With degrees in Entrepreneurship and Education, Scott brings over 25 years of experience as a senior executive, entrepreneur, educator, presenter and yes, even corporate business banker, to full practical use in his authored series, The Start Me Up Guidebooks.

Scott is currently the Director of the Peter Thomson Centre for Venture Development at the British Columbia Institute of Technology located in Vancouver, British Columbia where his department helps over 100 businesses each year to be successful. Additionally, in 2009 Scott has pioneered a highly interactive telewebinar platform that is being sought after by many businesses for its useful content, engaging format and cost savings structure.

An animator who works with various media, Larry started his career in stop motion and Claymation with the Will Vinton Studios. At the studio Larry worked on stop motion projects such as the California Raisins, Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker, The Globeheads and numerous commercial projects before moving into CGI. While part of the Vinton CG commercial group, Larry animated characters for Chips Ahoy! Raid and  Fanta.

During his seven year tenure as Commercial Animation Director at PDI/Dreamworks, Larry directed commercials for many top clients including Coca-Cola, Sega, Intel, Kraft, Target, Circle K, and Saturn.

While with PDI/Dreamworks, Larry was also Sequence Lead Animator on several hit films including Antz, Batman & Robin, A Simple Wish, and was on the effects team for Mission Impossible II, Forces of Nature & The Peacemaker.  At Warner Brothers Larry served as Lead Animator for the Stop Motion Division on Tim Burton's feature Mars Attacks.

From 2003 through 2008 Larry was Department Head of Animation and Visual Effects at the Vancouver Film School.  In 2007 the program was ranked 5^th in the world by 3D World magazine. Larry is currently the Vice President of Faculty and Business Development for the Vancouver Institute of Media Arts, also known as VanArts.

 In 2002, Larry founded his own animation company,  Blam! Animation. As the company's Creative Director, Larry continues to develop commercials and short films with animated characters.

Dr. Tom Calvert is Emeritus Professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at SFU Surrey. His research interests focus on e-learning systems, computer animation and computer based tools for user interaction with multimedia systems. His work on computer animation has resulted in the Life Forms system for dance choreography and the SFU spin-off company Credo Interactive Inc. that markets and develops this software. Tom has degrees in electrical engineering from University College London, Wayne State University (MSEE) and Carnegie-Mellon University (Ph.D.).

Harold Chaput is a Technical Director at Electronic Arts where, most recently, he led the engineering team for the FIFA common gameplay engine in the acclaimed FIFA 08 and FIFA 09. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2004 for his research in robotics and infant cognition. He also founded the Austin Museum of Digital Art, the world's first museum of digital art, in 1997. Dr. Chaput has been a research consultant in educational virtual worlds for Northwestern University and North Dakota State University, user interface for Compaq Western Research Labs, and machine learning for Motorola Advanced Research Labs.

Snjezana Cvoro-Begovic is a Senior Development Director at EA Canada with over 20 years of experience in information systems and business process transformation. Snjezana joined Electronic Arts in 2005 and she is currently responsible for developing and executing a distributed development strategy in EA Sports. She has managed delivery of EA SPORTS Online Communities easportworld.com and eafootballworld.com.
 
Prior to joining Electronic Arts, Snjezana was a management consultant at IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers. She has a track record in setting up successful business models by empowering world-wide talent to deliver innovative business and technology solutions. Snjezana has also been a program and project manager for a number of complex system integration projects in several industries, and a trusted advisor to her clients on information systems strategy and prioritization of competing projects.

Steve DiPaola, both an active artist and scientist, delves into the concepts of the virtual and the social by creating virtual human and community systems both in his research and art work. An Associate Professor at Simon Fraser University, Steve is an expert on 3d facial and avatar based, and intelligent user interface systems. He directs the social based I-Viz Lab at SFU (ivizlab.sfu.ca) which strives to make computer systems bend more to the human experience. He came to SFU from Stanford University and before that spent 10 years as a senior researcher at NYIT Computer Graphics Lab, an early pioneering lab in high-end 3D techniques. He has held senior positions at leading edge companies including Electronic Arts and Saatchi & Saatchi Innovation and has consulted for HP, Kodak, Macromedia and the Institute for the Future. His art work has been exhibited international including the AIR and Tibor de Nagy galleries in NYC as well as the Whitney Museum of Art, and the IBM Gallery of Science and Art.

