Jon Peddie Research - a technically oriented marketing, research, and management consulting firm in the graphics industry.

John Hart, Prof. CS Company: University of Illinois

John Hart is a Professor at the University of Illinois and Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Graphics. In Nov. 2001 he and his students implemented “The Ray Engine” to show the GPU’s potential for ray tracing. He now leads multicore visual computing research for the Intel/Microsoft UPCRC at Illinois.

David Kirk, Chief Scientist Company: NVIDIA

David Kirk has been Nvidia's Chief Scientist since January 1997. In 2006, Dr. Kirk was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). In 2002, Dr. Kirk received the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award. Dr. Kirk holds 50 patents and patent applications relating to graphics. Dr. Kirk has B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from CalTech.

Raja Koduri, CTO, Graphics Company: AMD Raja Koduri is the Chief Technology Officer for Graphics Product Group at AMD. He has been with ATI/AMD for seven years leading various GPU performance architecture efforts from the ATI R300 to the recent AMD 4800 series GPU technologies. Raja worked at S3 Inc. prior to ATI as Director of Graphics Architecture and has been involved with development of PC Graphics hardware, software and algorithms since 1996. He has a Master’s Degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India

Bill Mark, Senior Research Scientist Company: Intel

Bill Mark leads the advanced graphics research group at Intel. Prior to joining Intel he was on the computer sciences faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, where his group investigated flexible real-time 3D graphics techniques and architectures. From 2001-2002 Bill worked at NVIDIA as the technical lead for the design of the Cg language. Bill received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and did postdoctoral research at Stanford University.

James McCombe, CTO Company: Caustic Graphics

James McCombe is the CTO and founder of Caustic Graphics, and the visionary behind their breakthrough ray tracing technology. Prior to Caustic, James was a lead architect and developer of Apple's OpenGL implementation now used by every Apple software product. He was also chief architect of the embedded rasterization algorithms for the rendering technology used in the iPhone and video iPod.

Bill Roberts, Director of Product Management Company: Softimage

Bill Roberts is a 20-year veteran of the media and entertainment industry. Before joining Softimage, Bill held positions at Avid Technology, the CTV Television Network, and Autodesk. An expert in digital film, the Digital Intermediate Process, HDTV and the games industry, Bill’s knack for aligning shifts in technology with changes in the media production landscape have helped improve existing products, and grow companies through new product introductions and strategic acquisitions. Bill resides in Montreal.

Habib Zargarpour, Senior Art Director Company: EA

Habib Zargarpour currently serves as a Senior Art Director at EALA collaborating on a new next-gen game project. Habib has over 12 years of experience in the visual effects industry working on both games and film. Nominated for two Academy Awards in Visual Effects, for his work on Twister and The Perfect Storm while at ILM, his other projects include the pod race sequence in Star Wars Episode I, Star Trek First Contact, Spawn, and Signs, and the Need for Speed Underground and Most Wanted games.