GRAPHICS FOR EVERYBODY

Funda is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at UMass Boston. Her research is at the intersection of computer graphics, artificial intelligence, psychology, and applied perception with a focus on creating expressive, autonomous, and embodied virtual humans. Funda teaches Game Programming, User Interface Design, and Artificial Intelligence. She is an active member of the community, serving on the editorial board of Virtual Reality Journal, editing a special issue of Frontiers in Virtual Reality, and organizing workshops and conferences such as ACM Symposium on Applied Perception (SAP’23).

Daniel is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at UMass Boston and an Associate of the Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. In 2012, Daniel created the first framework for web-based visualization of medical images (goXTK.org and SliceDrop.com). Since then, Daniel's research focuses on visualization and computer vision. He teaches Computer Graphics, Software Engineering, and Biomedical Imaging very applied with live coding sessions and hands-on delivery of concepts. All of his course materials are openly available and allow students of all levels to succeed.

Jasmine Roberts is an engineer, researcher, and cognitive designer in virtual, augmented, and mixed reality. Currently, she is building generative A.I. creative tooling at Microsoft Research and planning to announce an XR startup. Jasmine has worked at PlayStation on PlayStation VR, Unity on Unity MARS, and at Google on ARCore. Jasmine has also been a member of collectives Oculus Launch Pad, Mozilla XR Studio and was honored in 2020 in Forbes Under 30 for Games. She founded Black in XR November 2021.

Pablo is a PhD Student at UMass Boston researching computer graphics and animation. Pablo holds an MSin Applied Statistics from Boston College. He has BS degrees in Biology, Chemistry, and Psychology, all with cum laude status, from Texas State University. He worked as an Education Data Analyst at Innovations in Urban Science Education (iUSE) and a Business Analyst Intern at EBO Global Innovation Capital, LLC. Pablo is a Teaching Assistant for CS615 User Interface Design and CS670 Artificial Intelligence.

Mahsa is a PhD Student at UMass Boston researching computer graphics and visualization perception. Before joining UMass Boston, Mahsa worked as a data scientist in Iran. She also worked as a game developer with the Unity platform on The Blurry Island, a game exploring AI technology and ethics. She received her BS in Computer Engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology in Iran. Mahsa is also the Teaching Assistant for CS460 Graphics.

Allyssa is a Creative Strategist, Recruiter, Career Consultant, and prime-time television EMMY® winning Animator most noted for her animation on over 75 episodes and promos of FX's series "Archer". She also has created content for NBC's "30 Rock", Discovery Channel, Mtv, i am OTHER, Animation Domination, Apple, ComicCon San Diego, Georgia Public Broadcasting (PBS), and Captain Planet's Planeteer Movement. In 2015, Allyssa founded Georgia's first and largest animation resource and staffing agency, My Animation Life (MAL). The team works to find creative strategies and solutions for both studios and independents. Creating Georgia's most inclusive animation map, calendar, and classified listing are just a few of the popular assets MAL provides to strengthen Georgia's animation industry.

Dan is the founder of Upsample Software, LLC, a software company offering consulting services with a specialization in 3D Graphics and GPU Computing. Dan is also a big fan of cross-platform development and open standards including Vulkan, OpenGL, Qt, and Linux. He co-authored the "OpenGL ES 3.0 Programming Guide, "OpenGL ES 2.0 Programming Guide", "OpenCL Programming Guide" and also contributed to "OpenGL Shading Language: 3rd Edition". As consultant for Valve, Dan worked on popular games such as Half-Life Alyx, Dota Underlords, SteamVR, Dora 2, and many others.

Sarah is Assistant Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Her work at BWH focuses on developing new methods and technologies to improve precision in image-guided neurosurgery. Before joining BWH, Sarah successfully sold her software startup company, 61 Solutions, Inc., which created drawing software for professional artists. Prior to founding 61 Solutions, she was a consultant to Disney Research and Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory (MERL), a Professor in Computer Science at Tufts University and a Distinguished Research Scientist and Advisor to Management at MERL. She held postdoctoral positions at MIT and CMU, has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from CMU, an MSc in Biomedical Engineering from U. Wisconsin, Madison, and a BSc in Mathematics and Engineering from Queens University, Canada.

Felix is CEO of Allumique, a graphics and vision-based startup. Prior to completing his PhD at Harvard University, Felix worked as a game developer at Electronic Arts and contributed to Red Alert 3, Boom Blox, Medal of Honor, Medal of Honor Vanguard, Fifa 2015, Madden NFL 2014 and 2015. Felix also worked at Disney Interactive on the Epic Mickey II game and as a Software Design Engineer at Microsoft.

