I'm Julia, co-founder and CEO of Fantastic Voyage Labs. As a scientist, educator, and entrepreneur I have focused on making science engaging, accessible, and practical. My career began at the City of Hope National Medical Center, where I completed my Ph.D. in cancer biology. After completing my training as a postdoctoral scholar at the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs and the University of Alberta, I joined Purdue University as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Biological Sciences. At Purdue I directed a research program studying the mechanisms of cancer development and metastasis. My work, funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense, has been published in prominent journals such as PNAS, JBC, Cancer Research, and Blood. In 2014, I founded zPREDICTA, a biotechnology startup focused on developing human 3D cell culture models for cancer drug testing identifying new compounds most likely to benefit cancer patients. I took the company from an early-stage concept (Y Combinator S15 batch) to a successful multimillion-dollar exit.

Throughout my career, I have prioritized teaching and mentoring, training many students from high school through graduate level. I’ve taught undergraduate and graduate courses at Purdue University, Santa Clara University, and California State University, emphasizing active learning strategies. Most recently, recognizing the growing demand for effective hands-on training, I founded Fantastic Voyage Labs, an education technology company dedicated to creating interactive and adaptive learning solutions that prepare a future-ready workforce.

I am Sergey, co-founder and CTO of Fantastic Voyage Labs. I am a machine learning expert with 20 years of experience as an educator, scientist, and an engineer both in industry and academia. Over the past decade, I was primarily developing recommender systems for e-commerce, improving product search recommendations for hundreds of millions of online shoppers at Amazon and Facebook Marketplace. I also built a platform for online ad campaigns at Walmart and worked on one of the first enterprise machine learning platforms at Skytree. Prior to that, I was a tenure-track Assistant Professor at the Department of Statistics at Purdue University where I taught, supervised, and mentored undergraduate and graduate students while directing multiple projects including a study where I collaborated with atmospheric scientists to build statistical models to forecast precipitation. My research has been published in top machine learning venues and atmospheric science journals. I earned my Ph.D. in Information and Computer Science from the University of California at Irvine back in 2005.

I'm passionate about using my expertise to build products that actually help people learn. As I observed first-hand how machine learning can be effectively applied to user interaction data to influence shoppers in ecommerce, I strongly believe that applying machine learning to the learner interaction data can be used to improve the learning outcomes. I am excited about building a learning platform that uses extended reality, learning engineering, and generative AI to help people acquire practical, hands-on skills.

I'm Pavel Koutcherina, a Senior Unity and Unreal Engine developer based in Krakow, Poland. I've been working in the tech industry for over eleven years, with the last six specifically dedicated to creating immersive XR experiences. I've developed XR solutions for everyone from small startups to industry giants like Amazon and Philips. My work has ranged from training apps and photorealistic CG videos for computer vision training to rapid prototyping and internal tool support,contributing to a number of award winning projects including a medical simulation which was recognized at the Telly Awards for the "Best Use of Interactivity" (gold winner), at the 13th Annual Lovie Awards in the "Web3 and XR Best Use of Technology" category (gold winner), and at the Horizon Interactive Awards (silver winner). I'm proficient in Unity, Unreal Engine 5, C#, VR/AR hardware, procedural modeling, and much more. I'm passionate about pushing the boundaries of what's possible in XR merging technical expertise with creative vision to craft innovative experiences. At Fantastic Voyage Labs, I’m building Destination Lab, a VR application for hands-on training for biosciences and clinical Labs, including animating Celly, a virtual instructor, who guides learners to mastery of a multitude of laboratory procedures.

Hi, I'm Daniel, a VR engineer from Hungary. I've been immersed in the world of VR development for over ten years, and it's been an incredible journey. I've had the chance to work on all sorts of projects, from my own puzzle game, PathCraft (which you can find on the Meta Quest Store!), to more recent work in simulations. For the past five years, my focus has been on creating realistic simulations, everything from visualizing real estate walkthroughs to large-scale training simulations for train and truck operation. Now, I'm thrilled to be part of the team at Fantastic Voyage Labs, where we're building life-like VR simulations for bioscience lab procedures. It's exciting to apply my experience to help people learn complex skills through hands-on virtual practice.

