Prof. Jan Adamczyk, Hochschule der Medien

Prof. Jan Adamczyk is a highly experienced German VFX Supervisor, with over ten years of experience in the visual effects industry. He has worked on a variety of international feature films and TV productions, including The Dark Knight, Sherlock Holmes, and Star Trek - Into Darkness, among others.

Prof. Adamczyk has worked at VFX studios located in Stuttgart, Munich, London, and Berlin, and has received multiple national and international award nominations and wins for his work. He is an active member of  professional organizations, such as the Visual Effects Society, the Deutsche Filmakademie, and the Deutsche Akademie für Fernsehen.

Since the winter semester of 2018/19, Prof. Adamczyk has been a valuable member of the visual effects team and animation team at the Stuttgart Media University. In this role, he brings his practical experience and artistic talent to the courses, as well as his connections to the local and international VFX industry.

Professor Susanne Marschall, Professor, University of Tuebingen

Susanne Marschall is Professor of Media Studies with a special focus on audiovisual media, film and TV at the Department of Media Studies and Director of the Center of Media Competence at Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. The main areas of her research are the theory and history of film and television, especially animation, transcultural cinema and serial narration. As a well-known film expert (Filmdienst, Deutsche Welle, SWR, HR, NDR …), she has published monographs and essays (Schüren, Fink, edition text&kritik, Königshausen&Neumann etc.), film critiques and TV and radio interviews on subjects such as film and TV studies, literature and theatre studies as well as visual and cultural studies. On a micro-level and positioned between cognitive science and art history, she conducts research on special areas of visual perception and visual aesthetics dealing with phenomena like light and colour design, mise-en-scène, body movement and body narrative and, last but not least, animation or Artificial Intelligence. Together with Hannes Rall she is the co-autor and co-director of the documentary Hölderlins Echo and of a VR-Experience about the famous poet Hölderlin for the Hölderlin Museum.

Ben Kent, Research Engineering Manager, Foundry

Ben is the Research Engineering Manager at Foundry as well as a screenwriter and film director. After completing his masters in Engineering at Cambridge University, he joined Foundry in 2001, at first developing state of the art effects plug-ins and more recently leading the A.I. research team. He was one of the team to win a 2007 Academy Award for Science and Engineering for his work on Foundry's Furnace toolset. As a filmmaker he's produced over twenty shorts and his feature film debut, comedy horror Killer Weekend was released around the world in 2019. 

Jonathan Harris, CEO & Visual Effects Supervisor, dupe vfx

Jonathan founded Dupe VFX in 2018 and set it on a course to become a sustainable conscious business from the offset. Proudly the world's first Visual Effects B Corporation, a 1% for the planet member and recently Carbon neutral, Dupe is leading the way for our industry on the topic of sustainable business. All this whilst delivering gorgeous work on some of the world's biggest TV shows. 

Prof. Volker Helzle, Head of Research and Development, Animationsinstitut, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg

Prof. Volker Helzle is in charge of Research & Development at Animationsinstitut of Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. After graduating from Stuttgart Media University in 2000 he moved to California and worked at Eyematic Interfaces on the eve of marker-less facial tracking tools and content. In 2003 he joined Filmakademie to supervise Research & Development. He is the senior lecturer for the Technical Director course and FMX program consultant. In 2013 Volker received the honorary professorship of Filmakademie.

During the past 20 years Volker raised funding for a substantial amount of regional and European Union projects in the scope of Animation, VFX, Virtual Production and Immersive Media. The most recent projects are EMIL, the European Media and Immersion Lab (emil-xr.eu) and MAX-R (max-r.eu) . Being a C-64 kid of the 80ties, Volker's life was strongly influenced by video games and early computer graphics. To this day he is a passionate gamer but also finds interest in analog activities like mountain hiking, gardening or yoga. As of January 2019 an improved version of Volker is available that keeps him busy day and night.