Team

Organizing Team

The Reality Virtually Hackathon is organized by a dynamic team of industry experts, developers, executives, and students, reaching many facets of the VR|AR community.

STEVEN MAX PATTERSON

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND LEAD ORGANIZER

Steven is a project manager and journalist contributing to Ars Technica, Quartz, Fast Company and IDG. He is the president of non-profit Grassroots Developer Education, Inc. that provides free education in new technology to designers, developers and engineers. He has worked to bring AR and VR to the developer community since Google I/O 2014.

MARIA RICE

OUTREACH LEAD

Maria is a Grammy-nominated sound engineer at Peerless Mastering in Boston, having mastered records of many genres and restored many acclaimed historical recordings. She excited to bring a new technology medium to the fore by attracting multi-disciplined creative talents. Outside of work, she re-watches episodes of Star Trek DS9 and studies classical piano at New England Conservatory. She earned her BA from Boston University.

DAVID GOLIGORSKY

David is a Sr. Design Director at IDEO New York focused on Digital & Emerging Technology. He worked in advanced R&D aerospace engineering before pursuing a graduate degree in Product Design at Stanford University. Previously he worked at IDEO leading project teams and lecturing on Design, Manufacturing, and Strategy at Harvard, Yale, and other institutions. Before he returned to IDEO, he ran design at a Google Ventures mobile media startup followed by a design and product private practice to startups like Artsy, Sonder, and Octave. David enjoys balancing culture and creativity with technology and commerce.

PRAVEEN ARAVAMUDHAM

JUDGING, RULES, DIGITAL OPERATIONS CO-LEAD

Praveen has over 15 years software engineering industry experience in designing and implementing high-performance distributed software systems in various programming languages. Praveen is currently the Chief Technology Officer at Berkshire Hathaway Shoe Holdings Inc. Praveen is a hackathon “geek” ready to join a team, and frequently a contributor to a winning team. He mentors young developers and enjoys conversation about technology past/present/future. Praveen holds Masters in Information Technology and Computer Science from Syracuse University.

Emily Bowen

Emily has spent the last decade bringing order to chaos as a Producer in Practical Visual Effects, Stop Motion, Digital Visual Effects and Animation all over this great nation. A native Massachusettsian who happens to be back in the area just in time for Reality, Virtually Hackathon 2019, she finds herself offering up her Type A personality, Leatherman and ability to work without sleep for extended periods of time to her favorite hackathon for round 2. Proud Trojan (Fight On!), knitter, and wannabe runner, she hopes you don't ever notice she's there because thats when she knows she's done her job well.

RUS GANT

ADVISOR

Rus Gant is a well-regarded international 3D artist, computer visualization engineer, and educator with four decades of experience in computer visualization, archaeology, and museology. A member of the research staff at Harvard University where he also leads the Visualization Research and Teaching Laboratory. Formerly the lead technical artist for Harvard's Giza 3D project reconstructing the Egyptian monuments on the Giza Plateau in virtual reality. He is on the teaching faculty at Tokyo’s Showa Women's University and a fellow at the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies and Carnegie Mellon's Center for Creative Inquiry.

ALICIA HONG

QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE LEAD

Alicia is a data analyst at Amazon Alexa. She co-founded Boston University's first AR/VR club. Data nerd, VR enthusiast. She enjoys day-to-day observation of how data embodies and enables interactions. Her long-term vision in life is to explore and define a spiritual language in social interactions, in VR.

MAX MCCLASKIE

DIGITAL OPERATIONS CO-LEAD

Max joins the team as a hack-a-thon veteran and wearer of many hats when it comes to world of digital marketing. As a Creative Technologist at Hill Holliday, he is responsible for leading projects of all types including websites, mobile apps, chat bots, API integrations and more. On the side, Max is a freelance content creator with a focus on photography and social content for brands of all sizes.

CINDY SHERMAN BISHOP

WORKSHOP LEAD

Cindy is a multimedia artist and creative coder. She authored several webVR storytelling tools as a fellow at the MIT Open Doc including VRDoodler, a web-based 3D drawing program that renders in virtual and augmented reality. At the MIT Civic Media Lab on the Media Cloud team, her role as web developer is helping to build the next generation of web-based tools for journalists and researchers.

