Leadership

Steve May’s tenure at Pixar Animation Studios spans 25 years, where he’s currently CTO. He oversees all technology at the studio, including software R&D, information systems, RenderMan, and the development of visual effects tools and processes for each film. Steve began his tenure at Pixar in 1998 as a shading and modeling technical director on “Toy Story 2.” For Pixar’s next film, “Monsters, Inc.,” he worked as the simulation and effects sequence supervisor and helped to pioneer the fur technology and overall look for the character Sullivan. He then went on to work on the Academy Award-winning feature “Finding Nemo” as the CG supervisor for the shark characters and Sydney Harbor environment. Steve served as the effects supervisor on Golden Globe-winner “Cars,” overseeing all of the film’s visual effects. His next role was as the supervising technical director for the Academy Award-winning feature film “Up.” During his tenure as CTO, Steve also served as supervising technical director for the final shot production of the Academy Award-winning film “Brave.” Steve received a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering as well as B.S. and M.S. degrees from The Ohio State University.

Guy Martin is Director of Open Source & Standards at NVIDIA, working specifically with the Omniverse platform. In this role, he’s responsible for helping shape the strategy of key open source and standards efforts such as Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD), Material Definition Language (MDL), and many others. He also provides support for the full lifecycle of open source efforts within Omniverse, as well as consulting on this for other parts of the company. His experience includes significant software engineering in a variety of areas (embedded, applications and server-side) as well as stints building and leading open source program offices at organizations such as Red Hat, Samsung and Autodesk. Prior to NVIDIA, he served as the Executive Director for OASIS Open, a hybrid open source and open standards consortium, where he worked to combine the best of both communities to move innovative technologies forward.

Guido Quaroni currently works at Adobe as senior director of engineering of 3D & immersive, overseeing the engineering teams responsible for Adobe Dimension, Adobe Medium, and the Substance by Adobe (Designer, Painter and Alchemist). Prior to joining Adobe in January 2021, Guido worked at Pixar for 24 years on movies like “Monsters University” and “Toy Story 3,” where he served as supervising technical director, and more recently as the vice president of software R&D, where he oversaw the studio graphics and animation software, including the USD Open Source project and the Academy Award-winning animation software Presto.

Gordon is a Technical Fellow at Autodesk working in the Media and Entertainment group where he’s responsible for software architecture. Since joining Alias Wavefront in 2001, he’s had the pleasure of working with many immensely talented game and film studios across the globe, and the privilege of working with the incredible development teams behind Arnold, 3ds Max, MotionBuilder, ShotGrid, the Academy Award winning Maya, and most recently, Autodesk’s new Flow production platform.

Travis is the Senior Standards Manager for the Vision Products Group (VPG) at Apple. Prior to joining VPG, he was the Senior Product manager for audio, video and graphics software technologies at Apple covering AirPrint, HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), Metal, QuickTime and others.

Mark Tucker is a Senior Software Architect at SideFX, where he has worked for over twenty years. For the past six years he has been leading the team developing Solaris, Houdini’s native USD look development, layout, and lighting context.

Sean Snyders is a Distinguished Engineer at Trimble Inc. with over 20 years of experience in research, startups, and organizations of various sizes. Sean specializes in AI and neural networks, holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science, summa cum laude, from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, and has several peer-reviewed international publications. Throughout his career, Sean has contributed to multiple domains, including CAD/CAM, visualization and simulation in engineering disciplines, and technological advancements in visual effects for films such as Avatar, The Hobbit, and Planet of the Apes. He has also developed and sold hardware products to the film industry and played key roles in startup funding and acquisition due diligence. Sean’s approach integrates deep research and creative exploration with a disciplined focus on transforming ideas into actionable solutions. He fosters environments where collaboration and diversity flourish, mentoring and directing teams toward co-created success.

