Professor William Latham, Co-director of MSc in Computer Games Programming
William is well known for his pioneering work with IBM (1987-93) in evolutionary art and computing at the IBM UK Scientific Centre in Winchester. He is co-author of the book 'Evolutionary Art and Computers', published in 1992, which covers the work during this period with the mathematician Stephen Todd. His award-winning organic computer animated films were shown at SIGGRAPH and many computer graphics events around the world, and he had major art exhibitions, touring the UK, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong and Japan for four years. During this period his work received much press and TV coverage and a number of IBM patents emerged from this work.
From 1993 to 2003, William was CEO of Computer Artworks Ltd, which initially worked with the music industry for two years (clients included BMG Music) then focused on producing computer games for Playstation 2, Xbox and PC. Employing around 90 people, clients included Microsoft, Nokia, Atari and Sony Computer Entertainment. Hit games developed included the award-winning ‘The Thing’ (PS2, Xbox, PC) for Vivendi Universal which was a number one hit in the UK and Germany. (The game is a sequel to the cult John Carpenter film of the same name.) Other products included the cult PC game Evolva for Virgin Interactive and Organic Art for Warner Interactive and Mattel. The average turnover was approximately £5m per annum, with two development studios in London and Brighton. William was responsible for negotiating and closing contracts valued at $100K to $5m with USA and European Publishers.
William is Director and Founder of Games Audit Ltd (2003), which is an Operational and Technical Due Diligence Company focusing on the development of Playstation3, Xbox360, Nintendo Wii, PC and MMO games for clients which include Banks, VCs and City Investment companies, Games Publishers and Developers. Games Audit clients include: Ingenious Ventures, Add Partners and IDG Ventures, ITI Techmedia (Scotland), Imprimatur Capital, IFG (International Film Guarantors), Add Zero, Nesta, NCC (National Computing Center; escrow provider).
Frederic was previously the director and founder of the former MSc in Arts Computing (2004-7) and MSc Computer Games & Entertainment (2008-16; jointly with William Latham) at Goldsmiths. He received his BEng in Electrical Engineering, with honors in aeronautics, from the Polytechnic School of Montreal, his MEng from McGill University in Computer Vision and Biomedical Imagery, and his PhD from Brown University (in 3D shape representation). In the mid-nineties he was leading R&D projects in the industry of 3D Geographical Information Systems, with Thales – part of Thomson-CSF – based in Paris, France.
His current research interests incorporate ideas from computer vision, together with the physics of waves and shocks and their modelling in modern mathematics via singularity theory. Frederic is also working on perceptual models grounded in geometry, based in part on Gestalt theory. Frederic has initiated several 'shape-based' projects mixing the arts, humanities, social sciences, and computing, including CyberCity and CyberMonument, digital sculpting (with the Mid-Ocean Studio), digital archaeology (co-founder of the SHAPE lab at Brown University), and FoldSynthProtein Folding Visualisation Project (with William Latham and Stephen Todd at Goldsmiths and the Bioinformatics group at Imperial College, London).
Richard Leinfellner
Richard Leinfellner is co-founder of 80’s games company Palace Software, where he was responsible for a number of hit games for Commodore 64 and Amiga. Richard has held executive level production roles at a number of major developers including 11 years as Executive Producer and Vice President at Electronic Arts. During his career he has managed teams of upto 150 people and shipped a significant number of critically acclaimed and commercially successful games including Cauldron, Barbarian, Dark Omen, Populous 3, Theme Park World, F1 and Battleforge.
Prior to his move into academia Richard was the CEO of Babel Media, with office in the UK, India and Canada and a staff of 350 providing outsourced services for the interactive entertainment industry.
Whilst focusing mainly on games production and business in his spare time Richard is still a keen programmer with a focus on the IOT for which he design Bluetooth Low Energy devices and firmware.
He holds a BA from the Open University and is Visiting Professor for Digital Entertainment and Business at the University of Abertay.
Alan Zucconi
Alan Zucconi is the author of one of the most popular online educational blogs, which helped thousands of developers all over the world to ship their games. Following its success, he published one of the leading textbooks in the field of Shader Coding for Unity. Some of the most recent commercial titles he has worked on include Pikuniku (Nintendo Switch, published by Devolver Digital), Still Time (PS4 & PSVita, in collaboration with SONY) and 0RBITALIS. He has experience in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Data Analysis, both from an academic and professional point of view.
Alan Zucconi is also a Video Game STEM Ambassador, with a strong focus on intersectional feminism and the support of under-represented groups in the game industry. He is a passionate lecturer and developer, currently working in the intersection between Creativity and Education.
Recognised as one of Develop’s 30 Under 30, he is deeply interested in using new media to bring innovation in Higher Education.
Other Lecturers
Main programme lecturers will be suplemented by lectures from games industry professionals, as well as invited guest lecturers, also from the games industry.