Steven is a project manager and journalist for IDG. and contributes to Ars Technica and Fast Company. He is the president of non-profit Grassroots Developer Education, Inc. co-organizes the Boston Google Developer Group, both provide free sessions introducing new technology and skill-based learning for designers and developers. He has worked to bring AR and VR to the developer community since I/O 2014. Twitter: @stevep2007

Scott is a final-year PhD candidate working on learning and education in virtual reality in the Fluid Interfaces research group at the MIT Media Lab. His interest in rapid-prototyping interactions in software has made tool development both a byproduct and a focus of his research. He is currently finishing his thesis and his team is preparing to release an open-source toolkit for VR research (stay tuned!) Twitter: @scottgwald

Misha is a PhD candidate working on natural locomotion techniques for multiperson experiences in virtual reality in the Fluid Interfaces group at the MIT Media Lab. Her inspiration comes from the paragons of virtual reality like the Holodeck from Star Trek or William Gibson's cyberspace. She is looking forward to a VR future with Sword Art Online's NerveGear or Ernest Cline's robotic arms and doing her part to help build it. Twitter: @pixelscanner

A. Egon Cholakian PhD is a Visiting Researcher (National Security) at Harvard University, and a retired Physicist / Attorney. His expertise is recognised within the international Dual-use Technology (Surveillance) arena, and he is involved in developing VR / AR Technology for National Security training purposes. He has spoken on the topic of Dual-use technology at Google and Facebook during 2016-17.

Adina Shanholtz (aka the Fey Technologist) is a Technical Evangelist for Microsoft. She graduated from Oberlin College with a double major in Computer Science and East Asian Studies. She has a passion for Game Development, Internet of Things/Wearable technology, and empowering others through programming. In her spare time Adina likes to knit, practice her Japanese, and perform hoop and poi circus arts.

Expertise: C#, Node.js/JavaScript, Azure, Game Development, AR/VR/MR, Cognitive Services, Chat Bots, .NET Core,

Microsoft

Expertise: C#, Kotlin, Swift, JavaScript, Xamarin, Unity, Cognitive Services, AR, Scalability

Co-founder and CEO, Spatial. Anand has a passion for 3D user interfaces and founded BumpTop after his Masters thesis became a viral hit, leading him to present it in a TED Talk.  BumpTop was a pioneering 3D, multi-touch, physics desktop interface inspired by real desks.  It was acquired by Google in 2010.  At Google, Anand worked on early versions of Android and Google Photos.

Alicia is a graduate student at Boston University and data analyst at Amazon Alexa. She is a strong believer in the power of virtual reality to create awakening experiences and bolster human intelligence. Her work (www.aliciahong.com) at BU explores the mind-and-body relationship with different media platforms in VR using biometric devices. She enjoys data science. Her long-term vision in life is to explore and define a spiritual language in daily social dynamics. 

During his tenure at Cubic Andre has served in various technical leadership roles that range from Studio Manager to Systems Engineering Manager. In these roles Andre has mastered several different facets of the training product continuum from game based learning to large gunnery trainers to marksmanship simulators. Prior to joining Cubic, Andre held an engineering position at L-3 Link developing flight simulators. A native of Florida currently residing in Winter Park, Andre holds an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Central Florida and also a master’s degree in Enterprise Systems Engineering from University Central San Diego.

Arpit is an experienced product manager, marketer, and a leader with experience in launching successful software products in the healthcare, advertising and ecommerce industries. He has a passion for getting things done and has organized several 5k road races and TEDxBeaconStreet (the largest TEDx conference). Twitter: @arpitgupta

Angela Haddad is a VR Creative Director and artist based in Los Angeles. She is the creator of One Third Blue - a VR art studio creating marketing campaigns and fan-facing stories, serving brands in lifestyle, fashion, and beauty. One Third Blue productions begin with watercolor and brushes, and are animated for 360° VR. The concept was born out of the desire to maintain an authentic hand-painted artistic visual within a medium heavily saturated with 3D renders, while enhancing analog, 2D watercolor art & animation with an unexpected technology. Angela’s portfolio includes Marie Claire, Lionsgate, LiveNation, AlJazeera, and more. She is one of ten global Microsoft Creator Council members for 3D & mixed reality products, a twice Oculus Launchpad Fellow, and has co-authored an IEEE op-ed. She has been featured at SXSW, in Buzzfeed, VRScout and UploadVR, and has spoken at SAG-AFTRA, UCLA Anderson, VRLA, NAB, and more. Angela is a UC Berkeley alumna. Prior to One Third Blue, she worked across the spectrum of VR on animation and stereoscopic live action, leading projects in production, post-production, direction, and UI/UX design.

Dubbed “Björk of Virtual Worlds” by the press, Barbara is a video-game-art-director-turned-actor perfectly bridging interactive and dramatic principles. As founder and Creative Director of entreZ XR Entertainment, an award-winning XR content creation studio developing the entertainment formats of the future, she is dedicated to bring drama to VR. Barbara holds a PhD in game studies, is board-member of VR Days Europe, consults and speaks at conferences worldwide.

Bob is at Case Western Reserve University, home of www.case.edu/ic, as Director CWRU LaunchNet, helping students and alum analyze and bring ideas to market.  He has decades of IT, startup and growth experience.  He is also an Entrepreneur in Residence at YBI.org, Jumpstartinc.org; assisting tech related companies www.enyxstudios.com, www.bioflightvr.com, 360alley.com and photonicstudio.com

Burc Oral, Ph.D., is a long time technologist who started his journey punching cards to solve geophysics problems.  Nowadays, he works on mobile architectures at the Staples Velocity Lab, in Cambridge, MA. 

