Color & Imaging Workflow Leader. OCIO TSC Chair, D&I Working Group Co-Chair.

Darin Grant has over 25 years experience in the industry, holding a variety of senior positions as a technologist including Head of Production Technology at Dreamworks Animation, the Global CTO at Digital Domain and Method Studios, and most recently as Group CTO of Animal Logic / SVP Technology of Netflix Feature Animation.

Eric has been the Autodesk representative on the ASWF Governing Board since March 2020.

Jeremy is the Chief Technologist for incubation projects in the Advanced Compute & Solutions division at HP Inc. Prior to joining HP, he was CTO at Jellyfish Pictures. At Jellyfish, he helped grow the company from an eight-man team to a facility of over 550 people across 15 countries. He oversaw several company expansions to different premises and has built a strong reputation for re-imagining the production pipeline using a hybrid of cloud-based and desktop-based technologies. He has a background in IT security (Canada) and earned a Master of Science in Information Technology from the University of Liverpool (UK).

Kimball Thurston is a senior researcher at Weta Digital Ltd. in New Zealand, focused on rendering and related imaging areas. For more than 20 years, he has provided software for the visual effects and general film industry. In 2012, he and his colleagues were awarded a scientific and engineering award by the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences for image processing software used for film restoration and image reparation.

Paul has over 25 years of senior management experience in technology leadership positions and a deep understanding of the importance of the role of technology in creative storytelling. Paul’s career includes 15 years as CTO at SideFX, where he oversaw the development of industry- standard visual effects and animation software tool Houdini from beta onwards. He then served as CTO of audiovisual technology firm Christie Digital, where he was a key member of the global executive team, providing strategic and technical direction to the company’s 1,500 employees across 18 countries. Most recently, Paul was CEO of the Accelerator Centre, a not-for-profit business accelerator that provides mentorship and support to over 120 high-growth technology start-up companies. Paul holds a BMath in computer science from the University of Waterloo, MASc and PhD degrees in engineering from the University of Toronto, and an MBA from the Rotman School of Management.

Rob Bredow is an Academy Award-nominated VFX Supervisor who serves as SVP, Chief Creative Officer of Industrial Light & Magic. Bredow has a particular focus on the creative strategy for the storied visual effects company where he is responsible for the company’s overall creative teams, innovation, and business development. Rob also serves in the role of SVP, Creative Innovation for Lucasfilm. Some of Bredow’s previous projects include Solo: A Star Wars Story, ILMxLAB’s story-based virtual reality experiment Trials on Tatooine, and films dating back to Independence Day.

Doing products at Epic Games, mainly for the Creator Ecosystem (Unreal, Twinmotion, Sketchfab, Quixel, Capturing Reality).