visualization and high-performance computing.

Newton Lee is CEO of Newton Lee Laboratories LLC, president of the Institute for Education, Research, and Scholarships, adjunct professor at Woodbury University’s School of Media, Culture & Design, and editor-in-chief of ACM Computers in Entertainment. Previously, he was a computer scientist at AT&T Bell Laboratories, senior producer and engineer at The Walt Disney Company, and research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses. He was founder of Disney Online Technology Forum, creator of Bell Labs’ first-ever commercial AI tool, and inventor of the world’s first annotated multimedia OPAC for the U.S. National Agricultural Library. Lee graduated Summa Cum Laude from Virginia Tech with a B.S. and M.S. degree in Computer Science, and he earned a perfect GPA from Vincennes University with an A.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and an honorary doctorate in Computer Science. He is the co-author of Disney Stories: Getting to Digital; author of the Total Information Awareness book series including Facebook Nation and Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity; coauthor/editor of the Digital Da Vinci book series including Computers in Music and Computers in the Arts and Sciences; and editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics and Games.

His research interest includes computer graphics, games, artificial intelligence, information science, and media technology

Susan Johnston, known as a Media Futurist, is President of Select Services Films, Inc. an award winning production company which is also certified DBE, has a casting division and is Founder/Director of New Media Film Festival. As a kid, Susan was on the set of the 1st Great Gatsby where she met Robert Redford while her father was handling the antique cars. From there, she worked on every production she could garnering experience in every department of filmmaking. Her first film a 35mm color film noir short Room 32 which won two awards, received distribution and was requested by Spiderman 3 for their production team. Susan founded the critically acclaimed New Media Film Festival ® in 2009 to honor stories worth telling in the ever changing landscape of media, New Media. Legendary judges cull over the content for the annual festival in Los Angeles that offers screening, competition ($45k in awards) and distribution opportunities. Currently there are over 600 titles in their library. Johnston has a background in the traditional film and TV industry, but has also become known in recent years as a pioneering new media producer including Stan Lee’s Comikaze Expo panel for Independent Creators, Co-Producing Feature Film Dreams Awake & currently producing the Marvel Comic feature Prey: Origin of the Species. While the Industry was changing from standard def to HD Johnston produced the 1stseries for mobile, Mini-Bikers the 1st live stream talk show on HD with a Panasonic Varicam and tested the Panasonic DVX100 which led to some changes on the DVX100A and was on a committee to develop the SAG Internet contract with Pierre Debs of SAG. Currently a Professor Emeritus in New Media, on New Media steering committee for The Caucus, an advisory board member for SET Awards (Entertainment Industry Council), Board Member Computer & Animation Society and Miss America NY judge. In 2012 LinkedIn announced Susan Johnston was one of the top 10% profiles looked at out of 20MM. With over 80,000 on the monthly newsletter elist and over 2 million across social media, Susan Johnston has been touted as a Social Media expert and lent her expertise to Los Angeles Social Media Week, IFFS, Jackson Hole Science Conference, Moviola, A Brasov Romania conference & is proud to have spoken at such high level conferences as American Film Market, NAB & NATPE about new advancements in the social media/crowd funding space. In November 2016, Susan will keynote the 3rd Annual Computer & Animation Expo in Vegas. Winner of Best Women Owned Film & TV Production Company CA 2016. Prior to relocating to Los Angeles in 2000, Susan Johnston, a New England native, worked with the Providence & Rhode Island Film Commissions over 5 years to build the infrastructure used by the Farrelly brothers, as well as by director Michael Corrente, NBC's hit TV series Providence, and the New England Screenwriters Conference. She developed Context Media Studios International production capabilities as well as garnered funds before Senate Committee hearings and helped facilitate the 25% tax incentive for investors of films in Rhode Island.

