Dr Maciej Zurawski
Founder, CEO & CTO
Maciej is an entrepreneur and technologist with an interdisciplinary background in science, technology and arts. He has 25+ years of software product development experience. Maciej believes that digital technology should be a force for good, and that mobile apps and decentralized digital innovations are the ideal ways to harvest and unleash human goodness. He is passionate about creating intelligent mobile apps and decentralized innovations for social good and a fairer society, as well as for physical, mental and spiritual well-being.
Maciej has developed several digital consumer products from scratch that have 10 000+ downloads and a decentralized and scalable global platform. He believes that innovation is not only about making new products, but also about re-imagining and re-creating the world from first principles. Maciej is seeing how scalable digital platforms (SaaS), artificial intelligence and blockchain technology realize this transformation. As an eager hands-on software developer, he is leading his team in delivering this vision.
Diwakar Thakore
Co-founder and Business Operations Consultant
Diwakar brings more than 18 years of business experience working with several top-notch organizations in Scotland, Asia and Europe including a number of start-ups, high growth and early stage companies. On top of his business background across operations, finance, marketing and business development, Diwakar brings strong knowledge and experience in research and technology commercialization. He holds an MBA from the University of Edinburgh Business School and certifications in intellectual property from World Intellectual Property Organization. He also holds professional degrees in accountancy and commerce.
Dr Ronen Barzel
CTO (music technology)
Ronen’s experience spans software development, academia, and project leadership, with a emphasis on computer technology used in the service of artistic endeavors. He worked for a dozen years as an Animation Scientist at Pixar Animation Studios (where his most visible claim to fame is having built the Slinky Dog model for the first Toy Story movie), and more recently as a Senior Technologist at Adobe Systems. He served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Graphics Tools for over a decade from its inception in 1996, and was co-editor of the Audio Anecdotes series of books on digital audio. He was chair of the SIGGRAPH 2009 Conference, introducing for the first time a special focus on music as it relates to interactive techniques and graphics. He holds an BSc in Math and Physics and an MSc in Computer Science from Brown University, and a PhD in Computer Science from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Over the years he has held occasional visiting academic positions, including teaching at the University of Washington, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ecole Polytechnique, and the University of California San Diego.
Anne CM Johnson
Technical Advisor
Anne is the founder and CEO of Cunning Systems, which offers technology risk analysis and management consulting. She has operating experience with Hewlett Packard, Cisco Systems, Arista Networks, cPacket Networks, several SMEs and a California charity. She has mentored many Techstars accelerator programs and made angel investments, including Musemantik. She is a Global Scot and an advisor to the Scottish Business Network. Located in Edinburgh as of May 2022, after 25+ years in Silicon Valley.
Anne holds a post-graduate IT diploma in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh and an MA in Economic Science from the University of Aberdeen.
Chris Wright
Advisor
Chris has been involved in the video games industry since 1995 and is recognised as a pioneer in the mobile gaming sector. He joined I-play (formally Digital Bridges) in 1999 as employee number 2 to create the company’s game development and publishing arm.
Chris worked as the Head of Game Development, Europe for I-play, managing both internal and external development. This included running 4 internal studios as well as overseeing all external development studios.
Chris left I-play in 2008 to found his own consultancy business, which has gone on to work with many of the world’s leading video game developers and publishers, as well as a number of business, science, technology and arts organisations, which are exploring the ongoing evolution of videogames.
Chris is a board member of The Independent Game Developers Association (TIGA).
Nigel Osborne
Advisor (music technology)
Nigel Osborne is the Reid Professor of Music at University of Edinburgh. His works have been featured in most major international festivals and performed by many leading orchestras and ensembles around the world, ranging from the Moscow to the Berlin Symphony Orchestras, and from the Philharmonia of London to the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
He is also carrying out neuroscience research with a particular interest in music and emotion. He is famous for his music therapy work. He frequently travels around the world and uses music therapy to help children traumatized by war and conflict. He is Musemantik’s creative advisor.