WMaurice Benayoun is a French pioneer, contemporary new-media artist, curator and theorist based in Paris and Hong Kong. Often conceptual, Maurice Benayoun's work constitutes a critical investigation of the mutations in the contemporary society induced by the emerging or recently adopted technologies.
WMark Bolas is a researcher exploring perception, agency, and intelligence. He is a Professor of Interactive Media in the USC Interactive Media Division, USC School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, Director of their Interactive Narrative and Immersive Technologies Lab, Director of Mixed Reality Laboratory at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies, and chairman of Fakespace Labs in Mountain View, California. Bolas is currently on leave from USC, working on the Hololens team at Microsoft.
WFrederick Phillips "Fred" Brooks Jr. is an American computer architect, software engineer, and computer scientist, best known for managing the development of IBM's System/360 family of computers and the OS/360 software support package, then later writing candidly about the process in his seminal book The Mythical Man-Month. Brooks has received many awards, including the National Medal of Technology in 1985 and the Turing Award in 1999.
WBoštjan Burger is a Slovenian informatician, geographer, a panoramic and VR panoramic photographer and a speleologist. He was founder of the Burger Landmarks website and had retired as computer programmer in the 1990s to become a geographic researcher on the hydrology of waterfalls. He used VR panoramas as a tool in the research of landscapes. He was greatly influenced by geographer Don Bain for documenting the landscape with VR panoramas and Hans Nyberg for his use of QuickTime VR fullscreen panoramas.
WJohn D. Carmack II is an American computer programmer, video game developer and engineer. He co-founded the video game company id Software and was the lead programmer of its games Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, and their sequels. Carmack made innovations in 3D computer graphics, such as his Carmack's Reverse algorithm for shadow volumes. In 2013, he resigned from id to work full-time at Oculus VR, where he served as CTO and later Consulting CTO in 2019.
WCarolina Cruz-Neira is a Spanish-Venezuelan-American computer engineer, researcher, designer, educator, and a pioneer of virtual reality (VR). She is known for inventing the CAVE automatic virtual environment. She previously worked at Iowa State University (ISU), University of Louisiana at Lafayette, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and she is currently an Agere Chair Professor at University of Central Florida (UCF).
WEla Darling is an American pornographic actress and co-founder of virtual reality company VRTube.xxx. According to the New York Times, Darling first used virtual reality technology to record an erotic scenario in 2014.
WChar Davies is a Canadian contemporary artist known for creating immersive virtual reality (VR) artworks. A founding director of Softimage, Co, she is considered a world leader in the field of virtual reality and a pioneer of bio-feedback VR. Davies is based in rural Québec and San Francisco.
WScott Fisher is the Professor and Founding Chair of the Interactive Media Division in the USC School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, and Director of the Mobile and Environmental Media Lab there. He is an artist and technologist who has worked extensively on virtual reality, including pioneering work at NASA, Atari Research Labs, MIT's Architecture Machine Group and Keio University.
WHenry Fuchs is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Federico Gil Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). He is also an adjunct professor in biomedical engineering. His research interests are in computer graphics, particularly rendering algorithms, hardware, virtual environments, telepresence systems, and applications in medicine.
WThomas A. Furness III is an American inventor, professor, and virtual reality pioneer based in Seattle, Washington. He is a Professor in the University of Washington Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, and the founder of the Human Interface Technology Lab at the University of Washington and its sister labs at the University of Canterbury and University of Tasmania. Known for his contributions in developing human interface technology, he has earned the title, "Grandfather of Virtual Reality."
WMyron Krueger is an American computer artist who developed early interactive works. He is also considered to be one of the first generation virtual reality and augmented reality researchers.
WJaron Zepel Lanier is an American computer philosophy writer, computer scientist, visual artist, and composer of contemporary classical music. Considered a founder of the field of virtual reality, Lanier and Thomas G. Zimmerman left Atari in 1985 to found VPL Research, Inc., the first company to sell VR goggles and Wired Glove. In the late 1990s, Lanier worked on applications for Internet2, and in the 2000s, he was a visiting scholar at Silicon Graphics and various universities. In 2006 he began to work at Microsoft, and from 2009 has worked at Microsoft Research as an Interdisciplinary Scientist.