Multimedia, Computer Graphics & Games

Abdennour El Rhalibi is Professor of Entertainment Computing and Head of Strategic Projects at Liverpool John Moores University. He is Head of Computer Games Research Lab at the Protect Research Centre. He has over 22 years’ experience doing research and teaching in Computer Sciences. Abdennour has worked as lead researcher in three EU projects in France and in UK. His current research involves Game Technologies and Applied Artificial intelligence. Abdennour has been leading for six years several projects in Entertainment Computing funded by the BBC and UK based games companies, involving cross-platform development tools for games, 3D Web-Based Game Middleware Development, State Synchronisation in Multiplayer Online Games, Peer-to-Peer MMOG and 3D Character Animation. Abdennour has published over 150 publications in these areas. Abdennour serves in many journal editorial boards including ACM Computer in Entertainment and the International Journal of Computer Games Technologies. He has served as chair and IPC member in over 100 conferences on Computer Entertainment, AI and VR. Abdennour is member of many International Research Committees in AI and Entertainment Computing, including IEEE MMTC IG: 3D Rendering, Processing and Communications (3DRPCIG), IEEE Task Force on Computational Intelligence in Video Games and IFIP WG 14.4 Games and Entertainment Computing.

His main research interests lie in computer game technologies and applied artificial intelligence. He is currently leading several research projects involving Game 3-D Web-Based Game Middleware Development and Deployment, Game Based-Learning, State Synchronization in Multiplayer Online Games, Content Sharing in Virtual Environments, and Peer-to-Peer MMOG Deployment and Dynamic Interactive Storytelling. 

Athomas is a man of many skills and a veteran of the computer graphics industry. With over 20 years of experience as an artist, researcher, animator and director, Athomas is lending his animation and programming expertise to Shape of the World. Athomas is currently President at Lifelike & Believable Animation Design, Inc. and Founding Member of Pepper's Ghost Media & Performing Arts Collective and co-conspirator on a variety of side projects.

Bringing 20+ years experience in the interactive entertainment industry to provide creative and technical leadership and support to studios developing emotionally-engaging, character-driven games and experiences for console, PC and mobile platforms.

Gareth Edwards M.Sc. Ph.D. CEO: Dr. Edwards has 20 years experience bringing state-of-the-art technologies to the animation and medical industries, turning groundbreaking research into products and services which transform workflows. Working with Professor Chris Taylor FrEng OBE and Professor Tim Cootes, he invented the Active Appearance Model, one of the most widely used (for example in the Microsoft Kinect face tracker) and widely cited methods in the analysis of video and medical images, for which the team was awarded the Olympus Science for Life Prize and Dr. Edwards was personally awarded the Sullivan Prize. Edwards, Cootes and Taylor were also awarded the 2015 Test of Time Award at the IEEE Conference on Face and Gesture Recognition (IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Biometrics Council) for “one of the most influential papers in the field and inspired many (if not all) subsequent works on deformable models for face analysis.”

Dr. Edwards is a pioneer in the field of facial analysis and facial animation. He continues to lead the research and development of state-of-the-art algorithms and software platforms for complex model-based analysis of images, video and depth data, applicable to a large variety of the most challenging problems in computer vision.

Luca Fascione is Head of Rendering Research at Weta Digital, where he leads the activity of research around rendering algorithms and material modeling. He joined Weta in 2004 and has also worked at Pixar Animation Studios. The rendering group's software, including PantaRay and Manuka, has been supporting the realization of large scale productions such as Avatar, The Adventures of Tintin, the Planet of the Apes films and The Hobbit trilogy.

Main area of focus are high performance rendering, advanced material modeling, light transport algorithms, and geometric representation and compression.

Sebastian Sylwan is a renowned and respected Visual Effects and Digital Media Technology Executive. Sebastian is currently developing novel and exciting live action Virtual Reality experiences and the cameras, pipeline and tools to produce them with Montreal based Felix & Paul Studios, widely recognized as pioneers in this field and for having produced the highest quality experiences to date.

Visual Effects

I am now a principal researcher in Internet Graphics Group of Microsoft Research Asia . I obtained my Ph.D. degree in Computer Graphics from Tsinghua University in 1999. My Ph.D. thesis is about hardware assisted volume rendering. I got my B.S. Degree and Master Degree in Computer Science from Zhejiang University in 1993 and 1996 respectively.

