Digital Media Education Forum

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The Digital Media Education Forum will feature speakers from academia and industry, including:

• Raquel Benitez, Comet Entertainment, Inc.
• Susan Gold, GarageGames
• Philip Holt, Electronic Arts - Tiburon
• Dan Kelly, Sparter, and formerly THQ Games
• Jason Leigh, Electronic Visualization Laboratory
• Carman Llanos, Comet Entertainment
• Peter Raad,The Guildhall at SMU
• Hans Rijpkema, Rhythm & Hues Studios
• Dawn Rivera-Ernster, Walt Disney Animation Studios
• Barbara Slade, Walt Disney Development, United Kingdom
• Barry Weiss, Sony Imageworks
• Chris Williams, University of Teesside, Animex International Festival of Animation and Computer Games

TENTATIVE AGENDA:

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2007

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2007

SPEAKER BIOS:

After obtaining her Bachelor in Arts and Communications at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Spain, with 2 masters, and 7 academic diplomas, Ms. Benitez Rojas worked in a variety of academic and professional positions, worldwide. Her strengths lie in her ability to conceive, create and develop audiovisual properties for the international market. She has written software programs that are now considered to be the industry standard, and has worked on, directed and received accolades for many animated films. Ms. Benitez Rojas works as CEO of Comet Entertainment Inc., COO of Vitamin Cartoons Inc and CEO of Duna Films International Inc.

Susan is chair of the IGDA Education SIG and recently joined game technology provider GarageGames as academic coordinator. Susan's work with the SIG has created many new tools for instructors in the games genre, and she brings a wealth of academic experience and knowledge to the GarageGames team. Her current focus at GarageGames is to expand the curricular offerings related to the Torque Technologies suite of game engines and to increase the usability of Torque in the classroom. Susan is an artist, teacher, and activist with a specialization in digital art, new media and videogames. Her artwork and writing have been featured in numerous galleries/museums. As an educator, Susan has helped shape a niche program in Entertainment Technology. Prof. Gold also sits on the ACM SIGGRAPH Education Curriculum Committee for Computer Graphics and the IEEE WG16.3 Committee on Theoretical Foundation of Entertainment Computing.

As General Manager of Electronic Arts - Tiburon, Philip Holt is responsible for the management of EAÕs Orlando Studio, which is responsible for creating some of the best selling titles in the industry, Madden NFL Football, NCAA Football, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, and NASCAR. His responsibility includes overseeing all aspects of design, production, engineering, and content creation for top EA SPORTS titles.

Philip was named General Manager in July 2007 after serving as EA - Tiburon's Chief Operating Officer. Philip joined EA in August of 2005.

Prior to joining EA, Philip was the senior vice president of product development for interactive entertainment developer and publisher THQ. He also had served as vice president of product development and operations at THQ-owned software developer, Volition, Inc. Before joining THQ, Philip worked for EA in its Seattle development studio, where he was the development director for multiple EA SPORTS branded FIFA videogames.

Philip holds a BA from The Evergreen State College, and a MasterÕs Certificate in Project Management from University of Washington.

Dan is co-founder and CEO of Sparter, a marketplace for peer-to-peer trading of virtual items and currencies from online games and virtual worlds. A ten-year veteran of the video game industry, Dan was previously senior vice president of business development for THQ (NASDAQ: THQI) where as a member of the executive management team he was responsible for building out THQ's portfolio of original titles and expanding the internal studio network. A few of the key franchises published by THQ as a result of Dan's leadership include Full Spectrum Warrior, Destroy All Humans!, Juiced, Supreme Commander, Company of Heroes, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, Frontlines: Fuel of War, Titan Quest, and Stuntman; studios added include Relic Entertainment, Juice Games, Kaos Studios, Vigil Games, and Paradigm Entertainment.

