Mark Sagar

Double-Academy Award winner Dr. Mark Sagar, is co-founder and Chief AI Officer of FaiBLE Media where he is working on future storytelling technologies.

Mark was previously co-founder and Chief Science Officer of Soul Machines and Director of the Laboratory for Animate Technologies at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, pioneering the use of Biologically inspired models of cognition and learning in interactive virtual humans, including BabyX, a virtual infant capable of lifelike face to face interaction, driven autonomously by a virtual Brain.

He was the Special Projects Supervisor at Weta Digital and Sony Pictures Imageworks and developed technology for the digital characters in blockbusters such “Avatar,” “King Kong,” and “Spiderman 2.”

His pioneering work in computer-generated faces was recognized with two consecutive Scientific and Engineering Oscars in 2010 and 2011.

Mark has a Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Auckland and was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT.  Mark was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2019 and was named New Zealand Innovator of the Year in 2022. 

Mark was a Keynote Speaker at SIGGRAPH 2024 and has consulted on the intersecting worlds of AI, Interactive Human Simulation, Embodied cognition, Facial Animation and Robotics, film and video games.