My research interests include appearance modeling and rendering, texture synthesis, and image based modeling and rendering. Specifically, my research concentrates on studying the underline principles of material light interaction and light transport, and developing efficient methods for appearance modeling and rendering. I am also interested in performance capturing and facial animation.

Marco Corbetta (born May 26, 1977) is a game programmer, notable for his work in as lead programmer of Far Cry and Crysis franchise. Corbetta also wrote the 3D engine known as Equinox, before his time at Prograph Research, where he is credited for Tsunami 2265 (2002) (distributed in the US by Got Game Entertainment).

Over 14 years of professional game development experience ranging from the initial development of CryEngine/ FarCry, to directing large groups of engineers across multiple disciplines, platforms and studios, including the successful delivery of several AAA titles considered technically excellent.

Lauren Carr joins the Department of Art and Design as an Assistant Professor in the Animation/Illustration program. She has worked professionally for Disney Feature Animation, Cinesite, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and Dreamworks Animation. Some of her film projects include Tangled, Meet the Robinsons, Bolt, Chicken Little, The ChubbChubbs, X-Men United, Rio, and Ice Age 4. Prof. Carr was a (DEL: the) character simulation technical director at Blue Sky Studios and, prior to coming to Montclair State University, had taught for the School of Visual Arts in the Department of Computer Art, Computer Animation & Visual Effects.

Computer Animation & Visual Effects.

Professor David Xu is tenure associate professor at Regent University, specializing in computer 3D animation and movie special effects. He got MFA Computer Graphics in 3D Animation from Pratt Institute in NY. He has served as a senior 3D animator in Sega, Japan; a senior CG special effector in Pacific Digital Image Inc., Hollywood; and as a professor of animation in several colleges and universities where he developed the 3D animation program and curriculum. He has been a committee member of the computer graphics organization Siggraph where he was recognized with an award for his work. He published the book Mastering Maya: The Special Effects Handbook invited by Shanghai People\\\'s Fine Arts Publishing House.

3D Animation and special effects, Christian-themed, 3D movies

Leonel Toledo recieved his Ph.D from Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey Campus Estado de México in 2014, where he currently is a full-time professor. From 2012 to 2014 he was an assistant professor and researcher. He has devoted most of his research work to crowd simulation and visualization optimization. He has worked at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center using general purpose graphics processors for high performance graphics. His thesis work was in Level of detail used to create varied animated crowds.

His research interests include crowd simulation, animation, visualization and high-performance computing.

Ramahan Faulk serves as an Art Director for InReal. A talented traditional and digital artist, Ramahan enjoys sculpting and designing new, original characters. He has contributed to work on feature films, video games and live shows as an artist. He most recently worked on the “Virtual Teresa Teng” character for Digital Domain, which was shown in front of a live audience of 16,000 fans in Hong Kong. While at DD, Ramahan also worked on the feature film, Maleficent. Prior to that, he worked at Lucasfilm in Singapore, Crytek in Germany, and Weta Digital in New Zealand. It was at Weta that Ramahan worked on the main CG character, Jake, for James Cameron’s film, Avatar. He also worked as a modeler on the Academy Award winning short produced by Moonbot Studios, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore. He created video game characters for Crysis 2, Heavenly Sword, NFL Street and Socom Navy Seals, and for the animated feature film from DNA, Ant Bully. While working at Reel FX in Dallas, he contributed to several commercial campaigns for Hasbro and other clients. Ramahan is a veteran of the United States Navy, where he served eight years as a Jet Engine Mechanic on Aircraft Carriers, and worked with the United States Marine Corps Helicopter Training Command as an aircrew/mechanic.