Before joining THQ, Dan was an executive with The Walt Disney Company where he held several management positions in the Consumer Products division. As head of business development and licensing for Disney Interactive, Dan was responsible for negotiating the ground-breaking relationship with Square Enix for the production of the hugely successful Kingdom Hearts. He also served as President of Marketing and Distribution for the award-winning television production company Cartoon Pizza, a spin-off from The Walt Disney Company. Raised in New Orleans and a graduate of Jesuit High School (go Blue Jays!), Dan earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering and Economics from Vanderbilt University and a Master of Business Administration degree from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

Jason Leigh is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Leigh is a co-founder of VRCO, the GeoWall Consortium and the Global Lambda Visualization Facility. Leigh currently leads the visualization and collaboration research on the National Science Foundation's OptIPuter project, and has led EVL's Tele-Immersion research agenda since 1995. His main area of interest is in developing collaboration technologies and techniques for supporting a wide range of applications ranging from the remote exploration of large-scale data, education and entertainment.

Carmen Llanos has a Masters Degree in Computer Animation Arts. She has coordinated, produced, and directed a variety of international projects in film, television, print, and on-line. Throughout her more than 10 years in the animation industry, Ms. Llanos has worked as an executive producer, creative director and instructor, and is the recipient of numerous industry awards.

Peter E. Raad received the BSME (with Honors), MS in mechanical engineering, and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. In 1986, he joined the mechanical engineering department at SMU. He currently holds the rank of Professor and is the Linda Wertheimer Hart Director of the Hart eCenter at SMU. The eCenter was established in 2000 to stimulate, facilitate, and support innovative interdisciplinary activities that enable the creative and responsible development and use of interactive network technologies. Under his leadership, the Guildhall at SMU was established in 2002 as a major program of the Hart eCenter to train and educate digital game developers. Dr. Raad serves as the Executive Director of the Guildhall, overseeing this unique program that crosses traditional disciplinary lines to combine art, design, software development, business, physical sciences, and humanities to create the 21st century's first new academic discipline.

Prior to becoming the founding director of the eCenter, Prof. Raad served as the Associate Dean for the SMU School of Engineering. He has taught courses in the thermal and fluid sciences, and his research in these areas combines computational and experimental investigations.

Between 1990 through 1993, he held the J. Lindsay Embrey Trustee Professorship in Engineering, an endowed chair for an outstanding junior faculty member. He has received several awards, including four times the Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award, twice the Outstanding Undergraduate Faculty Award, and the Sigma Xi Faculty Research Award.

In 1999-2000, he was named the ASME North Texas Section Engineer of the Year. Prof. Raad has published over 40 journal articles and over 100 symposium and conference papers. He has received over $2M in funding and support from, among others, the National Science Foundation, Texas Instruments, Raytheon, TriQuint Semiconductor, Chrysler Technologies, Isonics, and Marlow Industries.

In 1995, he founded the Submicron Electro-Thermal Sciences Laboratory dedicated to the adaptive thermal modeling of submicron electronic devices and laser-based measurements for thin-film materials used in high-performance ICs. He also does research in tsunami mitigation and fluid wave interactions with solid structures. Prof. Raad has served as an associate editor for the ASME Journal of Fluids Engineering as well as a frequent reviewer for NSF, ASME Transactions, IEEE Transactions, Journal of Computational Physics, and Physics of Fluids.

He is the chair of the ASME Computational Fluid Dynamics Technical Committee and in 2002 was the organizing chair of the 55th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics.

He is a member of ASME, IEEE, APS, and Sigma Xi. In 1979, he was elected a member of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society. He is a Licensed Professional Engineer in the State of Texas.

Hans was born and raised in the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands. When all the big waterworks around his home were finished and it was safe to take his finger out of the sea dike he went to the University of Twente for a masters degree in Computer Science. His thesis on "Knowledge Based Human Grasping" under the guidance of Michael Girard at SCAN in Groningen led to a paper in Siggraph 1991. After taking in the knowledge of his mentors he also took over their job and house and remained at SCAN for five years as head of R&D (working mainly on train simulators for the Dutch and European railways) and as a teacher of computer graphics and animation for a masters degree program. In 1996 he came to Rhythm and Hues to start up the character rigging department. While writing new tools into R&H proprietary software for rigging purposes he moved into the software department where he is now responsible for a wide variety of topics related to character development, like character rigging and skinning, fur grooming and animation, model creation and deformation. Over the last 11 years he has worked on over 30 feature films like f.e. Mousehunt, Babe: Pig in the City, Harry Potter I, Cats and Dogs, Elf, Scooby Doo, Garfield, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Night at the Museum, Evan Almighty and Golden Compass.

