Mr Thomas Lim is the Director at MDA. He is the chief promoter of the Interactive Media, Games and Publishing sector and has conceptualized initiatives such as Game+ to level up the capabilities and capacity of these sectors. He oversees the MDA charter to leverage the effective use of Media in the Education sector to foster an engaging learning experience to meet the diverse needs of learners in Singapore, through the innovative use of technologies and content-mix. A proponent of interactive & digital media, Thomas contributes actively towards several national digital initiatives. He currently heads up the Media-in-Learning initiative at MDA across media verticals such as Games, Publishing, Broadcasting and New Media.

Prior to joining MDA, Thomas is the Cluster Director of Digital Media and Education at the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, and responsible for the iN2015 development of the Education & Learning and Connected Games programmes at IDA. Some projects in conjunction with the Ministry of Education which he has championed include Backpack.Net, FutureSchools@Singapore, Learning Trails and iSHARE. Thomas is the Founding Advisor to the Games Exchange Alliance (GXA) of Singapore, an association of about 40 companies in the games ecosystem.

Prior to joining IDA, Thomas led the Business Strategy Consulting practice in Gartner for Asia. He has won numerous awards in recognition of his achievements in Gartner Consulting and SingTel. Thomas graduated from the University of Singapore.

Aroon has been in the virtual worlds / online games, 3D computer graphics and the animation industry since 1993. He is also the President of the Games Exchange Alliance (GXA), a non-profit organisation based in Singapore, involved in expanding the capabilities and infrastructure of Asian game developers and service providers.

Aroon took up his first management role at Virtual Reality Technologies in 1995, building online multiplayer virtual worlds and virtual reality simulations. By 1997, he was appointed Managing Director, and held a concurrent role as CEO of MMOG developer Paraworld (APAC) from 2000 to 2001. In 2001 he founded Interactive Digital Dreams (IDD) to establish a platform and gateway for "digitally interactive" enterprises to access Asia Pacific markets. From 2004 to 2007, IDD formed a joint venture with European games developer / producer 10TACLE STUDIOS AG where he took the role of CEO (Asia Pacific).

Magma Studios (2005) is his latest company in partnership with award winning writer, producer and director Chris Jones. Magma builds virtual worlds for global media brands.

Simon Bennett is a Social Entrepreneur based in London, England. Over the past 10 years, he has started and grown three businesses within the youth, education and multimedia spaces. Currently focusing on roll7, a Serious Games Developer and Digital Agency based in London and Coventry, Simon is currently finalising plans to set up an office in Singapore in partnership with the SGI and MDA.

This August, roll7 launch ‘Focus Pocus’ a groundbreaking serious game for children with ADHD – the world’s first research based application using Neurosky, a consumer BCI device developed in the US.

Simon is passionate about games and their ability to engage young people, roll7 are currently looking to work with new partners to develop more groundbreaking applications in the Health and Education sectors.

Jacqueline Cawston is the Senior Business Executive at the Serious Games Institute. Working with Serious Games, Virtual Worlds, Augmented Reality and related technologies she facilitates links with industry, academics and the cluster of cutting edge digital media companies that make up the Serious Games community. She started her career with BBC TV and previously ran her own Broadcast Media Company, she event managed the largest creative industry event in the East Midlands. She has a background in innovation, management, business development and marketing.

The Serious Games Institute at Coventry University based in London is globally recognised as a Centre of Excellence for Serious Games, Mobile Application, 3D animation and Virtual Worlds. The institute is a new model for industrial/ higher education partnerships, combining advanced research with business incubation, digital media prototyping, business clustering and sophisticated networking, training and demonstration facilities.

Hemant Doshi is the co-founder, Lead Trainer and Director of Business of Singapore's leading provider of financial literacy programs, Eduwealth Pte Ltd and Eduwealth Interactive Pte Ltd (www.eduwealth.com), empowering children and adults through experiential learning methods as well as dramatization. He was involved in the creation of Praxis®, Praxis®II, Praxis Junior® , Prax!® and ePraxis® Hemant has extensive experience in the education scene in Singapore establishing and managing a few education centres. He has been featured in The Straits Times, Berita Harian, MediaCorp Channel 8 and on Channel News Asia (CNA) on 'Moneyweek' & 'MoneyMind' respectively. Eduwealth has reached out to over 150,000 students and adults through strategic engagements with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) as part of a national campaign, MoneySENSE, in educating the public in financial literacy. Hemant also has over 20 years of experience in the IT, financial services and education industries.

As Chief Creative Director of Playware Studios Asia, Siddharth deals with game design, production, technical art & music direction. He heads a technology, platform and genre independent team that has successfully developed casual, card and multiplayer arena games released worldwide and also a range of serious games for the institutions such as Singapore's Ministry of Education, Singapore Management University and the Center for Learning Innovation, Department of Education Technology, NSW, Australia.

Siddarth is a media veteran who has worked on triple digit hours of television programming, double digit game titles, multimedia applications, game engines and tools. He is a visiting faculty to University SIM and Nanyang Technology University and is on several agency and industry advisory panels.

Devi Kolli is the co-founder and operations head at AiSolve Limited, Serious Games company based in UK. Devi has over a decade of experience in introducing serious games to vocational institutes and disadvantage young people who are not engaged in education or employment. She has led many successful blended learning programmes in east London that are initiated and funded by Skills Funding Agency and European Social Fund. Devi brings her wealth of experience of working with end users of serious games to AiSolve specialists. She helps her dynamic team to build learning applications using emerging technologies that are learner centred and are more relevant to today’s industry needs.

