Realtime Lab

Professor Gregor White is Chair of Applied Creativity in the Faculty of Design, Informatics and Business at Abertay University in Dundee. A leader in digital interactive entertainment, Gregor has secured over £40 million to establish innovation centres like InGAME and Abertay cyberQuarter. He is also a key contributor to the CoSTAR network, advancing research in creative technologies and fostering collaborations that shape the future of the creative industries.

Melissa Terras MBE FREng is Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage at the University of Edinburgh, specialising in the digitisation, mining, and analysis of cultural heritage, and using them to build award-winning digital products and services. A leader in the field of Digital Humanities, she has secured over £55m in research funding. Terras was Director of Creative Informatics, the Edinburgh based AHRC Creative Cluster supporting innovation in creative and cultural contexts, and is a founding Director of Transkribus, the AI-powered platform for text recognition of historical documents.   

Dr Andrea McSwan has 25+ years in the film, tv and architectural industries, as head creative designer and project lead. She is best known for inventiveness, synthesis of ideas and getting technically complex and creative projects over the line. Winning a BAFTA scholarship at the National Film & Television School, Andrea began in industry on the feature film Judge Dredd and in TV on Pie in the Sky III and more recently, being the concept artist on the Scottish TV drama Outlander. Her PhD, in 2022, explored the perceptual-experiences of artists with sight loss, through an animated film, created and viewed in VR. Joining Abertay University in 2023, as a thematic analysis Research Fellow on the UK-China games industry, R&D project InGAME International, Andrea is now the CoSTAR Realtime Virtual Production Lab manager at Abertay University; which places R&D side-by-side with commercial virtual film production.

Yasmin Sulaiman is SVP of Ecosystems at CodeBase, who are partners on the CoSTAR programme. CodeBase helps people build better startups, and since 2022 have run the Scottish Government's Techscaler platform. Yasmin started her career in journalism, becoming Editor-in-Chief at Scottish arts publication The List, and then joined Creative Edinburgh as Executive Director, where she worked with and advocated for the capital's creative community. Since joining CodeBase, Yasmin has worked with hundreds of founders to help bridge the gap between the creative and tech sectors. Yasmin is also a Trustee at the Edinburgh International Festival. 

Phillip Vaughan is a Researcher, Practitioner and Senior Lecturer, with over 26 years’ experience in industry and academia, is a Co-I on CoSTAR (National and Network), and has expertise in virtual production, real-time pipelines and digital avatars. Academically, Phil was previously a Co-I on AHRC’s £11M InGAME project as well as other technology-led funded research projects over the years including game development, digital avatar production and eye tracking. His professional work includes productions with the BBC, Sony, DC Comics and Warner Bros. In this work he was responsible for the implementation, production and teaching of highly specialised 2D & 3D animation and visual effects techniques, and credited on published work such as Braveheart, Jim Henson’s Farscape, Star Trek, Wallace and Gromit, Teletubbies, Tom & Jerry, Commando Comic and Superman, as well as various other original IPs.

Dr Caterina Moruzzi is Co-Investigator in CoSTAR Realtime Lab, focusing on the responsible integration of AI technologies in creative workflows. She is Chancellor's fellow in Design Informatics, University of Edinburgh and BRAID Research Fellow, in collaboration with Adobe. She has a Ph.D. in philosophy of art and has a background as music performer. 

Emily Bailey is R&D Fellow in VFX and Virtual Production Pipelines in CoSTAR focusing on innovation across production pipelines through CR&D with industry partners. She has an industry background in live TV and events, having worked as a Multi-cam Director and Vision Mixer for broadcasters such as Sky, BBC, ETP and IMG. She also has an AV art practice situated across the performing arts and animation and has collaborated with companies such as Rambert and exhibited across the UK arts scene. 

Ecem Ince is an R&D Fellow in Codesign and User/Audience Experience at CoSTAR. Ecem previously worked as a UX researcher in university-industry projects in emerging technology context, including UX research for Hyundai in AV concept development, and Metavethics Institute in ethical XR development. She is also a designer with a background in art and design. 

Caroline leads strategy for the engagement with the Creative Industries at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. She initiates and maintains industry relationships across the creative and cultural sector with trade associations, creative networks, creative companies and practitioners. Engagement dialogue ascertains the needs and challenges of the sector regarding data-driven innovation which inform skills support, instigating academic collaboration, supporting entrepreneurship and seeking research and innovation funding to address these challenges. She works closely with colleagues and teams across the University to support the Edinburgh Futures Institute’s interdisciplinary and collaborative approach. She has developed various skills programmes and most recently founded the CreativeTech Scotland Gathering. 

Sabrina is the Administrative Assistant supporting the establishment and delivery of the CoSTAR Realtime Lab at the University of Edinburgh. Alongside this, she is pursuing an MSc in Environmental Sustainability. Sabrina has previously worked as a technician for live events, including across a number of venues and productions at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. 

Calum Main is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in XR Technologies in CoStar Realtime Lab, focusing on the integration of Virtual Production pipelines with traditional filmmaking and animation technologies. His PhD focused on development pathways between academia and industry within the Scottish animation sector, specifically on building collaborative frameworks and training infrastructure. He has industry experience working as an animator, most recently on short film and advertisement productions. Calum's own practice looks to integrate stop-motion animation with 3D digital workflows.

Andrew Connor is a Lecturer in Design and Digital Media at Edinburgh College of Art. His research centres on cross-modal perception in 3D and immersive design. As a co-investigator on CoSTAR, his focus is on how virtual production techniques can enrich the learning experience for our staff and students.  

Dr Nichola Dobson is a Senior Lecturer in Animation at Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. Founding editor of Animation Studies (2006 - 2011) and Animation Studies 2.0 (2012- present), she has published on animation, television genre and fan fiction, including Norman McLaren: Between the Frames (2018) for Bloomsbury and Historical Dictionary of Animation and Cartoons, Volume 2 (2020) for Scarecrow Press. She is currently working on the Routledge Companion to Animation with Paul Taberham. She was President of the Society for Animation Studies between 2015 and 2019. She is currently the Director of the Animation Research Network Scotland.