Eric Bourque is a Director of Engineering in Autodesk’s Entertainment Creation Products group, working on Arnold, Bifrost and Maya. He has a Ph.D. in computer science from McGill University, and has been actively involved in Autodesk’s commitment to open source. He leads the CG Spotlight event series in Montreal, co-presented by Montreal ACM SIGGRAPH and Autodesk, where local studios and universities meet quarterly to present their latest results. In his spare time, Eric likes to race motorcycles and dive in underwater caves.

Laurence is passionate about connecting creators with technology. He has 20 years of experience in the Computer Animation and VFX industry, and is currently the CG supervisor at Folks VFX in Toronto, Canada. Laurence spent nine years at Autodesk working on Maya product team and is a college professor of Visual Effects and Animation at Centennial College, where he has developed courses and enjoyed teaching for over a decade.

Michael B. Nielsen is a principal engineer in the Bifrost FX team at Autodesk. Prior to joining Autodesk he worked as assistant professor at University of Aarhus in Denmark, and as a researcher at Weta Digital in New Zealand where he received screen credits on Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Tintin – Secret of the Unicorn and The Hobbit. He received his PhD in computer science from University of Aarhus.

Dr. Juergen Hagler is an academic researcher and curator working at the interface of animation, game and media art. He studied art education, experimental visual design and cultural studies at the University for Art and Design in Linz, Austria. Currently, he is a Professor for Computer Animation and Media Studies in the Digital Media department at the Hagenberg Campus of the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria. He became the academic coordinator for the Digital Arts master’s degree programme in 2009. Since 2014 he is the co-head of the research group Playful Interactive Environments with a focus on the investigation of new and natural playful forms of interaction and the use of playful mechanisms to encourage specific behavioral patterns. He has been involved in the activities of Ars Electronica since 1997 in a series of different functions. Since 2017 he is the director of the Ars Electronica Animation Festival and initiator and organizer of the symposium Expanded Animation.

Alex’s extensive experience with 3ds Max dates right the way back to high school where he gave his first demo of 3D Studio R3 in 1993. Since then, Alex has worked with a huge amount of customers mainly in the games and design visualization industry. Along the way he has produced real-time projects for Volkswagen, event agencies and medical institutes. Today Alex focuses on the optimal use of 3ds Max and Autodesk M&E software by supporting companies to optimize their creative processes.

Graduated from the Belgrade Faculty of Applied Arts in 2010. in the class of professor Rastko Ćirić, specializing in illustration and animation. Worked as an artist in Mad Head Games since 2013. Dabbles in comics, animation, portraits, caricature, miniature sculpting, FX makeup, propmaking, cosplay, scale modelling, art dolls and has too many hobbies.

Ivan Bereš and Igor Zarol, co-founders of Origin Tales, an award-winning, independent animation studio founded in 2015, located in Novi Sad, Serbia. Studio is recognized for captivating our audience with bold and powerful visual stories across multiple platforms. What we bring to the world is our experience in storytelling, character creation and adaption of IP for various entertainment media.