Aaron Luk is Director of Product Management leading Universal Scene Description (USD) Ecosystem efforts at NVIDIA, including oversight, integration, and optimization of USD and Hydra paradigms across all components of Omniverse. Previously, Aaron co-developed and deployed USD into production pipelines at Pixar.

Nick Porcino has been involved in Media and Entertainment since the early days of 8-bit game consoles, with a focus on bringing digital collaboration technologies into the hands of people making creative content. He’s built run time engines and tools for Bandai, Disney, LucasArts, Industrial Light + Magic, Apple, Oculus, and now Pixar Animation Studios, and has been focused on bringing OpenUSD to the creative and technical community since before its public launch.

Mathieu Sanchez is a Senior Software Engineer on Adobe’s Substance Modeler team. They have always been fascinated by geometry representation, a passion that began with their work in computer graphics. During their PhD, they focused on Function Representation (FRep), a topic that has also shaped much of their professional experience. At Adobe, Mathieu Sanchez works with various volumetric representations, contributing to the development of tools for 3D modeling and design.

Martin is a senior manager at NVIDIA working on Omniverse, focused on data optimization, geometric modeling and USD data exchange, having joined Nvidia in 2021. Prior to this, Martin was initially a developer on Maya for 13 years, from before the Maya 1.0 release, first at Alias/Wavefront and then Autodesk. This was followed by leadership of a team designing and building a parallel dependency graph engine for the Academy Award winning Premo animation tool at DreamWorks Animation, and then work on the VR Daydream project at Google.

Madison Huang is director of product marketing at NVIDIA, responsible for driving positioning and marketing strategy for NVIDIA Omniverse, the platform for developing industrial digitalization applications and services with OpenUSD and RTX SDKs and APIs. Prior to NVIDIA, Madison led marketing strategy and development in the luxury industry, working for the Louis Vuitton-Moët Hennessy Group. Madison received an MBA with dual concentrations in Marketing and Strategy from London Business School.

Jocelyn is Sr. Manager, Media & Entertainment Audiences Marketing at Autodesk. In this role, she’s responsible for shaping the strategy and creative development of marketing campaigns and experiences for on-set production, visual effects, animation, and game development audiences. She has over 12 years of experience working at the intersection of marketing and technology at Autodesk, with her career spanning Autodesk’s Media & Entertainment portfolio. During her tenure, she has led the marketing strategy and roll-out of key open source and standards efforts at Autodesk, including Maya and Bifrost USD. She also sits on the marketing outreach committee for the Academy Software Foundation.

Jonathan Stone is a Lead Rendering Engineer at the Lucasfilm Advanced Development Group and the Chair of the MaterialX Technical Steering Committee at the Academy Software Foundation. He has designed real-time rendering and look-development technology for Lucasfilm since 2010, working on productions including The Mandalorian, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and Pacific Rim. Previously he led graphics development at Double Fine Productions, where he designed the rendering engines for Brütal Legend and Psychonauts.

Anders has over twenty years of experience in photorealistic simulation of lighting and materials both as a creative and as a developer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards as a visual effects supervisor, and developed the popular open source alShaders material library. He currently leads product management for rendering and materials in NVIDIA Omniverse where he is focused on physically accurate rendering of digital twins and seamless interchange of materials and lighting in OpenUSD.

Adam is a Senior Director of Simulation Technology at NVIDIA. As part of NVIDIA Omniverse and Robotics, Adam leads teams advancing open source simulation projects such as PhysX and Newton.

David Eberle is the Tools Simulation Lead at Pixar Animation Studios. He has worked on numerous simulators used for animation and visual effects at Disney, Havok, PDI/Dreamworks and Pixar. He holds a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of South Carolina and an M.S. in Mathematics from Texas A&M University. David received a SciTech award in 2023 for his work on Pixar’s deformable simulator and has co-authored a Siggraph course on this work. Since 2020, he has been working with industry professionals from NVidia, Havok, SideFX, Apple and others to develop USD schemas to support rigid body and deformable simulation.