GUEST SPEAKERS

Real-Time enthusiast, Alexandre Menard has more than 20+ year experience in the vfx industry from previs to final pixel. He is currently the HOD of visualization at rodeofx, a department he built from the ground up tapping from his previous previs experience. He also occupied the role of cg supervisor and worked on many high-profile project such as Strangers Things, Fantastic Beast and Dumbo.

Teddy Wong is the Chief Technology Officer of Squeeze Studio. He oversees the operations and delivery of technology at Squeeze. For the last 15 years, he has built high performance technology teams for companies such as RodeoFX, SSENSE and Intelcom Express in the greater Montreal region. Scaling their reach into international markets. His goal is to continue enabling companies through technology, while focusing on culture and the people who represent it.

Shahin Rabbani is an R&D Scientist at Ubisoft. He joined La Forge R&D in 2016 after earning his Ph.D. at McGill in computer animation and control of physically-based humanoids. His current fields of interest are fluids simulation for real-time applications and rigid body destruction.

During his 11-year career, Samuel Guiraudou had the opportunity to work with different media, from TV to feature film, VFX and Animation, and within various departments such as surfacing, matte painting, lighting and compositing.
Since he joined Mikros Animation in 2014, he’s built his experience as an artist and a supervisor on very different projects. Today he leverages his technical and artistic experience to work with producers, supervisors, TD’s and artists to build the environments in which the stories are told. He also ensures data and information seamlessly flow across departments to help shaping creatives’ vision.

Mathieu has been working at Hybride for the past 17 years where he’s been leading and developing various R&D projects aimed at helping solve difficult production challenges by giving easy-to-use tools for artists allowing them to deliver shots as fast and as easy as possible. Mathieu and his team love to break conventional pipelines by integrating new technologies in the fields of rendering, simulation, animation and procedural modeling so they can then rebuild better more user friendly ways of delivering shots, and finding creative solutions to solve complex problems.

With a Ph.D. in Physics, years of industrial research experience in AI, and a passion for VFX, Martine Bertrand is researching novel approaches to keep dazzling audiences around the world at DNEG

Following a bachelor’s degree in physics, Marc-André held several positions in the video game industry, from gameplay programmer to physics programmer to R&D researcher. Following the competition of his master’s degree in A.I., he held a position as an AI specialist at Eidos Sherbrooke.

Marc Petit has been the Vice President in charge of the Unreal Engine ecosystem at Epic Games since 2016, previously he held executive positions at Softimage (1991-2000), Autodesk (2002-2013) and Taxelco/Teo Taxi (2014-2016)

Currently director of the Loomi Animation studio, he is passionate about digital creation projects. Previously, Louis was creator and general manager of international events in digital animation and video games at Pixel Quebec, including the Pixel Challenge, Cartoon Connection and Pixel Animation. His next challenge is to complete an Olympic triathlon…

Ugo Louche joined Eidos-Montreal in 2019 as a machine learning expert. He received his PhD in machine learning in 2016 under the supervision of Prof. Liva Ralaivola. His research activities are mainly focused on active learning and linear classification. Ugo believes that machine learning has the potential to change the way we create games for the better, allowing developers to focus on creative tasks and relegating boring tasks to AIs. He is committed to making this change a reality and his work at Eidos-Montreal focuses on all aspects of machine learning that can help in game development.

Josiane is the director of Québec EPIX, the technocreativity niche of excellence that brings together companies in video games, animation and immersive experiences in Québec City. Her mission is to bring together industry players and lead initiatives to support the development and influence of the National-Capital animation cluster.

Experienced research director with demonstrated experience in applied research for the visual effects industry, including two best scientific paper awards. Expert in Houdini with extensive experience in C+, and experienced in C#, Java, Python, PHP, and software engineering. Jonathan has always loved puzzles and has a passion for abstract problems, which leads him to work on unsolved mathematical problems as a PhD student in computer graphics at the Graduate School of Technology, his research and publications focus on fluid simulation, topological changes and texture surface synthesis.

Jinsong Zhang completed his Ph.D. at Université Laval under the supervision of Jean-François Lalonde. His research work involves understanding natural images through lighting modeling and deep learning. His interests include computer vision, computer graphics, and AR&VR, especially the interaction between them. He is currently working at Bentley Systems as an Applied AI Scientist.

Henrique Weber, MS, is a PhD student in Computer Vision and Systems Laboratory of Laval University. Previously, he worked as Computer Vision Researcher at Institute National d’Optique, Québec. He received a Master degree in Computer Science from Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil in 2016. His main interests lie in interpreting the real world through images using Computer Vision and Deep Learning. More specifically, he seeks to uncover the environment surrounding already taken pictures.

Born in Mexico but adopted by Quebec Canada, Guillermo Dupinet is a film passionate, especially those involving animation. With his 20+year experience in the Animation and VFX industry, he’s collaborated on a numerous projects, bringing animated characters that tell a story to life. He has been credited in Advertising, TV series, high-end videogames and films using various methods in a broad variety of styles.

He joined Mikros Animation three years ago as Lead Animator on The SpongeBob Movie : Sponge on the Run and evolved as Animation Supervisor on PAW Patrol : The Movie.

François Lord has been working in the visual effects field for over 25 years. He first graduated from NAD, worked as a general CGI artist, then became a project supervisor and specialized in optimizing production pipelines and creating tools to facilitate artists’ work and workflow efficiency. François has worked at BUZZ, Big Bang animations, Oblique FX, Framestore where he was CG supervisor and Rodeo FX where he was Head of pipeline. François is an architect of solutions adapted to the VFX context.

Today Francois is deepening USD implementations in production contexts and works as a consultant to companies. Since June 2021 Francois is a professor at the NAD school of the University of Quebec in Chicoutimi.

Florian joined Ubisoft La Forge (Montreal) in January 2020 and is currently an R&D programmer on FaceShifter, Ubisoft’s internal face creation tool. He is taking advantage of recent research on 3D hair to take creative assistance to the next level.

Florian received his M.Sc.Eng. in Computer Science from INSA Rennes (France) and his M.Eng. in Information Technology from ÉTS (Canada). Prior to Ubisoft, he experienced academic research in Japan, which convinced him that he was made for industrial research

Before he became Technical Director at the NFB Animation Studio in 2011, Eloi spent nearly two decades helping advertising agencies and corporations go beyond their creative limits. Drawing on his VFX expertise and creative problem-solving skills, Eloi has worked on many award winning productions, including a number of stereoscopic films. Currently, he is working on a variety of linear and interactive projects using 3D printers, head-mounted displays, projections, different types of sensors and mobile platforms.

Brigitte joined SYNTHÈSE as Executive Director after more than twenty years as a manager in the media and entertainment field (film, television, digital media) in the public, private and association sectors, both nationally and internationally. She was previously the Executive Director of “Femmes du Cinéma, de la télévision et des médias numériques”, the Quebec chapter of Women in Film and Television International. She began her career as a legal advisor in television production companies before joining Telefilm Canada, where she was Director of Coproductions and Director of International Relations and managed several teams in business relations and in the administration of the Canada Media Fund programs.

Co-founder and Executive Producer Archita Ghosh’s business expertise has propelled E.D. FILMS’ growth trajectory since she joined the company in 2013. Working alongside the studio’s talented team to produce award-winning, artist-led animation, immersive and mixed reality (XR) experiences, she has also worked to commercialize unique creative tools at the studio.
Fluent in Bengali, English, Spanish and French, Archita sits on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Media Producers Association as well as M.E.D.I.A. (Media•Equity•Diversity•Inclusion•Accessibility).