Organizers
Josef Spjut
Senior Research Scientist at NVIDIA
Adjunct Professor at Duke University
Josef is a leading researcher in esports technology with over a decade of experience in this domain. He has organized multiple SIGGRAPH Frontiers workshops and panels on esports. His research interests include esports-optimized latency, high refresh rates, and the emerging applications of generative AI to video games.
Benjamin Watson
Associate Professor at NC State
Benjamin directs the Visual Experience Lab, which focuses on the engineering of visual meaning in gaming, graphics, visualization, interaction and user experience. His current work centers on emerging displays, esports and socially rich video conferencing. Watson co-chaired Graphics Interface 2001, IEEE VR 2004, and ACM I3D 2006-7 and 2025-26 conferences. He is an ACM fellow and senior IEEE member, with a doctorate from Georgia Tech's Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center.
Dr. Madison Klarkowski
Lecturer at Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane, Australia)
Madison is a founding member of the Games Research and Interactive Design Lab and publishes extensively in understanding and cultivating high performance in esports contexts, player behavior and interactions, and social connectedness in competitive gaming communities.
Rulon Raymond
Sr. Director of Technology at Infinity Ward
Rulon has been working on core engine technology at Activision for over 23 years, focusing on high-performance graphics. His past projects include the Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero series, with the majority of his time devoted to the Call of Duty franchise. He specializes in striking a balance between competitive gameplay demands and compelling visuals.
Mark Claypool
Professor in Computer Science and Interactive Media & Game Development at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI)
Mark is an expert on the effects of latency on computer games, with over 75 peer-reviewed publications in this area. His research has been supported by NSF, MIT Lincoln Labs, Intel, Microsoft, Google, Viasat, and NVIDIA.
Paul Ritaldato
Rendering Engineer at Epic Games
Paul focuses on low-level systems and rendering architecture for large-scale, competitive titles. Previously, he served as a Rendering Engineer at Electronic Arts on the Madden franchise. He is passionate about building optimized systems designed to deliver high performance, low latency environments essential for esports-level gameplay.