The National University of Singapore (NUS) has established the Hollywood Lab in Los Angeles, California, to foster international R&D collaboration and technology commercialisation for interactive and digital media. The research Lab works closely with major Hollywood movie studios, universities, and entertainment companies in North America.   It focuses on international R&D collaborations, student exchange and visiting professor programmes, and joint business ventures between Singapore and the United States.

The NUS Hollywood Lab is a brainchild of Newton Lee, Prof. Adrian David Cheok, and Prof. Hang Chang Chieh at the National University of Singapore.   The Hollywood Lab exemplifies the global strategy of the National University of Singapore for the advancement of interactive and digital media.

The National University of Singapore (NUS) is a multi-campus university of global standing, with distinctive strengths in education and research and an entrepreneurial dimension. A growing university, NUS now spans three locations - its principal 150-hectare Kent Ridge campus, Bukit Timah campus and Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore. It has an enrolment of 22,000 undergraduate and more than 6,000 graduate students from 80 countries.

NUS offers a broad-based curriculum underscored by multi-disciplinary courses and cross-faculty enrichment. There are 13 faculties offering courses from architecture to medicine to music. A special feature of NUS education is the global dimension of its courses in partnership with some of the world's best institutions. NUS also enjoys a close teaching-research association with 13 national-level, 11 university-level and 80 faculty-based research institutes and centres. Research activities are strategic and robust, and a 'no walls' collaborative culture forms the bedrock of NUS' research-intensive vibrancy.   A spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation promotes creative enterprise university-wide. This is aided by a venture support eco-system that helps students, staff and alumni nurture the development of start-ups into regional and global companies.  

NUS plays an active role in international academic networks such as the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) and Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU). It is ranked amongst the best universities in the world, and is well-regarded for disciplines such as Technology, Biomedicine and the Social Sciences.

Newton Lee is the founding director of the NUS Hollywood Lab for interactive and digital media research and technology commercialization. He is the founding editor-in-chief of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Computers in Entertainment magazine - a nonprofit educational publication since 2003 to promote research and development in all aspects of entertainment technology. He is also the founding CEO of the nonprofit Institute for Education, Research, and Scholarships with educational and research focus on entertainment technology, renewable energy, and human aging research.

While at Disney between 1996 and 2006, Lee founded the Disney Online Technology Forums and developed over 100 games and activities on award-winning web sites Disney.com and Disney's Blast, as well as enhanced-TV programs for ABC's "Summer Jam Concert" and Disney Channel's "In Concert."

In 1993, Lee developed an object-oriented scripting language and cross-platform compiler for interactive CD-ROMs including the beloved titles "The Lion King Animated Storybook," "Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree," "101 Dalmatians," "Lamp Chop Loves Music," "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," "Haunted House," "George Shrinks," and "Barbie as Rapunzel." He and his colleagues received the Michigan's Leading Edge Technologies Award for their invention.

Lee has served as a juror for the 2003 Emmy Awards for Advanced Media Technology. He has won two community development awards from the California Junior Chamber of Commerce, and four Disney VoluntEARS project leader awards. He has published two novels, a book chapter in "Machine Learning and Uncertain Reasoning" (Academic Press 1990), and dozens of research papers on software applications in medical science, national security, quality control, telecommunication, library science, and new media. He has refereed for the International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, IEEE Expert, and IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. He has given invited talks at M.I.T., AT&T, the MITRE Corp., and international conferences.

Lee holds a B.S. and M.S. in computer science from Virginia Tech, an electrical engineering degree and honorary doctorate from Vincennes University. He currently serves on various advisory boards at the Art Institute of California, Digital Hollywood, UCLA, USC, and Virginia Tech.

Adrian David Cheok is Director of the IDM Network and the Director of the Mixed Reality Lab, National University of Singapore. He is Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

He has previously worked in real-time systems, soft computing, and embedded computing in Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (Osaka, Japan) and NUS. He has been working on research covering mixed reality, human-computer interaction, wearable computers and smart spaces, fuzzy systems, embedded systems, power electronics, and multi-modal recognition. He has successfully obtained funding for four externally funded projects in the area of wearable computers and mixed reality from the Defense Science Technology Agency Singapore. The research output has included numerous high quality academic journal papers, research prototype deliverables to DSTA, numerous demonstrations including to the President and Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore, CNN / CNBC television worldwide broadcasts on his research, and international invited new media exhibits such as Ars Electronica.

He is currently an Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore where he leads a team of over 20 researchers and students. He has been a keynote and invited speaker at numerous international and local conferences and events. He is invited to exhibit for two years in the Ars Electronica Museum of the Future, launching in the Ars Electronica Festival 2003. He was IEEE Singapore Section Chairman 2003, and is presently ACM SIGCHI Chapter President. He was awarded the Hitachi Fellowship 2003, the A-STAR Young Scientist of the Year Award 2003, and the SCS Singapore Young Professional of the Year Award 2004. In 2004 he was invited to be the Singapore representative of the United Nations body IFIP SG 16 on Entertainment Computing and the founding and present Chairman of the Singapore Computer Society Special Interest Group on Entertainment Computing. Also in 2004, he was awarded an Associate of the Arts award by the Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Singapore.