WBrenda Laurel, Ph.D. is a video game designer and researcher. She is an advocate for diversity and inclusiveness in video games, a "pioneer in developing virtual reality", a public speaker, and an academic. She is also a board member at several companies and organizations. She was founder and chair of the Graduate Design Program at California College of the Arts (2006–2012). as well as the Media Design graduate program at Art Center College of Design (2000–2006). She has worked for Atari, co-founded the game development studio Purple Moon, and served as an interaction design consultant for multiple companies including Sony Pictures, Apple, and Citibank. Her current work focuses on STE(A)M learning, and the application of augmented reality within it.
WRichard Bowen Loftin, better known as R. Bowen Loftin, is an American academic and the former chancellor of the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. He came to Missouri in 2013 after serving as the 24th President of Texas A&M University.
WPalmer Freeman Luckey is an American entrepreneur best known as the founder of Oculus VR and designer of the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality head-mounted display that is widely credited with reviving the virtual reality industry. In 2017, Luckey departed Oculus and founded defense contractor Anduril Industries, a defense technology company focused on autonomous drones and sensors for military applications. Luckey ranks number 22 on Forbes' 2016 list of America's richest entrepreneurs under 40.
WNonny de la Peña is an American journalist, documentary filmmaker, and entrepreneur.
WJoseph Warren Robinett Jr. is a designer of interactive computer graphics software, notable as the developer of the Atari 2600's Adventure — the first graphical adventure video game — and as a founder of The Learning Company, where he designed Rocky's Boots and Robot Odyssey. More recently he has worked on virtual reality projects.
WLawrence Jay Rosenblum is an American mathematician, and Program Director for Graphics and Visualization at the National Science Foundation.
WDaniel J. Sandin is an American video and computer graphics artist, designer and researcher. He is a Professor Emeritus of the School of Art & Design at University of Illinois at Chicago, and co-director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is an internationally recognized pioneer in computer graphics, electronic art and visualization.
WRobert Fletcher "Bob" Sproull is an American computer scientist, who worked for Oracle Corporation where he was director of Oracle Labs in Burlington, Massachusetts. He is currently an adjunct professor at the College of Information and Computer Sciences, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
WNicole Stenger is a French-born American artist, pioneer in Virtual Reality and Internet movies. In 1989–1991, she was a research Fellow at MIT. In 1991–1992, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Human Interface Technology Laboratory (Hitlab) in Seattle. Her works have been featured in the SIGGRAPH Art Show, the FILE Festival, the JavaMuseum, the Cartier Art Foundation and are part of the Archive of Digital Art (ADA). In 2013, she was included in the "Contemporary women artists on the web" collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, in Washington DC. To this day, Stenger is considered to be one of the first artists to explore the artistic virtual reality medium.
WIvan Edward Sutherland is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer, widely regarded as a pioneer of computer graphics. His early work in computer graphics as well as his teaching with David C. Evans in that subject at the University of Utah in the 1970s was pioneering in the field. Sutherland, Evans, and their students from that era developed several foundations of modern computer graphics. He received the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery in 1988 for the invention of Sketchpad, an early predecessor to the sort of graphical user interface that has become ubiquitous in personal computers. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, as well as the National Academy of Sciences among many other major awards. In 2012 he was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology for "pioneering achievements in the development of computer graphics and interactive interfaces".
WGunpei Yokoi , sometimes transliterated Gumpei Yokoi, was a Japanese video game designer. He was a long-time Nintendo employee, best known as creator of the Game & Watch handheld system, inventor of the "cross" shaped Control Pad, the original designer of the Game Boy, and producer of a few long-running and critically acclaimed video game franchises, such as Metroid and Kid Icarus.