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Geoff Engelstein is an award-winning table-top game designer, whose titles include The Ares Project, Space Cadets, and The Dragon & Flagon. He is also a noted podcaster. Since 2007 he has been a contributor to the Dice Tower, the leading table-top game podcast, with GameTek, a series on the math, science, and psychology of games. He has also hosted Ludology a weekly podcast on game design since 2011. Since 2015 Geoff has been an adjunct professor with the NYU Game Center, teaching Board Game design. Geoff has spoken at a variety of venues, including Pax, Gencon, Rutgers, and USC. He has degrees in Physics and Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is currently the president of Mars International, a design engineering firm.

Jason Eppink is an Assistant Professor of Digital Media at Elmhurst University. He is an artist, curator, and educator, who creates playful, collaborative interventions in online and offline spaces that offer glimpses of a world of expansive possibilities. His core strategy is the use of surprise–a physiological experience that requires an urgent re-evaluation of one's beliefs–to create contexts for participating audiences to imagine radical alternatives and co-create meaningful experiences together. Eppink's transdisciplinary practice manifests across many forms including urban interventions, augmented reality physics puzzlers, escape rooms, text-based interactive fiction, installation games, websites and browser plugins, activist Twitter bots, algorithmic video, and immersive theater. His work has found international acclaim and been presented by such esteemed institutions as New York City's New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Venice Architecture Biennale, and the Come Out and Play Festival. It's also all available online for free at jasoneppink.com. Previously, as the Curator of Digital Media at Museum of the Moving Image, Eppink founded two arts commissioning programs and organized events and exhibitions about animated GIFs, video games, and internet cats that garnered major press from Artforum, The New York Times, the BBC, The Guardian, NPR, Wired, and The Wall Street Journal.

Sven Lohse is Technical Director at ROCKFISH Games, where he leads development on systems and infrastructure for the EVERSPACE series. With a strong background in computer science and almost two decades of experience in game development, Sven specializes in localization, UI/UX, tooling, combat AI, and game physics. Since joining ROCKFISH in 2015, he has been instrumental in shaping the studio's technical pipeline, with a focus on scalability, quality, and cross-platform support.

Hogan Mastanduno is a Software Engineer at PICO, ByteDance, working on XR developer technologies. Prior to joining PICO, he studied Computer Science and Physics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, contributing to research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and autonomous vehicles.

Ross O’Dwyer is a software engineer and technical leader at Meta. He brings a career spanning game middleware, real-time physics, VR platform engineering, and large-scale developer ecosystems. Ross spent 14 years at Havok leading Developer Relations and Professional Services, partnering with studios worldwide and helping advance ragdoll and physics-driven character technology across the industry. He later joined Oculus in 2014, where he built the DevRel Engineering function and went on to lead major portions of the Rift and Quest software stack through multiple product launches. More recently he returned to an IC role to lead Generative AI technologies for Meta's Horizon platform.

- Education: Master in Astrophysics - First Gamedev Job: Hired out of the modding community to do design on Command & Conquer and Supreme Commander Forged alliance - Won the German games awards for best kids game with the Wii Game 'The Core Gang' - Worked at Bigpoint, a big Free to play pioneer in the west for over 8 years as the most senior Game Designer and Monetization expert. - Helped make a Singapore startup profitable as the product manager of the game that brought profitability (Mighty Bear Games, game is called Butter Royale) - Launched two

Pat Scandalis, CTO acting CEO of moForte Inc, has held lead engineering positions at National Semiconductor, Teradyne, Apple and Sun and spent the past 30 years in Digital Media. He was an Audio DSP researcher at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). He is the co-founder and VP of Engineering for Staccato Systems, a successful spinout of Stanford/CCRMA, sold to Analog Devices in 2001. He has held VP positions at TuneTo.com, Jarrah Systems and Liquid Audio/Liquid Digital Media (responsible for online digital music e-commerce properties for Walmart). He is currently the CEO/CTO of moForte Inc, a developer of GeoShred, a new kind of musical instrument based on physics modeling. He holds a BSc in Physics from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and is currently a visiting scholar at CCRMA, Stanford.

Martin Singh-Blom is the Machine Learning Research Lead at Embark Studios, where he heads a team exploring how learning systems can bring digital worlds to life. He holds an MSc in Engineering Physics from KTH and a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin, where his research focused on machine learning for genetics. Before joining Embark, Martin worked at EA's SEED division on next-generation facial animation. Since 2019, he has helped shape Embark's approach to integrating machine learning into every layer of game development. When he's not teaching machines to move or speak, he's usually chasing after his two kids.

Pasha Sol is a Motion Capture Supervisor at Electronic Arts, where he supports performance capture production for a wide range of AAA titles across the company as part of EA Create Capture. With over a decade in games and a background in acting and optical physics, he brings both a performer’s insight and technical perspective to the craft. His work focuses on building robust capture pipelines, supervising on set, and guiding teams through complex production challenges.

Ryan Valenza leads Data & AI for PlayStation Studios, partnering with first-party game teams to apply AI where it meaningfully improves game development. He previously drove machine learning strategy at Bungie and has worked across the data stack in research, government, and industry. With training in physics and mathematics, Ryan brings an eclectic, practical approach to AI—and a gamer’s perspective on the craft and future direction of the industry.

Dong Ye, Senior Client Developer at Tencent Games. He previously worked at companies including Yinhan Games and NetEase Games. He has taken part in the development of multiple in-house proprietary engines and commercial game engines, with a focus on the research and development of core technologies such as physics, animation, terrain, GPU-Driven rendering, and Procedural Content Generation (PCG).