Sunny Dhillon
Founder and Partner Signia Venture Partners, Silicon Valley

Sunny Dhillon is a founder and partner at Signia Venture Partners, an $85M early stage venture capital fund in Silicon Valley, California. His fund is backed by 2 leading Hollywood movie studios, Chinese internet giant, Tencent, and Paypal founder, Peter Thiel, among others. Sunny specialises in virtual and augmented reality investments alongside consumer and enterprise technology more broadly, investing in seed and Series A stage companies. He's previously had 2 billion dollar exits in his fund over the past 2 years (Cruise Automation, acquired by GM for US$1bn+ after < 2 years; and FunPlus, a Chinese gaming company acquired for ~US$1bn). Prior to venture capital, Sunny was a corporate strategist for Warner Bros in LA, an early employee at a venture-backed spin-off of New Line Cinema, and co-founder of one of the Apple App Store's first mobile dating apps in 2011. He was also a technology sector investment banker previously with Rothschild in London. Sunny is a graduate of Oxford University, the London School of Economics, and has his MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Sunny's VR/AR expertise has been quoted on Bloomberg Television, in the New York Times, VentureBeat, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, TechCrunch, LA Times, Forbes, Inc Magazine, and others. He has been an active speaker and consultant on VR and AR globally with recent engagements in Tokyo, London, New York, Los Angeles, Beijing, and Zurich.

Duncan Ransom
Academy Award winner and CEO, The Endless Collective, New York

Duncan Ransom is the Founder and CEO of The Endless Collective, a full-service production studio specialising in virtual/augmented reality applications, photo-real digital sculpting and high-end 3D pre-visualisation. Before establishing The Endless Collective, Duncan served as a computer-generated story artist and animator with legendary animation studio, Framestore CFC, where he and his team won the VFX category Academy Award for their work on Gravity. His animation work has also been seen in other visually stunning films including Edge of Tomorrow, 47 Ronin and Clash of the Titans. Duncan is currently focused on using immersive technology tools to help improve and redefine aid in the healthcare, environmental, medical and recreational therapy industries.

Mark Pesce
Co-Creator of VRML, Sydney

Mark Pesce is one of the world’s foremost VR pioneers. He’s also an author, broadcaster and engineer. In 1991 he founded the first consumer virtual reality startup, inventing an orientation sensor for low-cost applications adopted by Sega for its Virtua VR head-mounted display. Three years later he co-invented the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), which became the first standard for interactive 3D graphics on the World Wide Web. While running the VRML Architecture Group, Mark founded the first startup to use VRML to deliver streaming entertainment. In 1998, he was invited to found the Graduate Program in Interactive Media at USC’s world-famous School of Cinema-Television, teaching the next generation of creative professionals how to master new storytelling technologies. Mark was invited to Sydney in 2003 to establish an Emerging Media program at AFTRS. He has an Honorary Appointment in the Digital Cultures Program at the University of Sydney. Mark writes for internationally respected tech publication, The Register, and was a panelist on the ABC’s hit series The New Inventors for seven years. He currently hosts This Week in Startups Australia, the nation’s leading tech podcast.

X Media Lab

X Media Lab (XML) is helping to change the world by teaching the core advanced skill sets of the new innovation industries - data-driven storytelling using visualisation tools and Artificial Intelligence software. It is one of the world’s most prestigious digital media events. Over the past 13 years, XML has run major international conferences and workshops in 22 global cities including Sydney, London, Los Angeles, Beijing, Shanghai, Amsterdam, Mumbai and Singapore.