Carl Dungca is Senior Technical Designer at Cubic Advanced Learning Solutions (http://www.cubic.com), developing immersive training simulations for the US Navy. Prior to that, he was a Designer and Producer in the commercial video game industry, working on projects for various platforms--several utilizing nontraditional input and feedback systems--at companies including Electronic Arts and TOKYOPOP. He holds an MS in Interactive Entertainment from University of Central Florida’s FIEA and a BA in Digital Media, also from UCF. He is an active proponent within Orlando’s game development scene and serves as an Advisor to Indienomicon’s monthly games showcase (http://www.indienomicon.com), now in its fourth year.

Chris has been working in computer graphics and high performance computing for 25 years.  In that time he has worked in both graphics HW and SW on projects ranging from aircraft cockpit displays to supercomputer visualization to cell phone and mobile VR graphics.   For the last ten years Chris has been working on GPU graphics for Qualcomm’s mobile processors, overseeing graphics driver development and standards from Qualcomm’s Boxborough office.

Cindy is a multimedia artist and creative coder.  She authored several webVR storytelling tools as a fellow at the MIT Open Doc including VRDoodler, a web-based 3D drawing program that renders in virtual and augmented reality. At the MIT Civic Media Lab on the Media Cloud team, her role as web developer is helping to build the next generation of web-based tools for journalists and researchers

Connor does business development on behalf of start-up technology companies looking to solve tough social problems, and has over four years of experience working internationally in the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. He graduated from Wesleyan University with honors in 2012 and likes VR, rockclimbing, and Washington DC Capitals ice hockey.

David is a game developer at Mapbox, where he’s navigating uncharted territory in the mixed reality game space. His passion for video game design and newfound love for geospatial data inspire him to devise unique gameplay mechanics for a rapidly changing industry.

Prior to joining Mapbox, David created games and personality for Sphero’s Star Wars BB-8 droid. He’s also developed games for Disney, Activision, LucasArts, and Remedy Entertainment. When David isn’t working, he can often be found fishing Colorado’s beautiful rivers or hiking its plentiful mountains.

Denis Grigor, Forge Developer Advocate. Denis is part of the Autodesk Forge Partner Development team and the Autodesk Developer Network. Most of the time, he works for the media and entertainment workgroup supporting Autodesk APIs that are used by the film, game and visualization industries. He has more recently started to explore the 3D aspects of the web through WebGL, Three.js, and other viewing technologies, including the Autodesk Forge Viewer. He has been exploring aspects of controlling the movement of objects within the Forge viewer for purposes of mimicking a robotic arm.

Diane is a Computer Scientist and serial Edtech entrepreneur. She has been a mentor and/or judge at HackMIT, HackHarvard, Simmons Shark Hack, MIT Hacking Medicine Grand Hack, the Harvard WECode Hackathon, Harvard Astropreneurshipand Space Medicine, MIT Mobile VR Development Challenge. She is an alumna of MIT and Harvard. Twitter: @dianeew

Divyanshu Varshney is the founder and CEO of Spiro Studios, a young company on a mission to provide physical rehabilitation services to the doorsteps inorder to help people get better in a fast, easy and fun way. He is also the founder and president of  VR | AR | MR, India's first and now largest Virtual and Augmented Reality Community. Divyanshu holds a Bachelors in Information Technology from Manav Rachna College of Engineering. Twitter: @Div_Varshney

Don Stein started an investment fund and angellist syndicate with Larry Braitman (www.braitman.co) and Gil Penchina (www.flight.vc) in 2016 and built this into the most financially backed AR/VR syndicate on Angellist (https://angel.co/virtual-reality-investments/syndicate). They've completed 11 investments, and also co-host monthly AR events with Shasta Ventures and Betaworks.

Gavin Bauman graduated from Xavier University of Louisiana (class of 2014) with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. Upon graduation, he joined Microsoft as a Technical Evangelist in the Boston area. He’s given numerous technical and professional development talks, speaking at local events such as Boston Code Camp as well as national events like PAX East. Gavin has also worked with numerous schools, meetup groups, and technical professionals in the community. When he’s not punishing filthy plebians in Mortal Kombat, he’s focusing on leveraging the Azure cloud platform to develop cross-platform mobile apps and media solutions.

Expertise: C#, Xamarin, Visual Studio, Azure, Unity

Guillermo is a PhD student and Research Assistant at Fluid Interfaces Group, MIT Media Lab.  Guillermo’s work focuses on the back and forth between the physical and the virtual by exploring embodiment and experiences that address the augmentation of ourselves as technology is integrated into our lives. This is done by assessing the emotional response from the body while interacting with future technologies as they become a reality. His current research explorations use real body characteristics, including electrodermal activity, electromyography, and electrocardiography, as low fidelity indicators of our current state.

Heather Davies is a digital content creator specializing in creating juicy content for lean startups, including her own online publishing brand that she launched at 19, while still in college. She's an expert in generating grassroots fandoms and followings for independent media brands and acts professionally in both a content creation and consulting role. Heather graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 2016 with an undergraduate degree in English Literature and additional experience in editing, formatting, and graphic design. 

Ildar is an artist and educator from Saint Petersburg, his work revolves around designing new modes of digital production, consumption and governance. These practices take form of educational programs, installations, speculative design concepts, performances. Last year Ildar joined the team on the first day of the hackathon to wrangle the Vive interference problems.

Jacob is a 2nd year MBA Student at MIT Sloan and Founder/Co-President of VR at MIT, MIT's VR/AR Community. He previously worked at BuzzFeed and Samsung Global Innovation Center, and earned his undergraduate degree at Princeton University. 

Jacob is on the Developer Engagement team, working with developers building on Unity with our Maps for Unity SDK. Based out of our DC office, he helps developers use Mapbox to create new and interesting games and AR/VR experiences.

Before joining Mapbox, Jacob worked in various aspects of the mobile industry from community building to game design and monetization. Prior to that, he was marine biologist conducting research in locations from Antarctica to the Bermuda Triangle. Jacob received a BS in Ecology from the University of California San Diego.

Jasmine is a graduate student researcher at the MIT Media Lab and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She is the current president on the GSD’s AR/VR Club and is also the designated Augmented Reality specialist at the Harvard i-Lab. This last summer, she interned in the Magic Lab with one of our sponsors, PlaystationVR, under Richard Marks.

