2024 AIS Evolve Summit Guests

Mark began his career as an Historian at Cambridge University, with several publications to his name, before moving into the media industry. He spent many years as a Director, Producer and Executive Producer, and won numerous awards for his filmmaking, including an International Emmy and a BAFTA nomination. Mark was Managing Director of an independent production company before being appointed BBC Head of Arts, and then Head of Multiplatform Production. He was subsequently Controller of Production for BBC North and leader of the BBC’s End-to-End Digital programme, before becoming Director of Transformation for BBC Design & Engineering. In 2015 Mark founded the DPP – the international network for media and technology – and became its CEO. This led the International Moving Image Society to give him an Outstanding Contribution to the Industry Award in 2018. Today the DPP has around 550 member companies from across the whole media supply chain – from the global tech giants to broadcasters, and from media tech vendors to production companies. The DPP works with its member companies to generate strategic insight and create business opportunities.
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Meagan Keane is Director of Product Marketing for Adobe Professional Film & Video, but her beginnings were in documentary film. She was a producer across numerous documentary features including Join Us (LA International Film Festival documentary selection, 2007), We Live in Public (Sundance Grand Jury Winner, 2009), and Defining Beauty (Audience Award for Best Documentary, Newport Film Festival, 2011). Meagan joined the Adobe Premiere Pro Management team in 2012 and has led business strategy for the Adobe video portfolio since 2019. During her tenure she has defined the strategy behind top AI innovations in video at Adobe including Generative Extend, Object Removal/Addition, Speech to Text, Text-Based Editing, Auto Reframe, Scene Edit Detection, and Remix. Meagan has an MFA in film production from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.
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Michael DeValue is an executive who has spent the last 15 years helping to define industry standards and best practices for technologies related to the production and distribution of filmed entertainment. Most recently he was Director of Technology Standards and Strategy at the Walt Disney Studios where he was responsible for the standards strategy, and representing Disney in various standards bodies and trade groups. These included organizations such as the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), and Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI). He has chaired several technical committees in SMPTE, been the co-chair of the BDA UHD-TF Video Subgroup, which defined the UHD and HDR requirements for the Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc, and been the DCI Technical Committee Chair. Michael is also a past Chair of the Advanced Imaging Society Board of Governors.
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Miguel Casillas works with the TrueCut Motion operations team at Pixelworks.  He is a 24 year studio veteran having  worked in the industry adoption of  blu-ray, 4k mastering best practices, , HDR, as well as object based audio mastering. In addition he has executive produced over a 100 long and short form documentary films for ancillary bonus content for both physical and digital media.  He is currently focused on expanding filmmaker tools that he hopes will provide creative options for the way motion looks, unlocking delivery of director approved motion graded content to all screens.
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Morgan Prygrocki is a Sr. Strategic Development Manager at Adobe supporting Hollywood post-production video workflows.  She has spent the bulk of her career working in high-end camera technology & virtual production solutions, and has been supporting productions ranging from major league sports broadcasts to award-winning films & and commercial productions over the last 15 years.
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Moritz Bächer is the Associate Lab Director of Disney Research at Walt Disney Imagineering, where he leads a strategic program focusing on the development of novel model- and learning-based tools for the design and control of believable robotic characters. His core expertise is the optimal design and control of both soft and rigid systems, using a combination of differentiable simulation and reinforcement learning. Prior to joining Disney, Moritz received his Ph.D. from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and his master’s degree from ETH Zurich.
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Nick has served as Chief Technology Officer at Walt Disney Animation Studios since 2016 where he is responsible for technology and innovation across the studio. His credits at the studio include “Moana”, “Frozen 2”, “Encanto”, and “Wish”. Before Disney, Nick spent 13 years in visual effects leading technology for work on over 100 feature film productions from “Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets” to “The Jungle Book”. An active participant in the visual effects and animation community, Nick is an advocate for community-wide collaboration and innovation. As a member of the Visual Effects Society’s Technology Committee Nick was a founder, and still co-leads, the VFX Reference Platform initiative which drives software harmonization and interoperability across digital content creation software. Nick started his career working across a variety of industries, helping organizations with digital transformation and integrating new technologies. These experiences sparked a passion for taking a people-first approach to leading technological change that he now combines with his interest in the intersection of art and technology. Nick graduated from Royal Holloway, University Of London, where he studied Computer Science, and currently resides in Pasadena, California.
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Patrick Adler is co-founder of Westwood Economics & Planning Consultants, and Assistant Professor in Geography at The University of Hong Kong.  Dr. Adler is a seasoned economic development practitioner and researcher, specializing in projects related to the creative economy. For more than a decade, Dr. Adler has conducted urban economic research on behalf of The University of Toronto, The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and The University of California, Riverside. His client-facing work has included comprehensive economic development strategies, downtown revitalization plans, workforce analyses, and airport planning strategies. Dr. Adler’s research has been published in journals of planning and economics, he has been quoted in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and the NFL Network, and his analysis has been regularly featured at Bloomberg's CityLab.   Dr. Adler holds a Ph.D. in Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles, an M.A. in Economic Geography, and a B.A. (with distinction) in Urban Planning and Economic Geography from The University of Toronto.
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With over 30 years of experience in the field and 10 plus years at Comscore, Paul Dergarabedian is the movie industry’s most recognized and widely quoted authority for media-based information and analysis. In his role as Senior Media Analyst for Comscore, Paul provides expert analysis on results that come from Comscore’s real-time movie and television measurement services. Considered one of the industry’s most accomplished experts, Paul founded Media By Numbers in 2006, which later became a division of Hollywood.com, where he served as President of the box office division until October 2013 when he then joined Rentrak (now Comscore).  In addition to weekly credits online and in print, including The Associated Press, CNBC, CNN, Bloomberg News, The Wall Street Journal, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, The Wrap, Deadline, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, among many others, he is regularly featured on television and radio programs.  Paul has also appeared in movie-related documentaries including Being George Clooney, This Film Is Not Yet Rated & The Blockbuster Imperative. Paul holds a Master’s degree from USC’s Annenberg School of Communications & a Bachelor’s degree from Long Beach State’s Television and Film school.
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