ANDREAS DIAS

OUTREACH AND MOBILE APP

Andreas is a graduate of Princeton University 2017. He has helped organize hackathons in the past and currently is working on a companion app for Hackathons, Professional Conferences, and Networking Events that allows attendees to exchange contact information using Computer Vision and Augmented Reality and event organizers to easily communicate with attendees. Currently he is between Pensacola, FL and San Francisco, CA.

SARAH PILLAI

OPERATIONS CO-LEAD AND JUDGING / RULES

As a fashion editor by trade, Sarah knows the power of choosing the right word, the right format, the right connections, or the right outfit can make or break the future and develop a brighter path. Using her skills as a former cheerleader, as an alumna of Harvard and Boston University, and working as Teen Vogue’s fashion editor, Sarah’s mission is bridging, cheering, and evolving the fashion and technology industries by building empowering and fun systems for the overall betterment of the communities.

DIANE WILLIAMS

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION LEAD

Diane is a Computer Scientist and serial Edtech entrepreneur, and STEM education advocate. She has been a mentor and/or judge for HackMIT, HackHarvard, Simmons Shark Hack, MIT Hacking Medicine Grand Hack, the Harvard WECode Hackathon, Harvard Astropreneurship and Space Medicine, and the MIT Mobile VR Development Challenge. She is an alumna of MIT and Harvard.

SEHA GULNAR DALAY

DIGITAL OPERATIONS

Seha is a former commercial banker who changed her career by following her passion to build new things. She completed intense engineering immersive program and continues to learn and improve herself as a front end web developer. Seha holds an MBA from Radford University and BA in Economics from Bilkent University.

VIK Parthiban

Vik is passionate about teams and technologies that shape how people interact with digital information and the physical world. He helped build the Magic Leap One AR headset and led an R&D project for the advanced photonics team. He currently runs the AR community at MIT and plans to launch new initiatives in this space. As a researcher and graduate student at the MIT Media Lab, Vik is building new human-computer interfaces and holographic technology that hope to push AR/VR technology forward. He received his Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering, and a Bachelor of Arts in Plan II Honors from The University of Texas at Austin.

ILDAR IAKUBOV

TECHNICAL OPERATIONS

Ildar is an artist and educator from Saint Petersburg, where he curates one of the Russia’s biggest Art&Science festivals and manages local planetarium with a huge 37-meter projection dome of an enormous 12K resolution. He teaches Digiatal Art, VR and Interactive Media in different universities around the globe and also creates his own artworks - installations, live performances, VR environments.

MISHA SRA

ADVISOR

Misha is a Research Affiliate working on natural interaction techniques for multiperson experiences in virtual and mixed reality in the Fluid Interfaces group at the MIT Media Lab. Her inspiration comes from the paragons of virtual reality like the Holodeck from Star Trek or William Gibson's cyberspace. She is looking forward to a VR future with Sword Art Online's NerveGear or Ernest Cline's robotic arms and doing her part to help build it.

RYAN LEE

OPERATIONS AND PARTNERSHIPS

Ryan is an AR developer at PTC Academic who works on building learning experiences for the K12 classroom using PTC’s Vuforia technology. Prior to PTC, he was a Masters student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who also helped co-found Harvard’s AR/VR Student Alliance. He enjoys growing and learning from our vibrant Boston AR/VR community!

CHANDLER ZHANG

SPONSORSHIP AND OUTREACH

Chandler loves holograms. Chandler co-founded BU AR/VR. Chandler loves to eat. Chandler works at PTC.

JASMINE ROBERTS

Creative Technologist

Jasmine is an XR Software Engineer @ Unity Labs in San Francisco, California. She helped organize the last Reality Virtually Hackathon. She brings a technically focused but broad skill set including design, engineering, and immersive technology.

ARPIT GUPTA

OPERATIONS CO-LEAD

Arpit has worked over a decade leading products within the banking, healthcare, advertising, and e-commerce industries. He specializes in mobile, growth and Augmented Reality (AR). He currently works as Senior Vice President, Product Innovation at Bank of America, where he is responsible for bringing digital innovation to the physical bank locations. Before moving to the west coast, he ran the iOS mobile product team at Wayfair. Arpit is also a co-organizer of the annual Virtually Reality Hackathon.

CONNOR LARKIN

VOLUNTEER LEAD

Connor is currently an MBA/MS candidate at the Erb Institute for Sustainable Enterprise, a joint degree program between the Ross School of Business and the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Erb, Connor led business development projects on behalf of several tech and social impact startups for six years and has professional working experience in over 10 countries. He loves biking, rock climbing, and brainstorming about how AI and machine learning will impact our society in the coming years.