Jason Jerald has been creating virtual reality systems and applications for approximately 20 years. His work has been featured on ABC’s Shark Tank and the Discovery Channel, in the New York Times, and on the cover of the MIT Press Journal Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments. He currently serves in multiple technical and leadership roles, have built and led teams as large as ~300 individuals, and regularly speak at conferences and other programs. Jerald hold over 20 publications and patents in the areas of virtual/augmented reality, human-computer interaction, and computer graphics.

"The VR Book: Human-Centered Design for Virtual Reality" published by ACM Books and Morgan & Claypool Publisher is the #1 best seller at SIGGRAPH 2015 and continues to be the #1 selling book out of approximately 1000 books published by Morgan & Claypool Publishers.

Specialties: virtual & augmented reality; strategic advice & technical business planning; software development & hardware integration; human-computer interaction; perception, immersion, & presence; 3D computer graphics & real-time rendering; virtual humans; user studies; team leadership & mentoring; seminar speaking and training.

Jeff Bail is an organizer of the Boston VR meetup and has seen it grow to over 3,000 members and spawn the brand new Boston AR meetup. He has worked as a VR software engineer in military simulation systems at local defense contractor VT MÄK. His current interests are in medical applications of VR.

Jeffrey Jacobson, Ph.D. is a 25 year expert in Virtual and Mixed Reality, well published in the scientific literature on VR for education. His past and current consulting on immersive media spans several industries, and he is one of the key leaders of BostonVR.

Jenny Guo Co-founder at LumiereVR. Jenny is a cross boarder VR producer and entrepreneur. Her company LumiereVR won the top 10 VR projects 2016 in China, and it was one of the selected companies to be in Vive X accelerator.   Jenny has spoken in multiple conferences across the sea including VREdEx, TEDxBohaibay, and JP Morgan Tech Exchange. Jenny studied in Electronic Art and Political Studies at Bard College, and later studied creative producing at Columbia University. She was also the finalist and ambassador at Draper University.

Co-founder and CPO, Spatial. Jinha developed award-winning 3D interfaces at MIT, Microsoft, Samsung, and showed them in his TED Talk. He also designed the first prototype of Bradley, an innovative tactile wristwatch for the blind, one of the most successful kickstarter projects in 2013. He was named as one of the top 35 innovators under 35, and 32 greatest living designers.

Johan is a Mixed Reality Applications Engineer at Wayfair. His work aims to help people visualize and realize their ideas for the home. He’s helped release two Augmented Reality mobile applications for both iOS using ARKit and Android using Tango.

John is an entrepreneur and founder of 42 Equals Inc., virtual & augmented reality enthusiast, and all around nerd. John’s vision for Boston is that VR/AR is still the wild west of tech, and Boston can strong hold the reputation as the premier region companies seek to build and market VR/AR products and services.  John wants the world to know Boston is the home of VR/AR when it comes to marketing, legal, advertising and consulting firms. John wants Boston to hold the statistic for the most VR/AR designers/developers per capita coming out of Boston’s magnificent universities and drawing talent from around the world. Help Boston see John’s vision. 

Jonathan is the owner of Parkerhill Reality Labs, an immersive media indie studio. Previously he founded several successful start-ups, and held technical leadership positions at major corporations. He has a master's degree from the MIT Media Lab, authored several books including "Augmented Reality for Developers" and "Unity Virtual Reality Projects". Jonathan is a co-founder of Reality Virtually Hackathon and Mentor Team lead. Twitter:@linojon

Kate is a mixed reality practitioner / researcher and developer at Boston Children’s Hospital. Her research focuses on how VR can reduce narcotic use prior to procedures and decrease anxiety in pediatric patients. She is also the co-founder of Hacking Pediatrics an annual pediatric healthcare hackathon

Kevin Vandecar, Forge Developer Advocate. Kevin is part of the Autodesk Forge Partner Development team and the Autodesk Developer Network. He is manager for the media and entertainment workgroup supporting Autodesk APIs that are used by the film, game and visualization industries. He has more recently started to explore the 3D aspects of the web through WebGL, Three.js, and other viewing technologies, including the Autodesk Forge Viewer. Recently WebVR has become a solid solution for VR experiences, and has been exploring those solutions.

Kunal is an Android Developer at Wayfair. He has built AR experiences on Android using Tango and ARCore. He is working on features like `3D View in Room` at Wayfair, allowing users to easily try out furniture in their space. Kunal holds Master's in Computer Science from University of Illinois at Chicago.

Lance McCarthy, a Boston-based developer, is a Microsoft Windows Development MVP, specializing in; UWP (PC and Mobile), Xamarin, Hololens and Mixed Reality. During the day he is a Senior Technical Support Engineer for Progress Software supporting XAML and Xamarin technologies.

Expertise: C#, XAML, Xamarin, Visual Studio, Unity 3D, Mixed Reality / HoloLens, 3D Modeling for Mixed Reality: Maya, Blender (.gITF, FBX), UI Design

Laszlo is leading the Web Platform team for Samsung in the USA. He is a veteran moving the web forward with over 15 years of experience. Lately he has been focusing on VR/AR, payment and privacy on the web.

Maria is a Grammy-nominated sound engineer at Peerless Mastering in Boston,and is skilled in  architectural CAD.  She has mastered records of many genres and restored many acclaimed historical recordings. She excited to bring a new technology medium to the fore by attracting multi-disciplined creative talents. Outside of work, she re-watches episodes of Star Trek DS9 and studies classical piano at New England Conservatory.  She earned her BA from Boston University.

Mark is an MBA student at Harvard Business School and co-president of the Harvard AR/VR Club.  Along with virtual and augmented reality Mark is passionate about education and healthcare and is currently building molecular visualization software for virtual reality. Mark earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard and has previous experience in finance.

