Dwayne Waite Jr is the associate marketing director at Schell Games, and the Chapter President of the American Advertising Federation of Pittsburgh. Dwayne has been in the games marketing scene for over seven years, and in the marketing industry for almost two decades.

I am a Technical Animator for Stoic Studios currently working on an upcoming game called Towerborne being published by XBOX. I am very passionate about passing on industry knowledge to the next generation of game developers by providing insights into how best to approach game development. I also mentor high schoolers who are interested in game development and provide them with the best course of action to get the most out of their game dev journey.

George Landon is a Professor of Computer Science at Cedarville University where he teaches and coordinates the curriculum track in Video Game Engineering. He has performed research in 3D Scanning, Material Acquisition and Rendering, Games, and Machine Learning with funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and, most recently, the Air Force Research Lab. Always fascinated by games as a story-telling medium, George loves introducing new technology to game developers in ways that make it accessible to the broadest audience possible. He received a PhD in Computer Science with a focus in Computer Vision and Computer Graphics from the University of Kentucky.

Branson Mariola is a 3D Artist and Indie Dev from North East Ohio. He received his Bachelor of Science in Animation and Game Design from Kent State University in 2022. He leads a group of fellow devs at Findspot Interactive in the creation of a 3D Collect-a-thon platformer inspired by games from the late Nineties, Cubie: Botanical Breakout. He and several other game devs from the Mid-West operate JAMA Jam, an asset jam where creators from around the world gather to create and inspire! Branson enjoys making meaningful connections and helping others so make sure to say hello!

I am Tom Hutchins. I am a visual artist / motion designer / animator and a graduate of Bowling Green State University's animation program and am fast approaching my 25th year working in development of 'Serious Games' for all types of fortune 500 companies.

Hi there, I’m Keba Etzioni! I am a Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) graduate with a degree in Interactive Design and Game Development, and I’ve been working in the development of serious games for fortune 500 companies for 2 years.

I am the Team Manager for the Interactive team at Kinetic Vision. I have 12 years experience in engineering automation and have spent much of that time combining skills and techniques from that world and game development to create "Serious Games" for companies like Amazon, P&G, General Dynamics, and more.

Hello I'm Branden Middendorf - I'm the Regional Coordinator for the IGDA Midwest and run the IGDA Cincinnati chapter I have a background in motion design and animation but have been operating as a Technical Art Team Manager for the past few years working on serious games for fortune 500 companies.

Game maker and researcher interested in computer science education, physical computing, and educational games. Computer-supported collaborative learning and sociocultural approaches to online learning communities.

An independent generalist game developer and academic based out of Cleveland. I hold a BFA in Game Design from the Cleveland Institute of Art, and am pursuing an MFA in Visual Communication Design from Kent State University. I've taught game design at a university level for four years, the last two of which were at Kent State. My areas of expertise are prototyping, UI, and accessibility design.

Scott [he/him] is the Principal Engineer for 3D Interactive Development at Sine Nomine Associates, an independent IT engineering company. He holds BSEE and BSCompE degrees from University of Missouri and has worked for Sine Nomine since 2001. 3D development was a natural blend of Scott's experience in industrial control and CAD/CAM systems plus decades as a tabletop GM and as a backstage volunteer for community theatre. His first video game project, released in 2015, was "Rathunas", a five-year DLC-sized mod for "Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion". Manual workflows couldn't scale up, so Scott created a relational database to organize dialog lines, quest stages, and voice actors for the mod's 102 fully-voiced characters (over 3500 total dialog lines). At Sine Nomine, Scott creates parametric and procedural engineering applications in Unreal Engine, Blender, and other 3D tools. He also collaborated as a programmer on "Mission: HydroSci", an educational game created by Adroit Studios and has been a guest judge for several of Adroit's annual Game Jams. Scott and his wife, Katherine, live in northeastern Ohio with their three feline companions.

I have over 40 years in the software industry, from scientific computing to visualization research, to computer games and SOA applications. I was a group leader and project leader for several advanced technology projects at the Lawrence Livermore National Labs before taking a Professorship position at The Ohio State University. I also have extensive consulting experience in computer graphics related technologies, including military simulators, flight simulators and computer game technologies. Specialties: graphics programming, multi-threaded applications, computer game technologies, C++, C#/.NET, software engineering, Agile programming, flight simulation, scientific visualization

I am a professional UX designer with over six years of experience. I have worked periodically in the games industry as a game designer for over six years. I am a passionate artist who loves to create. I have presented at GDEX for the past two years.

I'm a programmer and developer who specializes in using Game Engines for Simulations. I've worked for Games, Defense, and the Museum Industry. I also have half a decade of VR experience.

Game Developer from Ohio! I graduated KSU in 2021, and have been working in games ever since. I've been involved with a handful of games that have Demo'd at GDEX in the past, including - Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends, Reed The Robotanist +, and Ra Ra Boom

Max has been developing indie games for about 8 years, releasing pixel art exploration-forward games, including Ocean's Heart and Yarntown. Generally developing solo, he has experience in just about every aspect of bringing a game from your head into players' hands.

10+ years in Unity creating cross-platform projects in both Industry and Games with a large focus on XR technologies. “I worked at AEP as the lead developer creating cross-platform (PC, Android, iOS, WebGL, XR) and collaborative products for the XR Team. I released a game on PS5 and PSVR2 in June 2023 and have been porting it to Quest 2 device (Android).”

D’Arcy Smith is a Professor of Acting and Voice and of The Director of Digital Performance Lab at UC-CCM who specializes in training actors for digital mediums, especially in producing vocally-aggressive combat sounds with minimal impact to physical health. As a videogame voice director and coach he has worked with Riot Games, Ubisoft, 343 Industries, Ninja Theory and other game developers. He is part of the VO Directing Team of KH Casting directing on numerous games and other projects.

Creator of YouTube channel “Entertainment Lives On”. “I am an up-and-coming content creator predominantly on YouTube that makes video essays and reviews about video games and other media as well.”

Lead Research Engineer at Epic Games and the co-creator of Learning Agents, which is a UE plugin for reinforcement and imitation learning. “My dream is that games will be able to have AI characters that have human-like gameplay and decision making.”