Video Games, Character Animation, 3D Modeling, Texturing, Visual Effects, Digital Sculpting, 3D Animation, Game Development, Facial Expressions

Dr. Ching Y. Suen is the Director of CENPARMI and the Concordia Chair on AI & Pattern Recognition. He received his Ph.D. degree from UBC (Vancouver) and his Master\\\'s degree from the University of Hong Kong. He has served as the Chairman of the Department of Computer Science and as the Associate Dean (Research) of the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science of Concordia University. Prof. Suen has served at numerous national and international professional societies as President, Vice-President, Governor, and Director. He has given 45 invited/keynote papers at conferences and 195 invited talks at various industries and academic institutions around the world. He has been the Principal Investigator or Consultant of 30 industrial projects. His research projects have been funded by the ENCS Faculty and the Distinguished Chair Programs at Concordia University, FCAR (Quebec), NSERC (Canada), the National Networks of Centres of Excellence (Canada), the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the industrial sectors in various countries, including Canada, France, Japan, Italy, and the United States. Dr. Suen has published 4 conference proceedings, 12 books and more than 495 papers, and many of them have been widely cited while the ideas in others have been applied in practical environments involving handwriting recognition, thinning methodologies, and multiple classifiers. Dr. Suen is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Gold Medal from the University of Bari (Italy 2012), the IAPR ICDAR Award (2005), the ITAC/NSERC national award (1992), and the \\\"Concordia Lifetime Research Achievement\\\" and \\\"Concordia Fellow\\\" Awards (2008 and 1998 respectively). He is a fellow of the IEEE (since 1986), IAPR (1994), and the Academy of Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada (1995). Currently, he is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal of Pattern Recognition and an Adviser or Associate Editor of 5 journals.

Computational linguistics Computer analysis and recognition of documents

Dr. Ines Boaventura graduate at Mathematics from Sao Paulo State University , UNESP, Brazil, master’s at Computer Science and Computational Mathematics and Ph.D at Electrical Engineering from University of Sao Paulo (USP). She has experience in Computer Science, focusing on Graphical Processing (Graphics), and acting on the following subjects: Biometrics, Image Processing, and Computer Vision. She is a full-time professor and head of the Department at Department of Computer Science and Statistics at UNESP, campus of Sao Jose do Rio Preto, Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 2011-2012 she was a visiting researcher at PRIP Laboratory –CSE –Michigan State University.

Biometrics, Image Processing, and Computer Vision

Yongjoon Lee is a senior engineer at Bungie, focusing on building Destiny's animation and action systems among others. He published numerous research papers at SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia as well as other conferences, until he graduated with a Ph.D degree from the University of Washington in 2010 and moved into video game industry full-time.

Animation

Dr. Ruck Thawonmas has been a Professor in the Department of Human and Computer Intelligence since its foundation in April, 2004. His work in artificial and computational intelligence has been widely recognized in a number of international academic journals, symposiums, and competitions.

Game AI, Games for Health, Virtual Worlds

Dr. Parberry received his PhD in 1984 from the University of Warwick in England. Twenty of his more than thirty years experience in academia are at the rank of Full Professor. He is author or coauthor of over 100 academic publications that include six books and over 75 articles (23 as sole author) in peer-reviewed journals, conferences, and workshops. Ian Parberry is a pioneer of academic game development education and research who began teaching game programming to undergraduates at UNT in 1993. The most famous alumnus of those classes is Jason West, co-founder of the Call of Duty franchise. Dr. Parberry's current research interests are clustered around game development, ranging from the procedural generation of game content to cognitive assessment of video gameplay using research methods from neuropsychology.

computer graphics, computer science education, data structures, design and analysis of algorithms, entertainment computing, fault-tolerant computing, game programming, game programming education, interconnection networks, load sharing, mathematical puzzles, mechatronics, packet routing, parallel computing, path planning, procedural content generation, philosophy of computing, randomized algorithms, real-time algorithms, robotics, software agents, sorting networks, video game cognitive assessment, and visualization of algorithms.

Angela Diamos has over 18 years of professional experience in the feature animation and live-action effects animation field. Angela has animated effects for Fantasia/2000, Tarzan, Hercules, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, The Emperor’s New Groove, Star Trek, Battlestar Gallactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Quantum Leap. Angela is now channeling her talent into teaching and her personal work. Having realized the potential in video imagery, Angela now explores the use of video and digital imagery as an art medium.