Dogu is CEO of Orderinbox, OIX, a revolutionary social commerce platform and NFT marketplace for the age of Metaverse. Prior to OIX, Dogu co-founded Stambol Studios, creative technology studio specializing in hyper-realistic immersive experiences and interactive applications through VR/AR. He co-founded Locopass, an end-to-end location-based content creation and delivery platform for small and medium scale businesses. Dogu also worked at Electronic arts, Microsoft, and Ubisoft, as a Software Engineer.

Mar is a Research Manager at Google creating a new generation of Immersive technologies. She leads the BIRD lab creating blended interactions in XR, that perhaps aim to bring more of the real into the virtual and bridge better 2D and 3D. Her team of special ops explores multi-device futures and ML enabled novel experiences. Before joining Google, she was a Principal Researcher in the EPIC (Extended Perception Interaction and Cognition) team at Microsoft Research. She created and led the Immersive Technologies lab in the UK to research AR, VR, HMDs and Mixed Reality in the context of aeronautic manufacturing. She worked as a Postdoctoral scholar at the Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics group, in the University College London. Mar received her PhD and MS degrees from the Universitat de Barcelona in Immersive Virtual Reality and Clinical Psychology. She was also affiliated as a visiting student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MediaLab.

Patrick Cozzi, CEO of Cesium, is dedicated to advancing the field of 3D geospatial. He is a recognized expert in 3D graphics and mapping technology, open standards and open-source software. Together with Marc Petit, VP and General Manager, Unreal Engine at Epic Games, Patrick hosts Building the Open Metaverse, a podcast that invites a broad range of technical experts to share their insights on how the community is building the metaverse together. Patrick was the originator of CesiumJS, an open-source JavaScript library for rendering world-class 3D globes and maps. Patrick originally designed Cesium to visualize satellites in space while working as a Principal Graphics Architect at Analytical Graphics, Inc., an aerospace software company based in Exton, PA. After raising $5M in Series A investment in 2019, Cesium is now its own private entity. A complete platform for 3D geospatial data that includes optimization, visualization, and analytics, Cesium is making an impact across industry and government with applications for digital twins, AEC, smart cities, and more. A longtime champion of open-source technology, Patrick created the Cesium WebGL engine and 3D Tiles, an OGC Community Standard for streaming massive heterogeneous 3D geospatial datasets. He is co-creator of glTF™, the open-standard 3D runtime asset format that has been adopted by Microsoft®, Google®, Oculus®, and NVIDIA®, among others. He is the former Chair of the Khronos 3D Formats Working Group. Patrick has authored, edited, or contributed to ten books on mapping, computer graphics, and games, including WebGL Insights and OpenGL Insights, which have been translated to Japanese, and 3D Engine Design for Virtual Globes, which is widely considered the seminal text on the subject. He is active in the graphics and geospatial communities—facilitating ecosystems and frequently contributing to academic journals and presenting at conferences such as SIGGRAPH and GDC. In 2019, Patrick received the Khronos "Khronie" award for outstanding contributions to open standards. Patrick taught Computer Science for 8 years at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned an MSE in computer science. He also completed a CME from Harvard Business School.

Eric Haines is a software engineer and expert in computer graphics, specifically image rendering. Currently he is with NVIDIA Corporation as Distinguished Engineer. He is a co-author of the book Real-Time Rendering, currently in its fourth edition. Eric Haines earned an M.S. in 1986 from Cornell University. His thesis was The Light Buffer: A Ray Tracer Shadow Testing Accelerator. An image created by software based on the thesis was used on the September 1986 cover of the IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications journal. He created the Massive open online course Interactive 3D Graphics in 2013 with Udacity. As of July 2013 it had 30,000 enrolled, with 1300-1700 students active over a given week. He authored a chapter in the book An Introduction to Ray Tracing by Andrew Glassner (ed), 1989. He published a number articles in computer graphics, some of which are included in the Graphics Gems series. He also maintains the Graphics Gems code repository. Haines was on the editorial board of the Journal of Graphics Tools until 2012, at which time he helped found the Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques. He was the editor of the online forum of experts in ray tracing, Ray Tracing News (1988-2010). He has pursued multiple personal projects including the Minecraft world mapper and exporter called Mineways.

Bella Baidak is a technical project designer and multidisciplinary researcher. She is also the lead author of the Cell Profiler Analyst Web publication from our initiative. Bella holds an undergraduate degree from UMass Boston and a master's degree from Cornell Tech. She now is Co-Founder and CEO at Project B, a Fashion Tech startup that creates custom-fit garments from 3D body scan data.