Andy Cochrane, Immersive Content Creator, The AV Club Productions

Andrew Cochrane is an immersive creator for interactive mediums such as virtual and augmented reality, installations, live events, large-scale domes. His extensive insight into both the creative and the technological aspects of modern content creation provides a unique blend of narrative focus, artistic savvy, and high-tech problem-solving.

Currently, he is working to bring reality capture tools from other industries into media and entertainment. He is simultaneously working on projects using VR, AI, live music, and large-scale exhibition. He recently made anime films for Japanese rock artist Miyavi that combined AI and traditional animation techniques.

Andrew has been integral to the growing AI and immersive entertainment spaces, both as a creator and a thought leader – speaking at conferences around the world to educate and promote the employment of AI in content creation. He has been a vocal proponent of using AI to aid in creating art by assisting artists rather than threatening their jobs.  

Andrew was the Senior Vice President of Post Production Innovation at MSG Sphere Studios for three years, building the studio, team, and workflows to deliver video and audio content to the Sphere venue that opened in October 2023 with a U2 concert in Las Vegas. 

His past projects span the gamut of live-action, CGI, and real-time experiences for partners and clients such as Intel, Adobe, USA Today, Google, GE, Disney, USA Network, Visa, Las Vegas, and many others. Andrew has also directed commercials for Disney, LG, VIZIO, Google, Target, Barco, and M&M’s.

Elena Garcés García, Director and Senior Research Scientist, SEDDI

Elena Garces is a Director and Senior Research Scientist at SEDDI, where she leads the AI & Optics team. She has more than ten years of experience in computer graphics and vision, mainly focused on 3D digitization. Her career has followed a dual path combining industry and academic research and leadership, taking diverse roles in entities like Adobe, Technicolor, or Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. 

Ben Hansford, Professor Machine Learning & AI, USC - School of Cinematic Arts

Ben Hansford is an award-winning Director with an unrequited love for storytelling, action-comedy, and Artificial Intelligence. (Which he now teaches at USC.)Born in New Orleans LA, and raised on a steady diet of movies, fine arts, rap, and Dungeons & Dragons, Ben entered Hollywood as a VFX artist at shops like Digital Domain, The Mill, and Framestore. But his true level up came when he attended USC's Graduate School of Film & Television. Fly pelican, fly!Ben has been fortunate enough to direct for clients such as Nike, Old Spice, Bethesda, Bungie, Activision, EA, Call of Duty, Playstation, Microsoft, Mountain Dew, Zynga, P&G, Target, Netflix, Marvel, & more.

Bilawal Sidhu, Creative Technologist, Billyfx

Blending realities as billyfx. Host of The TED AI Show. Venture Scout @ A16z. Ex-Google Maps & AR/VR. 1.4M+ subs & 360M+ views.

Bilawal Sidhu is a creator, engineer, and product builder obsessed with blending reality and imagination using art and science. His work has been featured by TED, BBC, The Verge, PetaPixel, Forbes, Benzinga, Esquire and more. He is the host of the TED AI Show and a Venture Scout for Andreessen Horowitz. With more than a decade of experience in the tech industry, he spent six years as a product manager at Google. There, he made significant contributions to groundbreaking projects such as Google's Immersive View, ARCore Geospatial API and YouTubeVR. His work with organizations and people – including Warner Music, Pepsi, Elton John and Gorillaz – underscores his talent for crafting engaging experiences through technology. Bilawal’s journey into computer graphics began at 11, when he fell in love with seamlessly blending 3D into real life footage. Since then, he’s captivated more than 1.4M+ followers garnering 360M+ views across YouTube and TikTok. An alumnus of the University of Southern California, Bilawal holds a dual degree in Computer Science and Business Administration. He also likes caffeinated beverages and electric guitars.

Mike Seymour, Co-Founder, FXGuide

Mike has a Ph.D in digital humans built on a B Sc. in Pure Maths from the University of Sydney where he also did his Masters. His research is into using interactive realtime photoreal faces in new forms of Human Computer Interfaces (CHI). Mike has worked in R&D and in production, winning an AFI and being nominated for an Emmy. He has worked as a compositor, vfx supervisor and second unit director on various TV shows. He is perhaps best known for his work as a writer, consultant and educator with the web sites fxguide and fxphd. Now with huge followings, these sites provide an important link between the film and vfx community and the researchers and innovators who constantly push the limits of technology.Mike has lectured at SIGGRAPH, HICSS, FMX, CVMP and SMPTE.  Mike co-founded the Motus Lab at the University of Sydney with explores digital humans using both traditional high end computer graphics and also advanced neural rendering and Machine Learning.