A public policy entrepreneur, open government activist and negotiation expert David advises the Mayor of Vancouver on open government, works with two spin-offs of the Harvard Negotiation Project and serves as a fellow at the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Queen's University. As MDM faculty, David will share his extensive knowledge and act as an advisor on industry-facing and student-pitched projects. 

Read his blog at eaves.ca

Glenn is an Academy Award-winning animation pioneer and games industry veteran. The former CEO of Dreamworks Interactive, Glenn worked with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg on a number of video games including the first title in the successful Medal of Honor series. In 2000, when Dreamworks was acquired by EA, Entis joined the gaming giant and went on to become their Chief Visual and Technology Officer. Prior to joining Dreamworks, Entis co-founded Pacific Data Images (PDI), where he co-wrote PDI's first animation system, earning him a Scientific and Technical Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures and Arts. Currently, Glenn is a General Partner with VanEdge Capital, a new venture capital fund focused on investments in interactive entertainment and digital media businesses. As a founding member of the MDM Advisory Board, Glenn has played a significant role in developing the MDM Program. As adjunct faculty, he will continue to provide guidance and leadership for the ongoing development of the collaborative design skills of MDM students.

Tom Frisina joined EA in 1997 as Vice-President of what today is called EA Partners, EA’s Third-Party Business Development & Production Studio. He was chartered with taking it from a distribution business into a world-class third party content provider to EA’s global Publishing Division. From 1997 through November 2006, Tom managed the tremendous growths of this business unit. In November 2006, he stepped down from his GM role into a newly created position of Talent Development Executive, as the lead for EA’s Strategic Education Initiative. Along with his EA experience, Tom also has extensive experience as an entrepreneur and has founded several innovative companies in the gaming and digital media areas.

Before joining the MDM faculty, George Johnson began instructing at the Vancouver Film School, focusing on the production of documentary programs. In his career, George has worked in virtually every sector of the film industry. He was formerly a Producer for the National Film Board of Canada (NFBC), during which time he produced, directed or edited more than 120 productions. Prior to joining the NFBC, he had worked on a wide range of films in the private sector and established a successful production and editing company. A British Columbia native, George learned the basics of filmmaking during the early days of the Simon Fraser University Film Workshop in Vancouver, Canada.

Steve Mamber is a pioneer in developing digital media tools and software applications for film analysis. One of Steve's most recent projects includes the Center for Hidden Camera Research, a fascinating online archive containing a collection of surveillance video where viewers can explore examples of hidden camera activity using cool digital media analysis tools that Steve developed. A professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media, UCLA, Steve is also an award-winning critic and author. As an Adjunct Professor at the MDM, Steve is working in the area of visual narrative and other forms of interactive media emerging within the intersection of film and video games.

Nuria Oliver is currently the Scientific Director for the Multimedia and Data Mining & User Modeling Research Teams in Telefonica Research (Barcelona, Spain). Her research interests  include mobile computing, multimedia data analysis, search and retrieval, smart environments, context awareness, statistical machine learning and data mining, artificial intelligence, health monitoring, social network analysis, computational social sciencies, and human computer interaction. She is currently working on the previous disciplines to build human-centric intelligent systems. in 1992 and 1994 respectively. She received her PhD degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, in 2000. Until 2007, she was a researcher at Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA. Nuria has received a number of awards, including MIT’s ‘TR100 Young Innovators Award’ (2004) and the First Spanish Award of EECS graduates (1994).

Patrick Pennefather (BFA, MFA, CELTA) is a founding faculty member at the Masters of Digital Media Program in Vancouver, Canada where he teaches collaborative, creative and adaptive intelligence in his Interdisciplinary Improvisation course and in the industry-facing projects that he manages.  His innovative/iterative approach as an educator is fueled by ongoing research into collaborative practices, and a relentless commitment to bridging the gap between what he teaches and what is demanded by a rapidly changing, team-based digital media industry.   He facilitates a student-centered learning approach, empowering learners to transform into creative and effective collaborators on multi-disciplinary project teams with the end goal of becoming the designers of their own digital future.  His iterative approach to teaching and managing is informed by improvisational techniques gathered from his experience as a professional comedian and clown on over a thousand large-scale events and performances, and as an award-winning composer on over fifteen hundred live and multi-media productions. He has mentored and managed industry-funded projects with Microsoft, InTransit BC, UBC Fisheries, Media Awareness Network, Pacific Wild, Cultural Olympiad Digital Edition 2010, and more. He is currently working as a consultant for numerous NGO’s in the area of serious gaming. As a composer he has worked with numerous clients including Bard on the Beach, Push Festival, Electric Company Theatre, Touchstone, University of Florida, UCLA Long Beach, CBC Radio & Television, Bravo Television, Comedy Network, City of Vancouver, McDonald's Special Events, Cossette Communications, and DDB. To hear some of his music go to www.patrickp.biz!