As a Creative Technologist at Hill Holliday, Max continues to explore new and emerging technologies, and evolve the digital work of the agency across all mediums. In his spare time, he can be found exploring the outdoors, target shooting, and playing video games on his PC. For this event, Max has helped spearhead the creative direction, website and Hill Hollidays involvement in this hackathon. Twitter: @maxxgeorgem

Marta is the founder of Garage Stories, where content creators explore endless VR|AR storytelling possibilities. She runs FilmPitch, a film incubator that helps filmmakers design Transmedia Strategies and get funding for their projects, and mentors at Imagine Creativity Center, a program that generates disruptive ideas to solve global challenges.

Mischa curates www.xr.design, a collection of VR and AR interaction design patterns. He's also a designer at Spatial, an AR company. He can help with questions related to 3D interaction design, ARKit, Unity prototyping, 3D modeling, and presentation design.

I’m a graduate researcher and student at the integrated innovation institute under the College of Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University. My current interests are in astrophysics (did physics15 at Stanford) and image processing with the goal of working on cutting edge technologies like adaptive optics that have made a big difference to scientific and industrial applications. I have design and software development experience using Unity for making various AR/VR and Mixed reality experiences. I have also hacked with devices such as Hololens, Gear Vr, Mobile phones. Also interested in immersive experiences for education and training. 

I like organising, attending and mentoring hackathons primarily because of the rapid convergence of ideas towards solving a problem, along with co-evolving a narrative about the impact of the solution.

I am a Studio Director with an extensive background in video game development that has worked in the video game, movie industry and government space for over fifteen years. I pride myself with my ability to finalize and ship products with a forward leaning freshness. I have worked and managed entire game, product and project productions of Engineers, Artists, Designers and Production from initial vision, concept, pre-production, design, R&D, 2D and 3D art creation, outsourcing, engineering, to the implementation of these assets and visions into the final production release.

Specialties and focus: Studio management, Art management, Design management, Production management, 2D and 3D art, animation, animation pipelines and motion capture. Software specialties include Maya, 3ds Max, Motionbuilder, Unity, Unreal, Photoshop and the Adobe master collection. https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickcarteraustin/

Senior Technical Evangelist, Microsoft

Nick Landry (@ActiveNick) is a mobility pioneer and former entrepreneur specializing in cross-platform mobile app development for Windows, iOS and Android devices. Nick works at Microsoft as a Senior Technical Evangelist in the New York Metro area. He spent most his career in IT consulting, software and services companies across various technical and business roles, designing, building, managing and selling innovative software products and solutions for the world’s top brands and Fortune 500 companies.

Known for his dynamic and engaging style, he is a frequent speaker at major software development conferences worldwide, was a 10-year Microsoft MVP awarded on Windows Phone Development, and a Nokia Developer Ambassador & Champion. With over 24 years of professional experience, Nick is a certified developer and software architect by trade and specializes in Cross-Platform Mobility, Computer Speech & Bots, IoT, Cloud, GIS and Mobile Game Development. He is an active blogger, occasional author, avid gamer, loving husband and proud father.

Blog: http://AgeofMobility.com – GitHub: http://github.com/activenick

Expertise: HoloToolkit for Unity, C#, UWP, Azure, Windows Speech SDK, Bot Framework

Nigel Williams was previously a graphics driver software engineer for the Adreno GPU, in the Snapdragon SoC, at Qualcomm. He worked on both the OpenGL ES and Vulkan APIs with a focus on the GearVR and Daydream mobile VR platforms. Currently, he has relocated to London, UK, where he is about to begin a new chapter in his career.

Praveen has over 15 years software engineering industry experience in designing and implementing high-performance distributed software systems in various programming languages. Praveen is a hackathon “geek” ready to join a team, and frequently a contributor to a winning team. He mentors young developers and enjoys conversation about technology past/present/future. Praveen holds Masters in Information Technology and Computer Science from Syracuse University. Twitter: @Paravamu

Qi graduated from Harvard Graduate School of Design with a Master degree in Design Studies. He worked as an AR/VR specialist at Harvard Innovation Labs, providing VR development training and support to student entrepreneurs working in AR/VR domains. He is also a co-founder of the Harvard AR/VR Student Alliance, a university-wide student group officially recognized by the University.

At Qualcomm, Sam designs VR/AR features utilized by app and platform developers in the mobile space. He works with industry leaders to define interface specifications and best practices. Prior to Qualcomm Sam has worked on graphics technology at ATI and AMD. He holds a masters in Computer Science from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Sami Ramly is a VR/AR Product Lead, currently the VR Product Management Lead at Wevr (2 out of 10 Best VR products of 2016 according to TechCrunch). Previously, he worked in Product on 3D Printing & 3D Scanning at Microsoft, where he shipped Microsoft's first 3D Scan app for Windows 10. Sami is a VR/AR Mentor at Stanford, UCLA, USC, SIGGRAPH and others. He sits on the VR Advisory Board of UCLAx’s Product Management Program and the Advisory Board of Rabbit Hole VR, Stanford's VR/AR maker community, featured in Business Insider as a place where “the next big thing in VR could come”.

Sandra Rodriguez PhD, is a creative director as well as a sociologist of new media technology. As a filmmaker, she has directed, written and produced award winning documentary films (long and shorts), broadcasted and exhibited internationally, before pushing creation into the interactive realm. In 2015, she was author and director (episode 05) of the acclaimed interactive webseries Do Not Track, a personalized exploration of data in the new web economy (Brett Gaylor, Upian, ARTE, NFB, BR – Peabody 2016). Today, she heads the Creative Reality Lab at EyeSteelFilm, an Emmy awarded company based in Montreal, where she explores the future of immersive and interactive documentary (VR, webdocs, installations). She has acted as comlumnist, public speaker and consultant on UX design, VR production and interactive media. A Visiting Scholar and a Lecturer at the MIT Open Doc Lab, she also teaches MIT’s first course in Virtual Reality and Immersive Media Production (in partnership with Oculus NextGen – www.hackingvr.mit.edu). She has written a book, articles and papers on new media, impact and networked cultures, and remains fascinated by the platforms tools through which we share our stories.