Fine Art & Studio Art

Dr. Xiaopeng Zhang is a professor and a supervisor of PhD candidates in Sino French Lab in Computer Science, Automation and Applied Mathematics (LIAMA), and in National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition (NLPR), Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences. .He received his Ph.D. majoring in Computer Graphics in the State key Laboratory of Computer Science, Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in February 1999. He worked as a Post-doc follow of Pattern Recognition and Intelligent systems in Lab. of Complex Systems and Intellignece Science, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences from March 1999 to March 2001.

Computer graphics, computer vison, digital geometry processing, and pattern recognition.

Kunihito Hoki,a Japanese chemist, computer scientist, and since 2010 Assistant Professor at the University of Electro-Communications. Kunihito Hoti received a D.Sc. in Chemistry from Tohoku University, and has been a research fellow at the University of Toronto as well as Tohoku University, where he then became Assistant Professor. As Shogi programmer, he is author of the strong Shogi program Bonanza.

Game Programming

I am passionate about reaching out to people with life-changing truth, through art, media, business and technology.Professionally, I create natural phenomena (fire, smoke, dust, fluids, rigid bodies, etc) that help sell that story in movies we watch and develop efficient scalable pipelines at Industrial Light and Magic, Lucasfilm. Some films I've worked on include: Pacific Rim, Marvel's The Avengers (Oscars Best VFX Nominee 2012, Transformers 3 (Oscars Best VFX Nominee 2011)

Vfx Programming Entrepreneurship Python Leadership Technology Computer Graphics Photography

Minhua Eunice Ma is Professor of Digital Media & Games in the School of Art, Design and Architecture at University of Huddersfield, and she is Director of Internationalisation and Acting Head of Department of Art & Communication. Professor Ma obtained her MSc in Computer Science from Newcastle University and PhD in Computer Science from Ulster University, and worked there as a Post-Doc Researcher on virtual reality games for stroke rehabilitation. She joined University of Derby as a Senior Lecturer in Computer Games Modelling and Animation in 2007 and was promoted to Reader in 2009. She was the Head of Academic Programmes at the Glasgow School of Art since 2010 and became a Professor of Computer Games Technology in 2013. She joined University of Huddersfield in September 2014. Professor Ma is a world-leading academic developing the emerging field of serious games. She has published widely in the fields of serious games for education, medicine and healthcare, Virtual and Augmented Reality and Natural Language Processing, in over 100 peer-reviewed publications, including 6 books on serious games with Springer. Eunice has received grants from RCUK, EU, NHS, NESTA, UK government, charities and a variety of other sources for her research on Virtual Reality and serious games for stroke rehabilitation, cystic fibrosis, autism, medical education and Holocaust education. As Director of Internationalisation, Professor Ma is responsible for leading the Internationalisation agenda for the School, contributing to the development and implementation of School Strategy in general and the Internationalisation strategy in particular, establishment and development of international teaching and research collaborations, bidding for funding and directing cultural change, coordinating international admissions and being responsible for international student experience in the School.

Digital games technology, serious games for education, medicine, and healthcare, 3D visualisation, medical visualisation, Virtual reality, Augmented Reality, HCI, embodied virtual humans, haptic interface, natural interface, Natural Language Processing, Computational Semantics

Yoshihiro Okada is currently designated as a Professor in the Kyushu University , Japan

3D Graphics and Computer Animation, Human Interface and Virtual Reality, Network Collaboration

Edmond Prakash is an Academic, Author, Editor and Researcher. He was appointed Professor in Computer Games Technology in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at University of Bedfordshire in 2010. As a visual computing expert, Edmond's research focus is on exploring the applications of visual computing across an unusually wide range of disciplines including engineering, business, science, medicine as well as in entertainment computing. He has worked on the design and implementation of walkthroughs of proposed structures, such as buildings, automobiles, and humans. In the process he has developed new algorithms for automatically generating object hierarchies, cinematic quality rendering, volume rendering, parallel computation, human modelling and animation for virtual environments. He has more than two hundred publications in academic journals, conferences and books and has worked extensively with companies including IBM, Microsoft, JP Morgan, and Silicon Graphics. He has also undertaken sponsored research funded by EPSRC and the industry. His first academic appointment was at the Supercomputer Centre at Indian Institute of Science as a Senior Scientific Officer. Subsequently, he was an Assistant Professor at Nanyang TechnologicalUniversity, Singapore, then as a Reader at Manchester Metropolitan University and now at University of Bedfordshire. He has an extensive international collaboration and has held visiting positions at NCSA, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA; CVC at State University of New York-Stony Brook, USA; Touch Lab, MIT, USA and Beijing Normal University, China.