Patrick is also faculty lead and curriculum designer with the Pre-MDM Program and the Centre for Digital Media's IDEA-x Program (Immersive Digital Experience Academic Program): a four-week intensive, cross-cultural, English and multimedia training program designed for international undergraduate students.

Dr. Gerri Sinclair's cross-domain career includes more than 20 years' experience spanning the fields of internet and new media technology, entrepreneurial business, academic research, and government policy.

Sinclair is the former Executive Director of the Masters of Digital Media Program and CEO of the Centre for Digital Media - a high-tech facility that houses the MDM Program at Great Northern Way Campus (GNWC). In 2006, GNWC received a $40.5M government grant from the BC Government to establish a world-leading Graduate Degree Program in the field of Digital Media. This powerhouse Master's Program is already garnering awards and attracting the best and brightest students from around the world.

Prior to joining MDM and GNWC, Dr. Sinclair was the chair of The Telecom Policy Review, advising the Federal Government of Canada on the policy and regulatory environment required to support an advanced telecommunications framework. She was formerly the General Manager of MSN Canada, as well as the founder and CEO of NCompass Labs, an Internet web content management company spun out of Simon Fraser University in 1996 and acquired by Microsoft in 2001.

A former IBM Consulting Scholar as well as a Visiting Scientist at IBM Research in New York, Dr. Sinclair was also the first President of the British Columbia Government Premier’s Technology Council, and the founding director of the ExCITE lab at Simon Fraser University, the first new media technology R&D centre in Canada.

She has served on several government and corporate boards including Telus Corporation and BC Telecom, as well as Canada’s Information Highway Advisory Council and the National Broadband Taskforce. She is currently a director of the Toronto Stock Exchange, Ballard Power, Canadian Foundation for Innovation, Canadian Communications Research Council, and Genome BC. She recently was appointed to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Dr. Gerri Sinclair is the recipient of the YWCA Woman of Distinction award, the Canadian Women in Communications Woman of the Year award, the Canadian Women in New Media Pioneer award, the Influential Woman in Business award, the Sarah Kirke award for the most outstanding Canadian woman in High Tech. In 2005 she was honoured with the Canadian Consumer Choice Award for Business Woman of the Year. Most recently, she was recognized by the Canadian Public Policy Forum as a Testimonial Award Winner for her outstanding contribution to the quality of public policy and public management in Canada. She holds a Ph.D. in Renaissance drama as well as an honorary Doctor of Science in Computing Science from the University of British Columbia.

Matt Toner is a successful and innovative game designer, digital media producer, and entrepreneur, and currently President of the Vancouver-based social media company Zeros 2 Heroes Media. Matt began work in the digital media industry as a co-founder of CanApple New Media, a founding executive of We Media Inc, and Managing Director of Oven Digital's Canadian office. More recently, he has worked on convergent television projects for Making the Cut 2 and the award-winning Bodog TV. As President of Zeros 2 Heroes, Matt has driven the company’s business vision and assembled a team whose skills range from database architecture to the intricacies of six-panel layout for mobile comics. Matt is also an experienced instructor, and has designed and led the initial Vancouver Film School Game Design stream, and has taught Game Design at SFU/SIAT and the Art Institute of Vancouver.

Tom Wujec is a Fellow at Autodesk, a leading innovator in 3D design software. As a recognized thought-leader and award-winning innovator, Tom works with leading-edge Fortune 500 companies to foster visualization practices from simple digital sketching tools to advanced visual collaboration systems.  Tom is a former creative director, writer, and animator for museums and cultural institutions. He has degrees in Astronomy and Psychology and is the author of three books on creative thinking, including Pumping Ions which has been translated into more than twenty languages. Tom will be joining fellow adjunct professor Glenn Entis in developing the collaborative design skills of the students of the MDM Program.