Serena is a product manager at Google, where she works on augmented reality. In particular, Serena recently participated in the launch of Google's ARCore, a developer preview of an SDK for building AR experiences on Android devices. Before joining the AR team at Google, Serena studied computer science with a focus on robotics and human-robot interaction at Harvard.

VR Evangelist, HP, Inc. Top Silicon Valley Engineer and Tech Community Leader.  Shannon works in the CTO Office of HP and is their VR Evangelist, guiding vision both internally and externally.  He has over 20 years’ experience as an engineer in Silicon Valley at places like Apple, Microsoft, Macromedia and now, HP. Organizer of VRCamp at Burning Man, Silicon Valley WebGL Meetup (largest in the world), co-organizer of Silicon Valley AR Meetup, Organizer of Mars Home Planet Meetup. Chairman of the W3C Declarative WebVR Community. Member of the IEEE Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Working Group and the Khronos OpenXR Working Group.

Steve is the Director of Technology at Hill Holliday. He and his group imagine, and bring to life, cutting-edge digital experiences on behalf of all of the agency’s clients. Outside of agency life, Steve manages DownloadBoston.com, a local movement to increase the awareness of Boston-based startups.  And in 2015 he co-founded Flutter (http://experienceflutter.com), an online platform dedicated to helping charities raise money by partnering them up with local sponsors to create amazing experience giveaways.

Victoria is an MBA student at MIT Sloan and is passionate about product strategy around emerging technologies. She is part of VR@MIT and The Future of People Conference. She recently worked with Rendever, a MIT startup that brings virtual reality to older adults to improve the negative effects of aging. Previously, she was also at Microsoft and Boston Scientific and earned her undergraduate degree from Boston University.

Vinny DaSilva is a Developer Evangelist for the Vuforia platform. Vinny is passionate about creating AR/VR experiences in Unity. Before joining Vuforia, Vinny was a consultant working with a diverse set of clients in industries such as medical devices, financial services, startups, and many more. In a previous life, Vinny spent over ten years as an engineer working in the life-sciences industry. In his current role, Vinny focuses on helping developers throughout the world create great Augmented Reality experiences. Twitter: @vad710

CEO, Mind Fusion VR. Purchasing his first computer at age 16 with his own money rather than his first car, Wade Stoddard's passion for technology started at a very young age. Through the years of company positions and various IT titles Wade has grown to understand the important role technology plays in our lives. After the release of VR consumer products in 2016 Wade started a VR events company in Phoenix, AZ. While his company was hosting VR events it became apparent that using VR for training would be vastly more immersive than current computer based solutions. In 2017 Wade started Mind Fusion VR and has great plans to train individuals in a more engaging way.

 I am a software engineer at Samsung Research America working on Samsung Internet. I mainly work on WebVR on the browser side and on the front-end side. I have also done some marker based AR on the web.

Luna is an MBA student from Harvard Business School and founder of Harvard VR/AR Club. She has worked as a VR/AR-focused investor at Rothenberg Ventures and is now starting a VR creative house for memory sharing. Twitter: @yuany44

Abdelrahman “Abdo” Mahmoud is the Product Manager for Affectiva, where he merges his understanding of the science behind Affectiva’s emotion sensing technology with the device-based SDKs and cloud APIs. He has worked both on science and engineering teams, which gives him great insights into how Affectiva’s emotion AI technology works.

VP Tech Ops, Cinetrics

Albert Putnam maintains expertise in physical world sensing, networking and cloud, and consults about how to take data and analytics from the edge to actions. He has worked in design, research, production and project management - at home and abroad - on site and in house - for Cimetrics, OEMs and academia.

Amanda Theinert is an Assistant Professor at the Becker College School of Design and Technology where she teaches classes in art and design as well as virtual and mixed reality. She holds a BA in Game Design and an MFA in Computer Art. She enjoys the creative process, brainstorming ideas, petting cats, and exploring new technology.

Amedeo is the founder and lead developer of Simmetri (http://simmetri.com), an engine and creative platform for building interactive art for screens, projections and VR. He is also a co-founder of iZotope, a company specializing in audio processing and music effects. Amedeo holds a B.A. in Computer Science from Boston University.
 

I have completed my Masters in EECS at MIT, with a concentration in Computer Graphics & Human-Computer Interfaces. My work in software engineering, user interaction and UI/UX design promotes the development and integration of emerging VR/AR technologies. I continue to pursue my passion in gamification and visualization by exploring the immersive experiences applied to different contexts from education & entertainment to cyber security and big data visual analytics.

Twitter: @andrewmo2014

Anna has recently graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in Industrial Design. She is currently working as a Product Designer at GrabCAD in Cambridge, MA, where she is primarily designing solutions and experiences for the new 3D printing software "GrabCAD Print". In the past, she has won a number of hackathons, including “24 hours in VR” hackathon in NYC, and would love to share her knowledge and experience with the participants of the Reality, Virtually, Hackathon!

Ben is an Integration Engineer with Affectiva. He is part of the team that ensures Affectiva’s emotion-aware solutions “play nicely” with external systems. When not pouring over technical documentation, Ben enjoys listening to and playing musical instruments; you may also find him on the shore with a rod, a reel and a book in his hands.

Brad Grantham has been an OpenGL developer since 1997 and has presented at SIGGRAPH and ARM TechCon.  He currently specializes in mobile graphics application support on ARM Mali GPUs for ARM’s Business Line Group

Philosopher. Educator. Engineer. Entrepreneur.

After my legal studies in international transactions at Boston University school of law, I am now a Ph.D student at ESCP Europe business school in Paris France, specialized in management and marketing in fashion industry. 

Meanwhile, I am launching a startup VEE, Inc. focused on new technology implementation, including but not limited to 360 degree production, 3D printing, AR, holography, and VR, in creative projects such as for customers' experience, marketing and education in the fashion industry.