Games Technology, Computer Graphics, Computer Animation, Interactive Digital Media, Computer Programming, Software Engineering

Marco Rocchetti is a registered professional Mechanical Engineer in Italy inscribed in the register of Engineers of Ancona. He is a 2006 graduate from the Università Politecnica delle Marche where he attained his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering with a specialization in energy and thesis entitled “Wind analysis in complex orography systems.” In 2007 he attend at Polytechnic of Milan and IUAV University of Venice for the RIDEF postgraduate Master Courses focused on “energy efficiency, renewable energy, energy context and decentralized planning.” Marco is a Certified Energy Manager (CEM) in Italy and has experience in various sectors of plant engineering, has previously worked for an ESCO and is expert in Energy Auditing development and technical economic feasibility studies for energy saving, especially in CHP and MCHP systems. He has also taught energy management courses at the Politecnico di Milano and has served as co-coordinator in research projects involving the prototyping of renewable technologies and patent drafting. His is competent in mechanical design with 3D CAD and Pro-Engineering.

Multimedia Technologies with Applications Health, Transportation and Entertainment, Media Art and Technology, Inclusive Digital Design for Multimedia

Zhigeng Pan received the bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Computer Science Department at Nanjing University in 1987 and 1990, respectively, and the PhD degree in 1993 from Zhejiang University. He is the director of Digital Media and HCI Research Center in Hangzhou Normal University, and his research interests include HCI virtual reality, multimedia, and digital entertainment. He is the editor-in-chief of Transactions on Edutainment

Human Computer Interaction, Computer Graphics, Image Processing, Virtual Reality,Animation, Multimedia, Computer Animation,3D visualization, Rendering

Dr. Benjamin Kenwright (MEng,PhD,CEng,SFHEA,FBCS,SMIEEE) is the programme leader for the undergraduate and postgraduate games technology degrees at Edinburgh Napier University. He studied at Liverpool and Newcastle University before moving on to work in the game industry and eventually joining the Department of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University in February 2014.

His research interests include real-time systems, evolutionary computation, and interactive animation

Matthew Johnson has been a Professor of Graphic Design at the University of South Alabama for eleven years and a designer for nearly 20. He holds an MFA in Graphic Design from Louisiana Tech University, and is an internationally awarded designer, and published children’s book author and illustrator. Matthew’s experiences in the field, as well as the classroom, allow him to present confidently regarding topics of Graphic Design and computer arts. He lives for visual gratification and the ability to create. His world revolves around visual communication and the satisfaction that comes from a piece of work well done.

Graphic Design

Kyoung Lee Swearingen has worked in the film industry for the last decade on a variety of features and shorts including Ratatouille, Walle, UP, Cars 2, Toy Story 3, Brave, Monsters University, Presto, La Luna, The Blue Umbrella, Mater’s Tall Tales, Partly Cloudy, Ant Bully, and the Jimmy Neutron TV series. As a Technical Director of Lighting at Pixar Animation Studios, Kyoung focused on visual story-telling, mood, and look development through lighting. Her work has claimed numerous awards from the Academy Awards, BAFTA, Visual Effects Society, The American Film Institute, as well as many others. Kyoung received her M.F.A. from The Ohio State University, B. F. A from Savannah College of Art and Design, and B.S. in Chemistry from Sungshin Women\\\'s University in Seoul, Korea. Furthermore, she has taught at various institutes and universities throughout Korea and the United States, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Arts and Technology at UT Dallas.

