Mary’s passion as a young art director at Ogilvy Canada was to understand and extend brand loyalty. When she moved into the museum and exhibition design sector, she built on the connection between visitor experience and brand loyalty. Mary is supremely sensitive to the visitors’ experience of an exhibitions’ cultural identity and aesthetic quality. This led her to advance her studies through a Master of Cultural Studies at KU Leuven in Belgium where she analysed semiotics’ influence in design. She pursued an advanced Master of Digital Humanities analysing qualitative and quantitative data to reveal the underlying causes and reactions to a given product. Mary conceptualized 20+ museums across 4 continents with a focus on the visitor experience. This has enabled her to provide deep insights through analysing data aggregated from the visitors’ voice.

Sarah researches at the forefront of interactive and immersive experiences for galleries, libraries, archives and museums. As Professor of Digital Museology at EPFL Lausanne she leads the Laboratory for Experimental Museology (eM+). Her focus lies in exploring the convergence of aesthetic practice, visual analytics and cultural data. She is also director and lead curator of EPFL Pavilions, EPFL’s new art/science galleries. Sarah worked fulltime for museums for 25 years. She held curatorial and special projects position at The Powerhouse Museum, Sydney and Museum Victoria, Melbourne, pioneering digital museology since the early 1990s. By joining academia, Sarah fills a lifelong dream to support museums at the intersection of research, infrastructure and exhibition – connecting digital collections to participatory experience.

Anita is an entrepreneurial academic fostering organisational innovation culture. She facilitates multidisciplinary teams at the intersection of industry and academia. Anita’s human first design research is implemented in new products and experiences across diverse sectors. She strongly beliefs that innovation happens when the boundaries around disciplines are removed. Anita’s international partnerships that promote design innovation are with Stanford ME310/Sugar network (USA), Aalto Design Factory in Helsinki (Finland), Challenge Based Innovation at IdeaSquare CERN in Geneva and more recently Arena2036 in Stuttgart. Her greatest achievements are as double agent working with unicorns, moonshots and pokemons changing mindsets one sparkle at a time. She is Director of Design Factory Melbourne and Professor at Swinburne University.

Volker has always had a keen eye on design’s influence seen and felt in our everyday experiences. Volker’s design vernacular is informed by history as its integral to our future trends; an inspiration influenced by modern automotive aesthetics in personally restoring and rallying the iconic French Renault coupe. Volker’s approach to rallying and solving problems; hands on, give it a go human centered design experience spans 20+ years across government, enterprise and academia. Volker’s design fluency is diverse; from product launches, exhibition design, corporate collateral, interaction design, customer experience and brand strategy. Volker’s digital knowledge, traditional design skills, strategic direction and co design methods provides a language for sectors across business to work together. His work in Fintech, Health, Government, Arts, Architecture, Corporate customer experience solve challenges through the language of design.

Allan is a software engineer creating impactful technology solutions and assembling and guiding high-performing software teams. He is based in Melbourne, Australia and is currently the General Manager Software Engineering at Deakin University’s Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute (A²I²). His strengths are in software architecture design, crafting user experiences, and maximising value for cost investment. Allan’s passion lies in creating technology that reshapes the way people communicate, work, learn and understand information. He believes that technology should empower users, be engaging and enjoyable to use, and be constantly evolving to the needs of its environment. Allan’s view is that the most impactful outcomes come from diverse teams, where openness and respect are a central part of any collaborative endeavour.