I believe that VR and AR is becoming not only a new channel to demonstrate creative products to enhance customers' experience, but also a new concept to stimulate and educate talents to realize their creative ideas in a new virtual space. It will accelerate the revolution of the fashion industry in the new digital age.

Dario Laverde is a senior developer evangelist at HTC. He has experience in software development for mobile, embedded, Web and enterprise. Among his various professional roles, he has worked as an instructor, consultant, software architect, author and entrepreneur. Dario founded and co-organizes several developer communities including NYC Java, NY Android and is currently active with the VR community. You can follow him at @virtual_dario. Speaking engagements include SVVR, SFVR, Andevcon, Wearablesdevcon, DroidCon, JavaOne and many more.

Darryl is the Lead Design Strategist at The Meme Design, a consultancy in Cambridge that helps tech companies large and small craft their products and services to fit with user needs and lifestyles. With countless design projects under his belt ranging from consumer electronics to enterprise software, he’s acquired the flexibility to contribute meaningfully to virtually any product space. Synthesizing, ideating, planning and pitching are a few of his secret powers. 

Meanwhile, VR and AR have become real passions of his. He’s chomping at the bit to contribute to their mainstreaming. 

Diana Ford is the Global Lead VR Researcher in Education at Unity, her current focus is on designing learning experiences for virtual reality and storytelling in VR. Diana is driving the efforts for creating and running the game engineering program in CS at UCLA, her courses include virtual and augmented reality games, and AI playing games. She is the co-founder and director of the Real-time Lab at UCLA. 

Dylan Hart is a veteran developer leading the Unity team at Signal Garden. His background in design and game development provides the foundation for many of the innovative solutions found in Signal Garden's technologies. He enjoys creative problem solving and is focused on ushering in the next generation of mobile utility. Dylan was recognized for a Top 3 Utility in Google's 2015 App Contest using Tango.

Dwight Meglan, whose doctorate is in Mechanical Engineering, has applied simulation and robotics to medicine for more 25 years. He has worked with a number of high technology medical startups as well as major medical device companies developing commercial surgical simulators and surgical robots.  He left a tenure track position at Mayo Clinic Orthopedic Biomechanics Lab so he could stay involved in the hands-on work in creating simulators and robots to enhance healthcare. The result has been a number of surgical training simulators on the market, contributing to 4 commercial surgical robot projects, more than 40 patents/applications, and an enjoyable life of problem solving and building.

Graham Pentheny, is an independent game developer and game AI researcher currently working at Spry Fox on awesome mobile games like Alphabear.  He's an organizer of Boston Unity Group, one of the longest running monthly unity meetups with over 1200 members.  Previously, he’s worked on open-ended conversational AI systems at Giant Otter, and on the Fieldrunners series of tower defense games at Subatomic Studios.  His AI work has been published in the AI Pro book series, and he's presented at the GDC AI summit.

Senior Software Development Engineer, Developer Experience, Microsoft

Haishi is focusing on Microsoft Azure and cloud computing. He’s the author of several cloud computing books including Zen of Cloud, Programming Microsoft Azure Service Fabric and Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions. He is the co-host of Microsoft’s Cloud Cover show (https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Cloud+Cover), and his blog is at http://blog.haishibai.com/.

Principal Program Manager, Partner App Experience, Microsoft

Jaime is looking after middleware in Windows. He also work with monetization partners targeting Windows Store. Prior to joining Windows team in April, Jaime ran the evangelism team for third party games targeting Windows store. He is also an avid VR fan, and has experience developing for HoloLens and Oculus using Unity.

Twitter: @jaimerodriguez

Jinn Kim is a Android developer since v2.3 operating in the New England area. He also has taught multiple Android developer courses based on the Google’s Study Jam. He’s also the lead organizer of the Boston Android Meetup group. Before he started programming Android apps, he worked primarily in .NET web application. He is left handed.

Joey Salisbury has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience and is the Director of Software Development at Brain Power in Cambridge, MA, where he develops VR and AR experiences for special education and neurological assessment. He works primarily in Unity (C#), and has experience with various mobile VR/AR SDKs, including Cardboard/Google VR, Vuforia, OpenCV, Affdex (Affectiva), and Blippar. He's developed for mobile VR/AR (Android/iOS), HoloLens, and Google Glass.

Twitter: @joey_salisbury

Ben Peck is a Generalist Engineer in the Lucasfilm Advanced Development Group, where he focuses on gameplay and engine programming for interactive experiences in VR and AR. Ben has experience in both the film and video game industries: at Pixar Animation Studios, writing tools and debugging art pipelines, and at Double Fine Productions, as a gameplay programmer on projects such as The Cave and Broken Age. Ben loves working alongside artists and designers to help bring their visions to life.

Dr. Jolanda Tromp is a human-Computer Interaction expert specialized in UX/UI for Virtual Reality R&D, and design and evaluation methodology for Collaborative Virtual Environments. Teaches Human-Computer Interaction Methods, VR, Human Factors, Statistics, and Digital Humanities in the Computer Science Department for the HCI Master’s program. Facilitates and mentors Study Abroad programs at several VR labs in Spain and the Netherlands. Initiated and coordinates the SUNY Oswego VR First lab.

Jono works as an engineer on the upcoming VR projects from Unity Labs: Editor VR, Unity's in-VR editor, and Carte Blanche, a consumer-facing VR worldbuilding app. Before joining Unity, he has built Archean, a cross-platform VR/AR worldbuilding app, and helped organize Boston VR and Boston Unity Group. Outside of work, Jono loves music, movies, and games!

Twitter: @jonoforbes

Lauren is Director of Business Development for Vevo where she helps to lead the company's corporate development, business strategy, and partnership efforts. In her role, Lauren analyzes evolving technologies, recommending when, and how, Vevo can participate commercially. This has included research into 360 video and VR / AR. Having spent the first 6 years of her career working with the aerospace and defense sectors, Lauren was exposed early to many of the technologies that are fueling VR / AR innovations today, including: night vision, advanced sensors, imaging, robotics, and artificial intelligence. 

