Game Designing & Development

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

Zerrin Yumak is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Information and Computing Sciences at Utrecht University, Netherland in the Virtual Worlds division. She obtained her PhD in Computer Science at MIRALab, University of Geneva and PhD thesis supervisor is Prof. Nadia Magnenat Thalmann. She did a post-doc at the HCI Group in EPFL, Switzerland. She also worked as a research fellow at the Institute for Media Innovation, Nanyang Technological University for more than two years. She was Editorial Assistant of Journal: Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds from May 2006 to March 2011 during MIRALab-University of Geneva, Switzerland. Her research is on believable virtual humans and social robots. She works on computational models of social and emotional behaviors and expressive verbal and non-verbal behaviour generation combining methods from computer graphics/animation, human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence.

Her research is interdisciplinary with applications in computer graphics, (applied) games, virtual reality and human-computer interfaces.

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.

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.