Program Committee:

Stephen McAuley started in video games in 2006 at Bizarre Creations before moving to Ubisoft in 2011, where he spearheaded the graphical vision on the Far Cry brand.
In 2020, he joined Sony Santa Monica as a Lead Rendering Engineer and is now Technical Director.
He focuses on physically based lighting and shading, data-driven rendering architecture and overall improvements in visual quality.
He is also passionate about sharing his knowledge with the industry as a whole, running internal and external training and conferences.

Angelo Pesce (Twitter and Mastodon) currently serves as a senior technical director for the Roblox "digital matter" team, after having helped Roblox establish its rendering teams. Previous to joining the metaverse, he was a Technical Director for Activision Central Technology where he helped the Call of Duty studios with rendering R&D.
His interest in Computer Graphics started in his teens by joining the demoscene community.
In the past he has worked on rendering solutions for companies such as Milestone, Electronic Arts, Capcom and Relic Entertainment.
Angelo is actively involved in the Computer Graphics community, having presented at multiple venues including Siggraph, GDC and Digital Dragons, and served as a chair for I3D.
He is one of the co-authors of the latest edition of the book “Real-Time Rendering”, and he helps as an editor for the Journal of Computer Graphics Tools.

Natalya Tatarchuk (Bluesky, Mastodon) is a graphics engineer and rendering enthusiast at heart, currently serving as Chief Technology Officer at Activision Publishing. In this role, she leads the technology strategy and execution across major Activision franchises—including Call of Duty—driving innovation at the intersection of cutting-edge tech and game development at scale.
Previously, Natalya was Distinguished Technical Fellow and Chief Architect, VP of Wētā Tools at Unity, where she advanced state-of-the-art rendering, graphics performance, and character creation tools for film and games. Before that, as VP of Graphics for the Unity Editor and Engine, she led Unity's graphics initiatives across the real-time rendering stack.
Prior to Unity, she was a AAA game developer at Bungie, where she contributed to the visual innovation and cross-platform rendering of Destiny, and earlier, the Halo series—including Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach.
Earlier in her career, she worked at AMD's Graphics Products Group, where she pushed the boundaries of parallel computing and explored advanced real-time graphics techniques, graphics hardware design, and next-generation API development.
One of Natalya's passions is fostering knowledge-sharing in the real-time graphics community, as she strongly believes that advancing the state of the art is always more powerful when done together. For over two decades, she has organized and curated some of the industry's most influential technical forums, including the Advances in Real-Time Rendering, Open Problems in Real-Time Rendering, and Rendering Engine Architecture courses. Most recently, she has been co-organizing Rendering Engine Architecture conferences with a few gaming industry colleagues.

Michael Vance (Mastodon) is a Fellow Software Engineer at Activision.
He received his B.Sc in Computer Science in 1999 from Pennsylvania State University’s Schreyer Honors College. His first job in the games industry was in the niche field of Linux game development as part of the start-up Loki Software.
He later began working at Treyarch before its acquisition by Activision in 2001. As a technical director he has led engineering teams on Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, and Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, and contributed to a dozen other titles as well as each of the Call of Duty series from Modern Warfare 3 (2011) to Modern Warfare 3 (2023). He was then the Chief Technology Officer of Activision from January of 2020 until January of 2024.
He resides in Falmouth, ME, where he raises goats and chickens when not volunteering for the Falmouth Land Trust.

Organization:

Stephanie Sampson is currently an Executive Assistant at Activision, on the Central Tech team where she directly supports Natalya Tatarchuk. Previously she was at Unity Technologies, where she was responsible for developing, owning, and supporting the processes and rhythm of business for the Ziva Characters and Wētā Real-Time Teams, and the Editor Graphics Organization.
She facilitates effective communication, collaboration updates, event organization, and leads communications and dependencies across various organizations, to ensure smooth operations.
In addition to her current role, her diverse background includes roles as an Organizational Project Manager, Campaign Manager, Sales Representative, Casino Dealer, and more; showcasing her adaptability and attention to detail.
With over a decade of experience, Stephanie is a dedicated professional who consistently leverages her organizational skills and effective communication to drive success in any role she undertakes.