Lex Dreitser is an award winning VR/AR developer. Over 90% of Virtual Reality is made with Unity®. Lex is likely the foremost Unity® expert in NYC. When he’s not deep in code, developing the future of VR/AR for major brands – he runs NYC VR University – an official Unity® meetup where he and his team teach the community how to make VR and AR – for free. He hosts a 360 video podcast for Unity® developers called Build and Run Build-Run.com. Join him on VRathon.com – an episodic iterative VR hackathon – where you’re able to participate through 360 video.

Evangelist, Developer Experience, Microsoft

Liv is a Virtual and Augmented Reality Developer and Evangelist at Microsoft based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the creator and host of Just A/VR Show, a web show for aspiring VR and AR developers, developer of KittenVR, and the author of The Matrix is My Office and Entering the Metaverse. Liv is passionate about making immersive technologies accessible to everyone, and teaching new developers how to create their own VR & AR experiences. She is a co-organizer of the ARVR Academy, and hopes to empower new developers and designers to create for a new world of immersive applications.

Maxim develops interactive museum exhibits for science, health, and history museums around the world. In addition, he provides consulting in VR and Unity development to companies looking to integrate these emerging technologies into their products or services, including architecture, gaming, or educational publishing. Maxim is currently developing Solo, a virtual climbing simulation, as well as being part of the Saurian team, developing a scientifically accurate dinosaur survival game set in Hell's Creek.

Neil has over twenty years of experience in software engineering and game development expertise to ARM. He oversees the technical, business and marketing relationships between ARM and mobile software developers.

Evangelist, Developer Experience, Microsoft

Nick is a mobility pioneer and three-time entrepreneur specializing in the design and production of mobile applications for consumers and the enterprise using diverse cross-platform technologies including Windows 10, iOS, Android, Xamarin and Cordova. He is focusing on Bots and Speech, Cortana, IoT, HoloLens and Cloud.  

Senior Program Manager, Partner App Experience, Microsoft

Petri is focusing on Graphics and Games in Windows. He started his adventure on an old Commodore 64, and quickly realized that graphics programming is awesome. He used to be an MVP on XNA and DirectX before joining Microsoft in 2010. Petri usually blogs about his passion for graphics and games development on his blog http://digitalerr0r.wordpress.com

Senior Software Development Engineer, Developer Experience, Microsoft

After working ten years in South of France on .Net and Web, I spent some time working at Microsoft Studio in London mainly on Games, WebGL, and HoloLens.  I have recently moved to Redmond to work with the Developer Experience team focusing primarily on AR/VR, Xbox and Media. Technology addict, I enjoy my free time contributing to open source projects and hacking on WebGL. It was then natural to enroll as an active core member of the BabylonJS team.

Shrenik Sadalgi is a polyglot developer and technology plumber. He drives engineering and software development on Wayfair Next to help create next generation experiences in AR and VR. Before joining Wayfair Next, he spearheaded the modernization of Wayfair's mobile web experience as a part of the Client Technologies team at Wayfair. Prior to joining Wayfair, he helped build Horizon Mobile out of the CTO's office at VMware, helped create a pointer-based, interactive media system for TV at Hillcrest Labs, and an AR experience allowing users to collaborate and casually create music in a shared physical space called ARmonica that was exhibited at UIST 2010. Shrenik holds a Masters in Computer Science from Columbia University where he was a recipient of the MSTA fellowship.

I am an associate professor of Interactive Media & Game Development at Becker College specializing in the development of VR, AR, and Mixed Reality applications for the entertainment, simulation, and art sectors. I am particularly interested in the integration of I/O, AI, and multi-user systems with virtual reality experiences.

Terrence Masson has 25 years of leadership and entrepreneurial experience in creative technology. He created visual effects and animation on more than 20 feature films.  Founder of augmented reality company Building Conversation in 2014. Former Head of Animation and Director of Creative Industries program (2008-2012) at Northeastern University in Boston, where he lead the vision and creation of all undergraduate Game Design and Interactive Media curriculum in the College of Arts, Media and Design.

Senior Technical Architect, Microsoft Technology Center Boston

Timothy is currently a Senior Technical Architect specializing in serverless cloud, IoT, gesture, speech, cognitive and mixed reality computing.  In his current role Tim spends much of his time directly with Microsoft’s customers building and delivering innovative applications.  Timothy is a frequent presenter at various technology and business events.  Timothy is also the co-founder of The Maker Mill, a makerspace and STEAM enrichment center for children K-12 in the Merrimac Valley north of Boston.

Umang Mehta is a Software Engineer at Affectiva, passionate about innovations in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.Umang works on the SDK and Gaming teams, geared at providing Emotional Intelligence to the digital world. Umang recently graduated from Northeastern University with a Master's degree in Computer Science. Umang is an adrenaline junkie and likes to immerse himself in outdoor sports.

Vinny is a Software Engineer with a passion for Augmented and Virtual Reality apps and games across various hardware platforms.

Senior Program Manager, Partner App Experience, Microsoft

Mixed Reality and Machine Learning engineer and evangelist. In Windows team, Vlad is focusing on experimental scenarios with desktop apps, HoloLens and Windows Holographic, middleware and machine learning.

Mike "Danger" Donaghey started using Autodesk Maya in 2004 and collaborating in Unity in 2007. His technical and art skills have been featured in local content such as Defective Studios' Cosmoknots and Subaltern Games' No Pineapple Left Behind. Most recently he has been teaching programming to youths and contracting in the architectural and medical fields to bring VR to a wider audience.