Hi, I'm Taras Voznyi, a 3D environment and props artist based in Lviv, Ukraine. I’ve been working in the 3D and XR space for nearly a decade, creating everything from realistic environments to stylized assets for interactive experiences. My interest in 3D began back in high school, blending my love for video games with my studies at the local School of Fine Arts. I later pursued a degree in architecture, where I started creating 3D visualizations.

In 2016, I began my professional journey as a hard surface artist at a game outsourcing company, focusing on detailed models of armored vehicles. Over time, I expanded my skillset, freelancing on projects ranging from mobile AR apps to stylized environments for businesses. Eventually, I joined a creative studio producing immersive VR/AR applications and interactive visual solutions across various industries. I contributed to everything from concept design and asset creation to animation and engine integration, including a VR training platform for industrial technicians. Now, I’m excited to be part of Fantastic Voyage Labs, where I’m building life-like 3D environments, props, and characters for Destination Lab, a hands-on VR training platform for bioscience labs.

I’m Connor, a software engineer from London, United Kingdom, who enjoys building systematic simulations, giving talks on immersive technologies, and meeting like-minded people. I have dedicated the past 6 years to improving the rate of skill acquisition and retention of information through the use of immersive technologies. My development journey started as a teenager with a 1000-page C++/DirectX9 book and dreams about fully interactable virtual worlds. I joined Fantastic Voyage Labs to inject an interactive component into training of laboratory personnel.

My name is Sergiy Putiak, and I am a Unity developer based in Lviv, Ukraine. Over the past ten years, I have worked in both game development and the XR interactive industry. I built a foundation in both 3D modeling and programming early in my career studying precision devices and systems at the university. I actually started out on my current path as a 3D artist, contributing to several AAA racing games. Working closely with game engines sparked my curiosity to go beyond just creating 3D models. I wanted to bring them to life in the virtual worlds! That's what motivated me to dive deeper into programming, and Unity in particular. As a Unity developer, I've focused primarily on VR learning platforms and other interactive VR experiences. I’m really excited to join Fantastic Voyage Labs to work with such a great team on creating a state of the art learning platform.

Pollard is a Silicon Valley C-suite veteran and has extensive global experience scaling businesses, establishing public and private partnerships, and building highly specialized technology, from concept to market - primarily to enable biotechnology. She is recognized as a strategy creator and implementor, advising companies, serving on corporate boards, and as a venture partner. She recently served as board director and the first female finance chair for YPO, a global leadership community of more than 35,000 chief executives representing over 150 countries. The member-run companies in YPO (also known as the Young Presidents' Organization) employ more than 16 million people and generate more than $6 trillion in annual revenues. From 2020 - 2023, Elizabeth played a critical role in developing and leading Oklahoma's innovation economy as Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt's Secretary of Science and Innovation. Her cabinet included the award-winning Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST). During her tenure, the agency has grown from $17M to $225M in assets under management, utilized the State Small Business Credit Initiative to create the Oklahoma Venture Capital Investment Program - a fund of funds for in-state equity investment in early stage companies, established the Oklahoma Business Lending Partnership Program to provide low interest loans to Oklahoma businesses, and funded 3 of the world’s most prominent accelerator programs to serve Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and rural Oklahoma (Gener8tor, TechStars, Farm Bureau). She holds a BA in Chemistry from Michigan State University and a MS in Business Administration from Central Michigan University.

Steve Ritter is Founder and Chief Scientist at Carnegie Learning. Dr. Ritter earned a doctorate in cognitive psychology at Carnegie Mellon University and was instrumental in the development and evaluation of the Cognitive Tutors for mathematics. Dr. Ritter is the author of numerous papers on the design, architecture and evaluation of adaptive instructional systems and is recognized as an expert on educational analytics and on using Artificial Intelligence in education. He is lead author of an evaluation that is one of the few to be judged by the US Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse as meeting their standards without reservations. He has received several awards, including the Best Paper award at the International Conference on Educational Data Mining. At Carnegie Learning, Dr. Ritter leads a research team devoted to using learning engineering to improve the efficacy of the company’s products. Current funding focused on such issues as algorithmic bias in educational AI, support for teaching math to struggling readers and the UpGrade tool for supporting rigorous field tests of educational software.