Alan Kay is one of the earliest pioneers of object-oriented programming, personal computing, and graphical user interfaces. His contributions have been recognised with the Charles Stark Draper Prize of the National Academy of Engineering "for the vision, conception, and development of the first practical networked personal computers," the Alan. M. Turing Award from the Association of Computing Machinery "for pioneering many of the ideas at the root of contemporary object-oriented programming languages, leading the team that developed Smalltalk, and for fundamental contributions to personal computing," and the Kyoto Prize from the Inamori Foundation "for creation of the concept of modern personal computing and contribution to its realization." This work was done in the rich context of ARPA and Xerox PARC with many talented colleagues.

While at the ARPA project at the University of Utah in the late 60s, he invented dynamic object-oriented programming, was part of the original team that developed continuous tone 3D graphics, was the co-designer of the FLEX Machine, an early desktop computer with graphical user interface and object-oriented operating system, participated in the design of the ARPAnet, and inspired by children, conceived the Dynabook, a laptop personal computer for children of all ages.

At Xerox PARC he invented Smalltalk, the first completely object-oriented programming, authoring and operating system (which included the now ubiquitous overlapping window interface), instigated the bit-map screen, screen painting and animation, participated in desk-top publishing, other desktop media, and the development of the Alto, the first modern networked personal computer. This was part of the larger process at PARC that created an entire genre of personal computing including: the GUI, Ethernet, Laserprinting, modern word processing, client-servers and peer-peer networking.

He has been a Xerox Fellow, Chief Scientist of Atari, Apple Fellow, Disney Fellow, and HP Senior Fellow. In 2001 he founded Viewpoints Research Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to children and learning. He is currently an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at UCLA, a Visiting Professor at Kyoto University, and an Adjunct Professor at MIT.

He has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Arts, and the Computer History Museum.

He has a BA in Mathematics and Biology with minor concentrations in English and Anthropology from the University of Colorado, 1966. MS and PhD in Computer Science (1968 and 1969, both with distinction) from the University of Utah, and Honorary Doctorates from the Kungl Tekniska Hoegskolan in Stockholm, Columbia College in Chicago, and Georgia Tech.

Other honors include: J-D Warnier Prix d'Informatique, ACM Systems Software Award, NEC Computers & Communication Foundation Prize, Funai Foundation Prize, Lewis Branscomb Technology Award, and the ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computer Science Education.

He entered show business in the 50s as a professional jazz guitarist. Much of his subsequent work combined music and theatrical production. Today he is an avid amateur classical pipe organist.

Bran Ferren is a designer and technologist working in entertainment, product development, engineering, architecture and the sciences. He is the former President of Research & Development and Creative Technology for Walt Disney Imagineering. Prior to that, he was the President of and Senior Designer for Associates & Ferren, which Disney acquired in 1993. He left Disney in 2000 to start Applied Minds Inc., with partner Danny Hillis.

Ferren is a board member of The International Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA), and a senior advisory board member for science, advanced technology, and innovation management to seven US Government agencies, and the US Senate. His currently held positions include: National Security Agency Advisory Board, National Reconnaissance Office Technical Advisory Group, Army Science Board member, former member of Defense Science Board, Chief of Naval Operations Executive Committee, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Technical Advisory Group, Securities and Exchange Commission Advisory Committee on Technology, Federal Communications Commission Technological Advisory Committee, National Imagery and Mapping Agency Advisory Forum, Strategic Command Advisory Board, and the Homeland Security Science and Technology Advisory Committee.

Ferren received Technical Achievement Awards from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the Computer-Controlled Lightning Effects System and Laser Synchro-Cue System, as well as the Scientific and Engineering Award for an Advanced Concept Optical Printer, used for special effects cinematography. Recent awards include the 1998 Wally Russell Lifetime Achievement Award for lighting design, and a 2000 Kilby Award for significant contributions to society.

Described as one of the great spirits of the computer industry, inventor, scientist, and computer designer, Danny Hillis is cofounder, chairman and Chief Technology Officer of Applied Minds. A former vice president of research and development at The Walt Disney Company and the first Disney Fellow, Danny has designed some of the fastest computers in the world and pioneered the concept of parallel computers, now the basis for most supercomputers, as well as the RAID disk array technology used to store large databases. A skillful speaker, he seamlessly combines storytelling with technical insight and video and slide illustrations to discuss everything from trends in technology to the evolution of new media and the creative process.

He co-founded Thinking Machines, the first company to successfully build and market parallel supercomputers. For his defining work in the area of parallel processing and for his spirit of innovation, creativity, and exploration, he received the first Dan David Prize for Achievements in ‘Past, Present or Future,’ specifically, in the Present category “for accomplishments that are shaping and enriching society and public life “ in Technology, Information and Society.

His research and development company, Applied Minds, provides advanced technology, creative design and consulting services to a variety of clients in areas ranging from software, entertainment and electronics to biotechnology and mechanical design.

Previously, Hillis was Vice President, Research and Development, at Walt Disney Imagineering, and a Disney Fellow. While there, he developed new technologies and business strategies for Disney's theme parks, television, motion pictures, Internet and consumer products businesses. He also designed new theme park rides, a full sized walking robot dinosaur and various micro mechanical devices.

Danny holds over 40 U.S. patents, covering parallel computers, disk arrays, forgery prevention methods, and various electronic and mechanical devices. Danny Hillis is also the designer of a 10,000-year mechanical clock and the author of The Pattern On The Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work, which describes how computers work and explores their future. He has published papers in major scientific journals and written extensively on technology and its implications for mainstream publications.