Chris Lowery is a UI artist and CXO/co-founder of Fasility. He is an app developer, WebVR and A-Frame evangelist, and HTML5/CSS/JavaScriptengineer. He combines left and right brained thinking to create comfortable, powerful new interfaces. He co-founded 3D toon shading pioneer ThinkFish Productions, invented a grayscale pixel font system called Ultrafonts, and co-authored FlashDash for Pocket PC, a futuristic Home screen experience that rivaled modern Android offerings. One year before Siri, he created SiteRider XL for iPad, the world's first mainstream speaking and listening browser. Chris holds a Bachelor of Fine Art in Graphic Design from The Rhode Island School of Design.

Kathy Trogolo is an educator and CEO/co-founder of Fasility, a WebVR studio centered on accessibility and user empowerment. She has extensive classroom experience with students and teachers as a technology specialist and administrator in public and private schools, as well as private sector sales and software development experience. She was a founding board member and subsequently Assistant Head of the Tremont School in Weston, MA, a new progressive school focused on student empowerment and experiential learning for academic, social and emotional growth. She brings her startup experience, marketing and technical backgrounds, strategic planning skills, and love of teaching and co-creating to the Fasility team. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from Cornell University and a Master of Arts in Educational Technology Leadership from The George Washington University.

Ricoh Theta Product Manager, North America. TK has covered business development, building an extremely lively developer community and supporting marketing and sales of the Ricoh Theta 360-degree camera and its Open Spherical Camera (OSC) API. TK recently participated in the launch of the brand new Ricoh Theta V, capable of 4K video with spatial audio and 4K live streaming. TK is supporting various use-cases ranging from enthusiastic hobbyists to larger businesses utilizing the Ricoh Theta. In his spare time, TK likes to hike in Northern California and play ultimate frisbee.

General Manager of Business Development at product planning section, SV product development center at Ricoh Company, Ltd. (Tokyo)

Recently joining NVIDIA, Vincent oversees developer marketing for Design, Visualization and Professional VR. Previously VP of Product Development at DAZ3D, he spearheaded integrating physically based rendering and improving compatibility with professional applications. Vincent spent five years at Fusion-io where he was Director of Visual Computing working closely with entertainment software developers and production studios on implementing solutions that facilitate new levels of creativity, productivity and worldwide collaboration. He helped pioneer interactive 4K and 6K production pipelines as well as new workflows that leverage the latest innovations in ultra-fast storage. Vincent has designed technology solutions for 2D and 3D production in the visual effects, video game and design industries for over 18 years. Before joining Fusion-io, Vincent spent 11 years at Autodesk Media & Entertainment, working with leading Hollywood studios both as a Product Specialist for 3dsmax and as Product Designer on Autodesk’s desktop compositing tool, Toxik (now Composite). At Autodesk, Vincent was a key member of the stereoscopic advisory board, where he helped to establish innovative S3D conversion pipelines with major studio clients. In addition working as a VFX supervisor and artist on films, games and architectural/engineering projects for Clients including Disney Feature Animation, Paramount Pictures, Electronic Arts, Bungie and four-time Academy Award nominee David Lynch.

David Gene Oh is head of developer relations at Meta, previously he has built games for Ubisoft and led VR efforts for Leap Motion.

Iulian is a creator and researcher of embodied educational technologies. His work intersects educational innovation, learner-centered design and usability, focusing on aspects of AR/VR education, embodied cognition, child development, and socio-technological evolution. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University developing augmented reality for collaborative learning in maker spaces. He holds a PhD from Georgia Tech focused on augmented reality for K-12 education, and has worked with PBS KIDS (lead project manager & lead game designer for the AR educational app Cyberchase Shape Quest - 1Mil downloads; Webby & iKids awards winner), ArchieMD (senior researcher of AR medical simulations), MIT (creator of AR Scratch), Samsung Research, Qualcomm, WestEd Research. He is a co-organizer of the Boston EdTech meetup, and the founder of the annual IEEE Virtual Reality conference workshop on K-12 Embodied Learning through Virtual & Augmented Reality. 

Expertise: educational design, UX research, UX design, Unity, C#, C++, Networking, Electronics/Arduino, Vuforia, Hololens.

Principal Engineer @ Merge Labs
Yifan Yang is a principal software engineer with over 10 years in software development and administration of development teams. He has expertise in embedded systems, mobile applications, kiosk systems, 3D applications, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality applications and games.

Yifan is principal engineer on the Merge Cube, and has lead the teams developing several of the most heavily downloaded Merge Cube apps. Previously, Yifan helped deploy augmented reality games to over 20 different zoos and museums around the world.

Yifan is an expert in several programing languages and game engines. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from The University of Texas at San Antonio, where he worked at the AR/VR research lab focused on building applications to help the disabled. Yifan also has published to IEEE and MINI-Micro Systems, and owns two patents in China.

VP @ Merge Labs

Emerging Technologies Chair @ SIGGRAPH

Jeremy Kenisky spent 13 years leading an award winning visual effects and post production company in the US focused on high end animation and VFX for broadcast television, film, and IMAX. Clients include National Geographic, Coca Cola, and P&G amongst others.

 For the past 7 years, Kenisky has focused on building Augmented and Virtual Reality experiences, pushing the limits of interactivity for agencies, institutions, theme parks, museums, science centers, zoos, and aquariums. Zoo-AR is an education and technology company Jeremy founded in 2011 with the idea that we can positively change the way kids learn while also creating compassion for the living world around them.

 In 2016, one of Jeremy’s companies was acquired by Merge VR, where he sits as Vice President of Creative, directing content development, outreach strategy, and helps influence new product design, among a variety of other technology and design related tasks. Jeremy's team helped launch Merge's latest award winning product, Merge Cube, the first augmented reality product in the world available to general consumers.

Jeremy brings a unique blend of art and creativity combined with science and technology to develop compelling products, tell engaging stories and bring delight to customers.

Pauric is a Principal User Experience Designer at MathWorks where he specializes in product vision and inventing new programming paradigms for STEM Students. He grew up on and off the West coast of Ireland but these days he can be found tinkering in a barn just outside of Boston