Co-Chair, Treasurer
Lawrence Schwedler directs the audio degree programs at the DigiPen Institute of Technology
in Redmond, Washington. He is the owner of Schwedbeast Studios, a music production company whose most recent credits include the new Mario vs. Donkey Kong for the Nintendo Switch. As staff composer and audio director at Nintendo Software Technology, Lawrence wrote and produced music and sound for fifteen video games, including Metroid Prime Hunters, 1080º Avalanche, and the first four installments of the Mario vs. Donkey Kong franchise. AVAR 2024 will be the fourth AVAR conference he has co-chaired and hosted at DigiPen.
Lawrence is Treasurer of the Pacific Northwest Section of the Audio Engineering Society.
lschwedler@digipen.edu
Papers Co-Chair
Stefania Serafin is professor of Sonic interaction design at Aalborg University in Copenhagen and the leader of the multi-sensory experience lab together with Rolf Nordahl. She is the President of the Sound and Music Computing association, Project Leader of the Nordic Sound and Music Computing network and lead of the Sound and music computing Master at Aalborg University.Stefania received her PhD entitled “The sound of friction: computer models, playability and musical applications” from Stanford University in 2004, supervised by Professor Julius Smith III. Her research on sonic interaction design, sound for virtual and augmented reality with applications in health and culture can be found here: tinyurl.com/35wjk3jn
Workshops Co-Chair
Agnieszka Roginska (B.Mus. McGill; M.Mus. NYU; Ph.D. Northwestern University) is a Professor of Music Technology at New York University. She conducts research in the simulation and applications of immersive and 3D audio in AR/VR/MR, including the
capture, analysis and synthesis of auditory environments, auditory displays and applications augmented acoustic sensing. Agnieszka is an AES Fellow and the Past- President of the AES.
Audio/Video
Dan Mortensen is President of Dansound Inc., which specializes in live sound reinforcement. He is currently serving on the AES PNW Committee, and has previously held the posts of Chair, Vice-Chair, and Treasurer. His research into the life of Columbia Records’ 30th Street Studio, and his hosting of the weekly Tea Time Topics audio discussion series (close to 100 events by AVAR Conference time), have garnered interest and participation from a wide group of people.
Events Coordinator
Greg Dixon works as Assistant Professor of Music and Sound Design
at DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, WA, where he teaches
courses in game audio, audio engineering, sound design, and music
composition. Greg’s artistic work focuses upon music production,
audio engineering, and interactive audio systems for video games,
installations, concerts, and other forms of interactive media.
Graphic Designer
Randi Ganulin is a visual artist and designer based in the Seattle area. She has worked as a graphic designer for companies and institutions ranging from Microsoft to the J Paul Getty Museum and California Institute of the Arts. Interesting fact: examples of Ganulin’s graphic design can be found in a time capsule at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Her artwork has been exhibited nationwide and is included in a variety of collections, including the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, and public collections of the cities of Seattle and Tacoma, WA. Ganulin teaches art and design at DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, WA.
Social Media
Shauny Jang is an Audio Designer for games and media and has been working in game audio professionally since 2016. She has shipped games with Mojang (Microsoft), Nintendo, 8th Shore, and Rootless Studios. In addition to her work on games she works with Audiokinetic as a freelance technical translator to help grow the Korean Wwise community. Recent credits include Minecraft Jurassic World, Minecraft Earth, Snipperclips Plus, Super Mario Maker For Nintendo 3DS, 8 Doors, and others.
She is currently working as an Audio Designer at Microsoft Mixed Reality Experience Development team to deliver interactive audio for Microsoft Mesh, AltspaceVR, and various Augmented Reality experiences on HoloLens.
Co-Chair
Rémi is an Engineering Manager supporting XR Audio at Meta – Reality Labs. Prior to joining Meta, Rémi spent over 7 years on the Sound Technology Research team at Dolby Labs and then led audio services and algorithms Research and Development at Magic Leap. He received his ‘Diplôme d’Ingénieur’ from the Ecole Centrale de Lyon (France), and MSc. in Music Technology from IUPUI (USA) in 2006. He is passionate about advancing the state of the art of audio for mixed reality.
Papers Co-Chair
David Lou Alon is a research scientist with Meta – Reality Labs Research, leading the research on spatial audio technologies. He received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Ben Gurion University (Israel, 2017) in the field of spherical microphone array processing. His research areas include head-related transfer functions, spatial audio capture, binaural reproduction, and headphone equalization for VR and AR application.
Workshops Co-Chair
Scott is the Audio Experiences Lead for Reality Labs Research, developing and advocating for audio-forward and multi-modal experience prototypes around virtual sound and augmented hearing research initiatives. These experiences accelerate and facilitate transferring disruptive “time machine” technologies from the future into near-present Meta platforms and devices. Scott is also an advocate for evolving best practices and knowledge sharing for solving technical and creative challenges around developing interactive sound for immersive experiences across augmented, virtual, and mixed reality. Prior to his work for Meta, he was engaged in developer consultancy, education, and support efforts across three generations of the Xbox game console and broader Windows audio efforts at Microsoft. Scott has composed music for a wide range of media, including film, television, games, and live performance, and is a violist with the Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra in Seattle. Scott is on the advisory board of the Game Audio Network Guild and the Game Developers Conference, and has coordinated and lectured at the Game Developers Conference’s Audio Summit tutorial sessions for more than twenty years. Scott is an alumnus of the University of Southern California, where he obtained dual degrees in Music Composition (film scoring emphasis) and Computer Engineering/Computer Science.
Support Team Manager
August McCubbin is the Sound Lab Manager at DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond,
WA. There he upkeeps and oversees the hardware, software and space that the Audio Degrees
at DigiPen use along with supporting students and assisting with more technical issues relating
to audio in their projects. A recent graduate of Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and
Digital Audio degree at DigiPen, he has always been fascinated with how audio can make such
a large impact in how people experience media of all forms. He especially has an interest in
how audio is evolving in modern interactive media such as games and augmented reality.
Social Media
Ian Shores is a committed, passionate, decisive, and collaborative audio designer. He is the full time Audio Design Lead at Highwire Games in Seattle, where he works with industry veterans Marty O’Donnell, Jaime Griesemer and more to create highly polished and innovative independent games. His most recent title, Golem, shipped exclusively on Playstation VR and remains a standout game of the platform. It was nominated for the 2018 Game Audio Network Guild’s “Best Sound Design for an Indie Game” category and was awarded “Best Dialog for an Indie Game.” Ian is currently creating the audio for Highwire’s next title, Six Days in Fallujah, a project about the Second Battle of Fallujah in the Iraq War, told by the people who actually experienced the conflict. He has a discerning ear, over 20 years of classical musical training, a passion for bleeding-edge technologies and an eagerness to push the boundaries of what videogames can be. Ian graduated valedictorian and with honors from DigiPen’s Bachelor of Arts in Music and Sound Design program in 2017.