Dawn began her career at The Walt Disney Company in 2005 as Director of Animation Resources, working closely with the filmmakers to connect creative talent to Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons and future developments.

Before joining the Walt Disney Company, Dawn worked throughout the entertainment industry. Most recently, she was the Director. Creative Resources, Universal Creative, Universal Studios Parks and Resorts where she supported the talent resources and design efforts for blue sky concept design development of various theme parks, rides, shows and attractions at various park and resort locations including Universal Studios Japan, Universal's Islands of Adventure, Universal's Port Aventura and Universal Studios Hollywood. As Director of Creative Services for the Saban Entertainment, Dawn managed the Consumer Products Creative Services group developing logo brands, style guides and all marketing and design for the Power Rangers, Fox Kids Network and all new series pitches. She was also the Director of Licensing at ITC Entertainment and DIC Entertainment where she helped launched domestic and international license campaigns for Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds, Ludwig Bemelmans' Madeline and Guess' Wild Guess character line.

Dawn majored in advertising and design from the American Academy of Art, Chicago, Illinois and continues her studies in art and anthropology and is a member of ASIFA, The Society of Children's Books and Writers, and Women in Animation.

Barbara Slade began her screenwriting career in London when her first show "Brown Bear's Wedding" starring Helena Bonham Carter and Joss Ackland aired on ITV, Christmas day. It sold to most countries as well as the Disney Channel, and was nominated for five Emmy awards including 'Best Writer'. Barbara returned to America where she continued her career, writing and developing children's series for Nickelodeon, Disney, ABC, Fox and most other networks. She has written features for both Working Title and Disney and received numerous awards including a 'Humanitas' for one of her episodes of 'Rugrats'. Barbara now lives in London, yet travels extensively, developing and 'heading up' shows for the international market. Some of her credits include "Angelina Ballerina" (ITV/PBS/NICKELODEON), "Rotten Ralph" (FOX/BBC/NOCKELODEON), and "Comin' Atcha!" (ITV). Barbara has just created and produced a pilot for an original live action comedy series for Coolabi/Nickelodeon, has recently begun working for Disney as a Development Executive and continues to teach and lecture around the world.

Barry S. Weiss is Senior Vice President of Animation Production for Sony Pictures Imageworks. Mr. Weiss is a widely respected animation producer and administrator with extensive experience in both features film and television animation production. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Short Subject and Feature Animation branch Executive Committee and also serves on the Academy's newly created Science and Technology Council.

Recent animation projects include work on both "The Polar Express," "Spider-Man 2," "The Matrix" sequels, "Big Fish," "The Haunted Mansion" and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." The studio also created new characters for "Stuart Little 2," winner of the VES Award (Visual Effects Society) for Best Character Animation in an Animated Film.

Prior to joining Sony Pictures Imageworks, Mr. Weiss was a producer with Turner Feature Animation. He planned and built the company's animation facilities, supervised the company's production facilities and oversaw budgeting and scheduling for more than 200 artists and other employees. While at Turner, his credits included co-producing "Cats Don't Dance," winner of the 1997 Annie Award for Best Animated Feature, and served in the same capacity on the Turner/Twentieth Century Fox release of "The Pagemaster." Mr. Weiss began his career at Hanna-Barbera Productions where he managed production accounting for more than 200 hours of television programming, as well as features and direct to video projects.

Mr. Weiss received his undergraduate degree in television and film at Northwestern University and his master's degree in film from the University of Southern California. He is the recipient of a Chicago Area Emmy Award for outstanding achievement in children's programming, as producer of "The Magic Door."

Chris Williams is the founder and Director of the pioneering Animex International Festival of Animation and Computer Games. Animex, which began in 2000, is now one of the most established festivals of its kind in the world. Every year, professionals are brought together with students and children to help develop and nurture talent, particularly in the community in which the festival is set. He has worked closely with other organizations to launch and establish other festivals around the world. Chris has worked as an animator and games artist and is currently a Principal Lecturer in Animation at University of Teesside in the north east of England. Chris is responsible for curriculum development in the School of Computing and has recently guided the University's undergraduate Computer Animation course to national recognition as one of six in the UK to gain accreditation from the UK Sector Skills Council, Skillset. He has also been involved in writing Skillset's National Occupational Standards for Animation and was part of the University of Teesside's successful application to become a Skillset Academy.