Team

Our Team

Aldora Wang – Co-producer/ Experience Designer

Aldora Wang is an experience designer who is passionate about creating playful and meaningful experiences for her audience. She is dedicated to designing and making interactive projects including installations, games, and media art.

Laura Yang – Lead Artist

Laura Yang is a passionate and motivated 3D and technical artist dedicated to aesthetically pleasing visuals. After earning a B.A. degree in Media Studies from Vassar College, she decided to pivot to what she is the most passionate about – bringing unimaginable yet enjoyable immersive experiences to people through technology and art. She enjoys working across different platforms, doing 3D modeling, texturing, shader and VFX development. She loves working with different yet creative minds, solving problems, and pushing her limits to learn new skills.

Kristin Wu – Programmer

Kristin Wu is a programmer with a focus on AR/VR/Game development. Her passion lies in creating immersive experiences through cutting-edge technologies. She has experience working on a variety of projects, from small indie games to large-scale virtual reality simulations. She is constantly seeking to improve her skills and stay up-to-date with the latest advancements in the field. She believes that teamwork and communication are essential for success, and she always strives to collaborate effectively with her colleagues.

Jialu Sun – Programmer

Jialu is a second-year master’s student at Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University.

She started her journey in the game industry as a User Experience Designer Intern at Just Dance Mobile, Ubisoft Shanghai. During this 4-month internship, she conducted market research and performed UX design for the new social networking modules including player’s profiles and game data.

With rich experience in VR/AR projects in her undergraduate and ETC study, Jialu is also a skilled programmer who is familiar with C# and blueprint. She is always seeking a way to turn creative ideas and technical skills into real entertainment and convenience using XR technologies.

Pan-Pan Gou – Sound Designer /Composer

Pan-Pan is a sound designer and composer. Currently a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, she is passionate about creating soundscape that inspires storytelling and evokes human experience. Her work ranges from theater, games, films to dance.

Receiving Her bachelor’s degree in Classical Music and Theatrical sound design at University of California, Irvine, Pan-Pan is also trained in classical voice and find her music background allowing her approach sound design creatively.

Shirley J Saldamarco

Shirley Saldamarco is an entrepreneur, a producer and an educator. She has a background in theatre from Carnegie Mellon School of Drama and Producer for national programming at WQED-TV. As President of Interactive Media Productions, the company she founded in 1982, she produces a variety of Broadcast and Non-broadcast programs.
As an Independent Producer, projects include documentaries, public affairs and special programs, which have aired on PBS, network and cable television. She proudly displays a number of awards including an Emmy nomination, Matrix Award in Broadcast News and Documentary, Golden Cine, Pennsylvania Cable Arts Network Award, American Psychological Association Award, and several Telly Awards. Shirley has a particular interest in producing quality programming for children and was Creator and Executive Producer for the pilot, “Charlie’s Sharing Adventure,” as well as Dialogue Director for 52 episodes of “Johnson and Friends,” on Fox Network.
Shirley provides consulting services and serves on several professional boards, including the Themed Entertainment Association International Board of Directors, Themed Entertainment Association Next Gen Committee, Steeltown Film Factory, LEGO First Competitions, National Civil War Museum Advisory Council and Robot Hall of Fame. In the past she served on the Carnegie Science Center, Robo World Advisory Council and Pittsburgh Jazz Society Board of Directors.
As a member of the School of Drama faculty from 1990-2009, Shirley taught classes in Producing for Television and Film, and produced the WQED Television Showcase, and master class Television Workshop, collaborating with Drama Professor, Cindy Limauro. Shirley designed a cross disciplinary course, “So You Want to Make a Movie,” (2005-2006) which she co taught with Associate Professor Sharon Dilworth. She also taught the class “Creative Enterprises” (2005-2007) in the Heinz School Master of Entertainment Industry Management Program.
Since 2006 when Shirley joined the ETC faculty, she has taught projects and offered workshops at the Pittsburgh campus, Silicon Valley, Osaka, Japan and Salford, England. From 2006-20012, she was also Director of Creative Services for the Entertainment Technology Center. As ETC Special Faculty, Shirley continues to teach in Pittsburgh and Silicon Valley, conduct workshops and offer Interdisciplinary Courses and her Fundamentals of Producing in the Entertainment Industry class to all Carnegie Mellon Students.

Scott Stevens

Scott Stevens has extensive experience in the areas of games, and augmented and virtual reality for education. He has been involved with multimedia research and development for over forty years. Scott began his career at CMU in 1987 in the Software Engineering Institute where he and his research team created the world’s first digital video CD-ROM, a virtual reality learning system that allowed users to carry on conversations with simulated personae.

In 1996 Scott moved to the Human Computer Interaction Institute where he was a co-principle investigator of the Informedia Digital Video Library project. Informedia research applied speech recognition, image processing and machine learning to automatically analyse video. For that work he received the Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence. Also beginning in 1996, he taught part-time at the then newly created Entertainment Technology center. Scott joined the ETC full-time in 2008.

Recently, Scott was the principal investigator on a multi-year research grant to develop games that teach STEM concepts to children, while improving social and emotional learning. This grant was funded by the ENGAGE Program of United States’ Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under the mandate to ensure a strong, scientifically literate workforce.

Scott received his B.S. and M.S.Ed. degrees in physics from Northern Illinois University and his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has spoken internationally on computer science and artificial intelligence’s impact on education and interactive entertainment and has written over one hundred professional papers, talks, and book chapters. He is a holder of three patents related to digital video and Synthetic Interviews.