Randall W. Hill, Jr. became the executive director of the USC Institute for Creative Technologies in 2006. A leader in understanding how classic storytelling and high-tech tools can create meaningful learning experiences, Hill steers the institute’s exploration of how virtual humans, mixed reality worlds, advanced computer graphics, dramatic films, social simulations and educational videogames can augment more traditional methods for imparting lessons. He oversees a diverse team of scientists, storytellers, artists and educators as they pioneer and evaluate new ways to deliver effective teaching and training in areas including leadership, cultural awareness, negotiation and mental health treatment and assessment.

He is a research professor in the computer science department at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. His research focus is on using intelligent tutoring systems and virtual humans to augment immersive learning environments. Hill’s career at USC began in 1995 at the USC Information Sciences Institute where he worked on the development of models of human behavior and decision-making for real-time simulation environments. He joined the USC Institute for Creative Technologies in 2000 as a senior scientist. Prior to joining USC, Hill served as a group supervisor and the work area manager for network automation in the Deep Space Network Advanced Technology Program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Hill graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Military Academy at West Point and earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the University of Southern California.

Professor John Shi is currently the Director of Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Smart Cities Research Institute of PolyU, Director of PolyU-Shenzhen Technology and Innovation Research Institute (Futian), Chair Professor in Geographic Science and Remote Sensing, and Director of Joint Research Laboratory on Spatial Information of PolyU and Wuhan University. He is Academician of International Eurasian Academy of Sciences and Fellow of Academy of Social Sciences (UK). He earned his doctoral degree from University of Osnabruck in Vechta, Germany in 1994. A Fellow of Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors, Professor Shi also serves as President of International Society for Urban Informatics and Editor-in-Chief of International Journal Urban Informatics.

His research covers urban informatics for smart cities, geo-informatic science and remote sensing, artificial-intelligence-based object extraction and change detection from satellite imagery, intelligent analytics and quality control for spatial big data, and mobile mapping and 3-D modelling based on LiDAR and remote sensing imagery. He has published almost 300 research articles in journals indexed by Web of Science and 20 books. He is among the worldly top 2% cited researchers according to the standardized citation indicators published by Elsevier BV and scholar in Stanford University. He has 34 patents grants and 33 other patent applications filed.

Professor Shi has won Natural Science Award, China’s highest award for fundamental research, in 2007; Distinguished Scholar Prize by CPGIS, Gold Medal in Geneva Invention Expo, and Smart 50 Awards (US) in 2021; Founder’s Award by International Spatial Accuracy Research Association in 2020; China’s Science and Technology Progress Award in Surveying and Mapping (Grand Award) in 2017; Wang Zhizhuo Award by International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing in 2012; and ESRI Award for Best Scientific Paper in Geo-informatic Science by American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing in 2006.

Gerard Pons-Moll is a Professor at the University of Tübingen, at the department of Computer Science. He is also the head of the Emmy Noether independent research group "Real Virtual Humans", senior researcher at the Max Planck for Informatics (MPII) in Saarbrücken, Germany, and faculty at the IMPRS-IS (International Max Planck Research School - Intelligent Systems in Tübingen) and faculty at Saarland Informatics Campus. His research lies at the intersection of computer vision, computer graphics and machine learning -- with special focus on analyzing people in videos, and creating virtual human models by "looking" at real ones. His research has produced some of the most advanced statistical human body models of pose, shape, soft-tissue and clothing (which are currently used for a number of applications in industry and research), as well as algorithms to track and reconstruct 3D people models from images, video, depth, and IMUs.

His work received several awards such as the Emmy Noether grant’18, German Pattern Recognition Award’19, and best papers and nominations at CVPR’21, CVPR’20, IVA’21, 3DV’22, 3DV’18, Eurographics’17 and BMVC’2013.