The Game Developers Conference returns to San Francisco March 20-24, 2023, and organizers are excited to announce more new counselors for the GDC Summits.

CDG 2023 is preparing to accept submissions to present talks and panels for the Summits portion of the event, which takes place on the Monday and Tuesday of the conference. Each summit focuses on a niche topic within game development and its relevant community, and has its own set of advisors who set the summit’s editorial goals and review summit submissions.

Here is the second batch of new Summits Advisors that GDC is proud to share—head here for the previous set of announcements, with more to be shared in the coming days.

AI Summit

Andrea Schiel—Senior AI Architect, Worlds Edge Studio (Microsoft)

Andrea Schiel has been working in AI for over 20 years and in the gaming industry when the internet was born. She is currently working as the lead AI architect for World’s Edge studio (Xbox, Microsoft: age of empires franchise) and as an AI developer on the age of empires Games. She has worked on everything from sports games to RTS to FPS and has previously spoken at GDC 2017. You can find her at LinkedIn or hang out at the top of the AI. His passions include bringing together the various worlds of research and engineering. Besides actively coding, she works with the bright minds at Microsoft Research, experimenting with reinforcement learning.

Duygu Cakmak—R&D Director, Creative Assembly

Duygu Cakmak is a senior artificial intelligence programmer who has worked at Creative Assembly for four years. As an AI programmer, she aims to achieve realistic game AI for the total war while writing new AI systems, new AI features for the campaign, and developing visualization tools for AI autoplay testing. His last work was the implementation of the new diplomatic AI system for Total War: Three Kingdoms. She holds the Tech Impact of the Year award at the 2019 Women in Games Awards. She was credited in Total War: Warhammer, Total War: Warhammer II, and Total War: Three Kingdoms.

Ahmed Khalifa—Lecturer and Part-Time Artificial Intelligence Engineer, University of Malta Digital Games Institute and Modl.ai

Ahmed Khalifa is a lecturer in AI in games at the Digital Games Institute. He is also a part-time AI engineer at Modl.ai and a game designer and developer in his spare time. His work on AI and game design mainly focuses on level design and generation.

UX Summit

Rebecca Cohen Palacios—Senior Head of UI/UX Design, Sledgehammer Games

Rebecca Cohen-Palacios is a technical and creative designer currently working as Senior UI/UX Design Manager at Sledgehammer Games. She shipped mobile and console games such as The Elder Scrolls: Blades, Assassin’s Creed Origins, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, and shape up (Kinect), using engines like Unity, Unreal and proprietary studio tools. Prior to a career in game development, Rebecca spent many years designing and programming user interfaces for websites, apps and interactive experiences. At the intersection of her work as a game developer, Rebecca is an advocate for diversity equity and inclusion. As a seasoned community organizer (Pixelles, Game & Colour) and speaker, her internationally recognized advocacy work has had a direct impact on the gaming industry in Montreal and beyond.

Peak of Advanced Graphics

Jeremy Ong—Senior Software Engineer (Rendering), Amazon

Jeremy Ong is currently a Principal Engineer on the Game Engine & Developer Services team at Amazon AWS and primarily focuses on rendering and graphics programming. Previously, Jeremy worked as a graphics and engine programmer at WB Games, Cryptic Studios and Riot Games on a variety of systems (lighting, materials, HDR, FX, animation). Real-time graphics in games is Jeremy’s passion, and he’s been hooked ever since programmable shaders became a thing.

Animation Summit

Michala Braker—Associate Facial Animator, Rockstar Games

Michala Braker is an Associate Facial Animator at Rockstar Games. Before Rockstar, Michala started out in the industry as a member of the face team at NetherRealm, where they worked to deliver the deadly gritty detail featured in Mortal Kombat 11. “That Blooming Feeling”, the first gardening videobook about living alongside a drop of water, was a collective labor of love by the team of Michala and Tots that received an honorable mention at the Festival of Games freelancers in 2018. If you’re at GDC, you can often find them in a neon shirt, eagerly waiting to answer any questions you might have.

GDC 2023 will soon be accepting submissions to present talks and panels for the Summits part of the event, as well as Gaming Career Seminar-departure Thursday, September 1 through Friday, October 7 at 11:59 p.m. PT. More information on how to submit an application for the Game Career Summits and Seminar will be shared in the coming days.

GDC returns to San Francisco in March 2023! For more information, do not hesitate to visit our website.

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