Building the Future
of Human Potential

Michele Atwater

Michele is a library-museum professional with an enduring passion for lifelong learning. Her eclectic academic background includes Business, Art History, Museum Studies, Literature, and a Master's degree in Library and Information Science (MLIS) with an emphasis in Emerging Technology.

She is currently engaged in UX/Usability Studies, creating wireframes, prototypes, user task matrix trajectories, actionable user personas, and usability reports. Her work includes conducting comprehensive surveys and observational interviews to document the end-to-end experience of stakeholder groups as they interact with immersive VR/XR spaces.

Her background spans information communities research, marketing and stakeholder engagement, graphic arts and photography, and early training in music, theatre, and dance. Her ongoing interest in STEM and Emerging Technology drives her work in iterative creative innovation through empathetic, user-centric design thinking.

Mark Billinghurst

Mark Billinghurst is a professor in computer interface technologies, with a focus on applications of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology. He has been a Fellow of the IEEE since 2023.

Billinghurst has served as professor of Human Computer Interaction at the University of South Australia, professor at the University of Auckland's Bioengineering Institute, and director of the Empathic Computing Laboratory. He founded and formerly directed the University of Canterbury's HIT Lab NZ.

In 2001, he co-founded ARToolworks and helped create ARToolKit, an open source AR development platform. He is a founder of the SuperVentures AR/VR fund. His previous work includes roles at ATR Research Labs in Japan, British Telecom, Nokia, Google, Amazon, and the MIT Media Laboratory. He has published over 650 research papers and is one of the most cited AR researchers in the world.

Tom Furness

For nearly six decades, Dr. Tom Furness has pursued a quest to build interfaces between humans, machines, minds, and hearts. That journey began with the challenge of helping people see, understand, and act beyond the limits of ordinary perception, leading into advanced cockpit systems, virtual and augmented reality, wearable displays, retinal displays, photonics, and new ways of using light to connect human beings with knowledge, experience, and one another.

His students and colleagues have gone on to start more than 25 companies in the VR/AR space, carrying these ideas into medicine, education, training, design, entertainment, humanitarian work, and new forms of human expression.

His lifelong exploration of light as both a physical phenomenon and a metaphor for awareness, discovery, healing, and hope has led to the creation of the Light School and the Luminara Institute of Light, whose purpose is to help children, families, educators, and communities use imagination, extended reality, artificial intelligence, storytelling, science, and love as instruments for learning and transformation.

Dave Lorenzini

Dave Lorenzini has built and scaled breakthrough technologies across XR, AI, and real-world spatial computing companies that helped redefine how people see and interact with the world, including Keyhole (Google Earth), ARc (for Google X/Glass), and xR/AI.

Currently Director of Quantum Studio, he is working on how AI understands and relates to physical space.

Bay Area, CA · @davelorenzini · QuantumStudio.exe.xyz

Trond Nilsen

Trond Nilsen is an engineer, scientist, game designer, teacher, writer, and aspiring entrepreneur. He holds a PhD from the University of Washington, with research experience in augmented and virtual reality, artificial intelligence, human factors, software engineering, medical ontology, game design, educational technology, and data science.

His pioneering work includes strategy games and command and control systems using augmented reality at the HITLab NZ. He has particular expertise in and passion for applications of AI, XR, and data visualization in healthcare, education, and research.

He actively contributes to and helps lead several projects and communities, including Seattle VR, the Seattle Immersive Technology Association, the Virtual World Society, the XR Guild, Seattle MegaGames, and the Orion's Arm Universe Project.

Daniel Oestreich

Dan Oestreich is a seasoned leadership consultant who helps individuals, teams, and organizations liberate their untapped potentials. He offers consulting, training, facilitation, and coaching guided by principles of effective trust-building and communications, with a focus on the personal growth of people at all levels of an organization.

He is co-author of Driving Fear Out of the Workplace and The Courageous Messenger, books about effective listening and speaking up as ways to get past the "undiscussables" that undermine productivity and innovation.

His specialties include individual leadership coaching, team trust evaluation, culture change consulting, conflict reduction, managerial and leadership training, retreat development, and organizational evaluation.

Marty Perlmutter

Marty Perlmutter invented a sensory stimulation and monitoring helmet in 1970 and later created interactive 3D TV exhibits at the Boston Museum of Science and the New York Hall of Science. He founded Ghost Dance, a pioneering video company that explored video image synthesizing and built interactive exhibits. Ghost Dance created the first interactive movie game, "Murder, Anyone?", winner of many awards.

He helped launch the San Francisco Multimedia Development Group, which made San Francisco the global center of new media. He worked in classrooms, led summer STEM academies, and was a math instructor for Aim High. He also led a multi-year effort to save Africa's elephants by ending demand for ivory.

A dear friend of Dr. Tom Furness for four decades, Marty is working with the Luminara Institute to pioneer transcendent and transformative experiences as an alternative and antidote to first-person shooter immersive games, alongside his work with House Studios on bringing a Humane Algorithm to global prominence.

Drew Stone

Drew Stone is a virtual and immersive technology specialist with deep expertise in interactive experiences, XR event production, and collaborative community building.

He is dedicated to fostering impactful connections and elevating XR platforms as tools for education, social engagement, and innovative problem-solving.

Stacy Whittle

Stacy Whittle is a writer, director, actor, and producer who has lived in four countries and worked in more than a dozen. She studied anthropology at Catholic University and George Washington University, was nominated for the Irene Ryan Acting Award, and was selected for an archaeological expedition in Maui whose findings are now permanently installed at the Maui Historical Society.

She earned her MPA from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey with a focus on international economics, and her career has spanned international development through the Middle East Institute at Harvard's Kennedy School, Save the Children, and the Society for International Development. She co-founded Culture Vultures in Bahrain, bringing art, literature, music, and opera to the Gulf.

Her film work has received Telly Awards, Anthem Awards, and recognition from the U.S. Forest Service. She has performed in dozens of plays in Washington, D.C., and co-directed the Helen Hayes Recommended production of Waiting for Godot. Most recently, she directed Rolando Villazon in a short film about the importance of trees in cities while he was directing La Sonnambula at Lincoln Center.