Animation, Visual Effects

Sunil Thankamushy is a US based seventeen-year video game industry professional who was part of core teams that developed highly acclaimed, and successful video game franchises such as CALL OF DUTY™: FINEST HOUR™, MEDAL OF HONOR™ etc. A graduate of UCLA, Sunil was hired by DreamWorks Interactive studio as one of its first animators. After seven years of working at DreamWorks Interactive, and later Electronic Arts, he joined hands with other game veterans to co-found Spark Unlimited™, a game studio based in Los Angeles. Five years after its inception, Spark has a long body of work that includes helping launch the now multi-billion dollar CALL OF DUTY™: FINEST HOUR™ franchise, TURNING POINT™: FALL OF LIBERTY™, LEGENDARY™, LOST PLANET 3™ etc. Blending technology and animation has been a passion for Sunil. In every stage of his career, he has successfully created animation paradigms and technology to improve the level of immersion in the virtual environment of the game, and heighten the experience of realism for the player. After shipping more than 8 video game titles, Sunil decided to change his life direction and set up DEEPBLUE Worlds Inc, a knowledge-based games studio to make innovative products for children. His most current product is an Augmented Reality based mobile app called, DINO ON MY DESK. Sunil recently joined Mt.San Antonio College, Walnut, California. as professor of gaming and animation. He lives with his wife Diana, and 2 children in beautiful San Diego, California.

Animation, Game Design & Develpment

Will Kim is a Tenured Associate Professor of Art at Riverside City College and a Los Angeles based artist. Kim is a founder and director of RCC Animation Showcase. Kim received an M.F.A. in Animation from UCLA and a BFA in Character Animation from CalArts (California Institute of the Arts). Before teaching at RCC, he also taught at CalArts, Community Arts Partnership and Sitka Fine Arts Camp as a media art instructor. Kim’s work has showed in over 100 international film/animation festivals and auditoriums including Directors Guild of America (DGA) Theater, Academy of TV Arts and Sciences Theater, The Getty Center, The USC Arts and Humanities Initiative, and Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego. As an animation supervisor and a lead animator, Will has participated in various feature and short live action films that were officially selected for the New York Times’ Critic’s Pick, the United Nations’ climate change conference (Framework Convention), Los Angeles Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, and Cannes.

Film-making, Animation

Since March 2015, I perform researches in Visual Computing in Innsbruck as post-doctoral researcher. Previously, I received a Sc.B. in Computer Science from University Claude Bernard Lyon 1, a M.S. in Computer Science with Honors from INSA-Lyon, University Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and Ecole Centrale of Lyon, France. In 2012, I obtained a phd degree from University of Bordeaux (France) with summa cum laude, without supervisors. In addition, I was teaching assistant at University of Bordeaux from 2009 to 2011. I was temporary teaching assistant at ENSEIRB engineering school. I was visiting researcher at University of Porto in Portugal from March to May 2013 and IT Porto. In 2013, I joined Ben Gurion University of the Negev (in Israel) and Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology - Shandong University (in China) as post-doctoral researcher. I'm member of ACM, ACM SIGGRAPH since 2009, and Eurographics from 2009 to 2012. As PhD student, I was quadruple-time single-author of peer-reviewed publications, including three contributions at ACM Siggraph level. More importantly, I was honored to serve our community as reviewer for a large scope of well-established interactive computing conferences and journals like Eurographics, Graphics Interface, ISMAR, SIGGRAPH, VR, CHI, PGV, SUI, GraphiCon 2013, SIGGRAPH ASIA, TOG, PLOS ONE, Optica Applicata, TVCG, CVPR and so long.

My research interests lie in the field of Computer Graphics, Computer Vision and Digital Fabrication; in particular, I devote efforts on techniques for video-based performance capture, mesh tracking, character rigging and skinning, mocap, geometric modeling, mesh deformation, captured animation, non-rigid time-varying scenes reusing, and non-photorealistic animation. My research work is dedicated to develop vision-based graphics toward 3D cinematography, and designed to bring easy-to-use tools.