Tim Laning began developing (entertainment) games in 1997, and started the independent game development company Grendel Games in 2003, together with partner Jan-Jaap Severs. Besides creating entertainment games such as “Diamond Dan” and “Diatomic”, Grendel Games strongly focuses on the development of serious games that have a strong emphasis on entertainment- and production value. Serious game development started out with the creation of the world’s first 3D virtual reality engine room for Kongsberg Maritime, which was built on proprietary technology.

The company creates rehabilitation software together with Motek Medical for clients such as departments of defense, various universities and rehabilitation homes. Besides rehabilitation software Grendel Games is the world’s first game company that has started a joint venture with two hospitals to create “seriously entertaining” laparoscopic surgery games for Nintendo Wii. Tim Laning serves as a member of the advice committee to Games For Health Europe, and is also one of the spiritual fathers of both the Gameships Studios and Gameland Indie Gamejam Festival in the Netherlands.

Pure is President of Cyberwisdom Learning Solution (Cyberwisdom) has led to the rapidest development in the past few years, he is now in charge with all the business as well as Research and Development of Cyberwisdom’s Platform, Content, Consulting, Serious Game (Game based learning) and Mobile Application business units.

Cyberwisdom has become the number one and largest Corporate Learning solution provider in Greater China under Pure’s leadership. He set the vision of Cyberwisdom as “Give Unlimited Possibilities to Corporate Learning” while he is also a thinker of Corporate Learning Strategy. As a recognized leading e-Learning expert in the region, he is a frequent speaker in e-Learning seminars and advisor of Training Magazine, one of the most influential media in Training industry.

Prior joining Cyberwisdom learning solution, Pure has years of management experience in Greater China spanning across Telecom, IT and Internet industries. He graduated from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology with a degree in Business Administration and also holds a Masters degree in International Studies from University of Sydney in Australia.

Prof. Hiroyuki Matsuguma is an assistant professor with the Faculty of Design at the Kyushu University in Japan. He is also the Leader of the "Serious Games Project (SGP)", an outsourced 3-year project commissioned by the Fukuoka city government and SGP is operating in its third year now. The project aims to accumulate developmental know-how of serious game and promote it in Japan to expand the contents industry. Currently, the team is also working on the development of a game for rehabilitation since last year.

Prior to joining Kyushu University, Prof. Matsuguma was Master of Design with the Kyushu Institute of Design from 1995 to 1997. Before that, he was Graphic Designer of Toppan Printing Co. Ltd from 1997 to 2003.

John is a game designer and programmer who has worked with young people to create games for the last 6 years. John was a leading developer of the FPSC drag-and-drop games design platform, and established it as a tool for teaching on the RollingSound games design course in 2005. John went on to create indie games studio Roll7 with Simon Bennett and Tom Hegarty in 2008 after the release of Channel4's anti-knife-crime game Dead Ends. John was one of the first people to develop games for the NeuroSky mass-market Brain Computer interface and has worked closely with NeuroSky to develop their hardware further. Roll7 is a Serious Games Developer and Digital Agency based in London and Coventry, the company is currently finalising plans to set up an office in Singapore in partnership with the SGI and MDA.

Samir Abou Samra, Chief Technology Officer at DigiPen Corporation, joined the DigiPen family in 1996. He holds a Masters of Science in Computer Science and is currently pursuing a PHD at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, working on a stem cells simulation thesis. A 14-year veteran in the video game industry he has 15 years of experience in teaching computer science and video game production.

Since 2003 he has been the Project Manager for the Technical Proof of Concept and Projects on Simulation for Boeing as well as Renault Formula1. The projects for the "Boeing company" where related to graphics and non graphic simulation, Artificial Intelligence, Human Interactive Virtual Environment, Human Behavioral Descriptive Language which lead to a development to a new high level programming language. He also received from the Boeing Company an award of outstanding achievement in finding a solution to a complex problem. While heading the development division, DigiPen received the award of the best supplier of the year in the technology category for 2008.

In addition, he oversees all Science programs both internationally and in the USA. Samir is the curriculum researcher and developer for the Real Time Interactive Simulation (RTIS) Degree at DigiPen. He was previously employed at Nintendo Software Incorporated Canada as the Vice President of Operations; and Nintendo Software Technology U.S.A. as the Director of Artificial Intelligence. At Nintendo, Samir was the co-author of eight United States of America patents related to the game technology and computer science.

Norihisa joined IE Institute in January 2009 and is currently the General Manager of the Project Development division. Prior to joining IE Institute, Norihisa was a pioneer member of Advanced Media, Inc. (specialising in voice recognition solutions, the company successfully went public in the Japanese main stock exchange market (2005). There, he served as a Senior Manager of Entertainment & Education / Mobile Business Department and also as a Secretary for Business Strategy Management Department. In the early years of Advanced Media, he had worked closely with theCarnegie Mellon University to develop and market state-of-the-art voice recognition technology.

In 2004, Norihisa met his current employer and developed his first language learning product with Japanese-English voice recognition engine which triggered his intellectual curiosity for the emerging educational market. In his current role, Norihisa Wada seeks for new business areas which will maximize current IE Institute Co., Ltd. assets and to make use of his successful experience in a venture business. His first project with the company was to launch the first Official TOEIC preparation software for Nintendo DS "TOEIC Test Official DS Training".