JENNA OLANDER

DESIGN LEAD

Jenna is a graphic design major completing her bachelors degree at UMass Lowell in May of 2019. As a design lead, she helps the Reality Virtually Hackathon with it’s cohesive look and feel throughout all platforms including website, advertisements, and print. She attended and won the Circular Navigation Hackathon in the summer of 2018. Additionally, she’s an alumni to the NCAA Division 1 Track & Field program at UMass Lowell. Jenna also prides herself on being a service member for the Air National Guard.

BRIAN BURNS

EDITOR, WRITER CONTENT CREATION LEAD

Brian Burns is the Integrated Marketing Manager for the Mass General Research Institute, and a freelance writer and web content producer. He is intrigued by the potential of AR and VR technologies to change the way we think about science, medicine and education.

ERIC BOEHLKE

SITE PLANNING LEAD

Eric, in short, can be called an Autodesk Revit coach. His consulting, project work, training, and application development using BIM technologies. He is a consultant who capabilities extend beyond Architecture, Engineering, and Construction. His is best at synthesizing solutions to complicated problems at the nexus of technology and industry domains.

JOHN DUFRESNE

PHYSICAL OPERATIONS LEAD

John loves AR and VR and believes in the future of these technologies,, especially in the greater Boston area. John assoiciates the diversity of Boston’s industries with a future or regional AR and VR success as companies operating in vertical industries win leadership with AR and VR innovations, expanding the field from niche businesses to global enterprises.

PAURIC O'CALLAGHAN

TEAM FORMATION LEAD

Pauric is a Principal User Experience Designer at MathWorks where he specializes in product vision and inventing new programming paradigms for STEM Students. He grew up on and off the West coast of Ireland but these days he can be found tinkering in a barn just outside of Boston.

CARL YANG

MARKETING

Carl is creative and methodical strategist committed to generating business value by helping enterprises develop empathy for their customers' wants, needs, and motivations to develop solutions that meet the demands of the market. His responsibilities leading R&D efforts at Fidelity Investments included developing concepts, prototypes, and pilot studies of emerging applications of evolving user interfaces - including work with blended and virtual reality platforms.

PRATHMESH JAKKANWAR

Prathmesh has a Masters in Computer Science from Northeastern University and currently works at Cengage Learning as a Sofware Engineer. Primarily a backend engineer, Prathmesh is exploring the idea of being a full stack. He has been a cricketer for life and actively plays it professionally (he has also represented the USA in the American College Cricket tournament and played against Canada). When he is not coding or playing cricket, he likes to travel and fly drones. He is an aspiring YouTuber and carries his drone with him.

PABLO KROPILNICKI

DIGITAL OPERATIONS CO-LEAD

A digital Swiss army knife and new to the Cambridge scene, Pablo is involved with many aspects of emerging technology. A software engineer at Coresecure Inc. by day, he primarily deals with international enterprise level system operations. By night, he is a developing electronic house music producer and an active maker. With interests in ethical hacking, blockchain development, self powered biomedicine and nanotechnology, he's always looking for a way to learn and give back to the community.

DIVYANSHU VARSHNEY

INTERNATIONAL OUTREACH

Divyanshu Varshney is the founder and CEO of Spiro Studios, a young company on a mission to provide physical rehabilitation services to the doorsteps inorder to help people get better in a fast, easy and fun way. He is also the founder and president of VR | AR | MR, India's first and now largest Virtual and Augmented Reality Community. Divyanshu holds a Bachelors in Information Technology from Manav Rachna College of Engineering.

MURALI AYYAPILLAI

WEBSITE

Michael Wissner

Michael is an MIT alum with a background as a software engineer, consultant, and entrepreneur. He was on the founding team of several successful startups, including Avid Technology, a pioneer in digital video and film editing for which he won an Emmy Award, and QuickBase, a leader in no-code database application systems. He currently works in technology consulting. Michael has participated in many hackathons, and his current interests include Internet of Things devices, and VR/AR applications.

Craig Herndon

Technical Operations and Mentor

CEO of Boston Virtual Reality, one of the largest VR communities in the world with over 5,000 members. He hosts the Virtuality Podcast, that spotlights immersive media created in Boston and around the globe. He cofounded VR content creation studio Digital Precept a location-based immersive entertainment content creator.