Chaki Ng is passionate in novel ways to connect users and contextual content and information, across various devices+screens. Currently, he is the general manager of Viacom Lab, a brand new user-centered and experimental team within Viacom to explore new things, at the intersection of media+product+design. Prior to the Lab, he spent 3 years as head of product at Viacom Music and Logo Group for entertainment brands MTV, VH1, CMT and LOGO. He rebuilt the team from 2 product owners to 2 vp of product and 7 product owners to develop multi-platform, video-centric products (responsive websites, 15 iOS/Android/XBOX apps) for TV shows and events like VMA, with hundreds of millions of streams a year. He led the transformation to user-centric, MVP, and agile/squad-based development processes, helped started data science initiative for MTV News, and led future looking mindset as corporate liaison of MIT Media Lab. Previously, Chaki investigated place-based discovery and social experiences at the MIT Media Lab, by co-deploying a real-time, pervasive network of 30 large touchscreens using RFIDs and AI algorithms in its new building. He also was a veteran of adaptive learning experiences via Interactive Constructs, a 10M+ annual revenue and 60+ employee technology company that he co-founded (with $0 investment dollars) and sold, which powered leading products like Read180 for education companies like Scholastic, Harcourt, and Pearson. Chaki holds PhD and SM degrees in computer science from Harvard, where he designed auction-based algorithms to solve complex multi-user resource allocation problems in distributed systems including wireless sensor networks and cloud computing. He also holds MBA (MIT Sloan) and BS (Northeastern) degrees. Chaki is an advocate of using user-centered design and various rapid innovation methods (from Stanford D.School and LUMA Institute) for product development as well as general business design problems. He continues his extensive startup involvement by acting as mentors at accelerators and is currently Expert-in-Residence at the Harvard Innovation Lab, advising student startups, and acting as competition judge.

Ken Perlin is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at New York University and directs the NYU Games For Learning Institute. He is a participating faculty member in the NYU Media and Games Network (MAGNET). Perlin was also founding director of the Media Research Laboratory and director of the NYU Center for Advanced Technology. His research interests include graphics, animation, augmented and mixed reality, user interfaces, science education and multimedia. He received an Academy Award for Technical Achievement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his noise and turbulence procedural texturing techniques, which are widely used in feature films and television, as well as the 2008 ACM/SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award, the TrapCode award for achievement in computer graphics research, the NYC Mayor's award for excellence in Science and Technology and the Sokol award for outstanding Science faculty at NYU, and a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation. Dr. Perlin received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from New York University, and a B.A. in theoretical mathematics from Harvard University.

Clara Fernández-Vara is a game scholar, designer and writer. She is an Associate Arts Professor at the NYU Game Center. Her area of expertise is narrative in games and how it can integrate with game design, focusing on adventure games. She is particularly interested in applying methods from textual analysis and performance studies to the study of video games and transmedia artifacts. Clara’s videogame work is grounded in the humanities, informed by her background in literature, film and theatre. Before joining the NYU Game Center, Clara was a a researcher and game developer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She holds a Ph.D. in Digital Media from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Comparative Media Studies from MIT. Clara has presented her work at various international academic and industry conferences, such as DiGRA (Digital Games Research Association), and Foundations of Digital Games and the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC). She has worked both in games for research as well as in the commercial sphere. Her first book, "Introduction to Game Analysis" has been published by Routledge.

Omer Shapira is the head of Virtual Reality at Fake Love. His practice combines live action elements with procedural graphics, using custom-built software and hardware. Previously, Omer was a VR Developer at Framestore, The NYU Media Research Lab and the MIT Media Lab, and a Filmmaker and VFX Artist in Israeli TV. His work was presented at Tribeca Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival and The Barbican. His commercial VR work won an Art Director's Club Award and was a Webby Awards Honoree. Omer has a B.Sc in Mathematics from Tel Aviv University and a Master's from the NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program.