Keynote Presentations

Lanny Smoot (Research Fellow, Disney Research) has spent more than 45 years as a theatrical technology creator, telecommunications systems researcher, inventor, electrical engineer, and scientist — with 25 of those years at The Walt Disney Company. Lanny holds Bachelors and Masters degrees in electrical engineering from Columbia University and he has invented and patented many forward-looking technologies that allow The Walt Disney Company and, ultimately, the theatrical community at large to create new magic, illusions, and entertainment. With 107 patents to his name, he is Disney’s most prolific inventor. His work can be seen throughout Disney’s theme parks, resorts, and cruise ships worldwide.

Lanny joined Walt Disney Imagineering as the head of its Research & Development site in East Hampton, New York, and moved with that group to the Los Angeles Imagineering R&D headquarters a few years later. He joined Disney Research (the most forward-looking part of Research & Development) and became a Disney Research Fellow in 2014.

Seventy-five of Lanny’s patents are from his research and inventions at Disney. Some of Lanny’s early patents and innovations there include “Where’s the Fire?” at Innoventions, formerly at EPCOT; classic special effects guests love in the Haunted Mansion; the virtual interactive koi ponds at the Crystal Lotus Restaurant at the Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel; the Fortress Explorations interactives at Tokyo DisneySea; and “Power City” at Project Tomorrow. More recently, he has created state-of-the-art extendable lightsabers along with the high-tech interactive lightsaber training experience used at Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser at Walt Disney World. He and his team have also created the HoloTile™ Floor, an omnidirectional treadmill, allowing persons on it, wearing head mounted displays, to walk through surrounding virtual environments.

Before Disney, Lanny worked at Bell Labs and then at Bell Communications Research (where he was also that company’s patent leader). While at Bell, Lanny earned patents on early video-on-demand technology, video conferencing, and television systems allowing viewers to individually choose their gaze direction from a special camera.

Lanny is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including three Thea Awards from the Themed Entertainment Association (for Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage at Disneyland Park, Kim Possible World Showcase Adventure at EPCOT, and the “Ghost Post” limited time experience inspired by the Haunted Mansion). Additionally, he was named a 2020 TEA Master, also by the Themed Entertainment Association.

Lanny was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame® in the class of 2024 and is only the second person from The Walt Disney Company to achieve this honor. The first was Walt Disney, honored posthumously in 2020 for the invention of the multiplane camera. Lanny was featured as part of the exhibit “Breaking Barriers: Honoring Extraordinary Black Inventors” at the National Inventors Hall of Fame® Museum located in the United States Patent and Trademark Office headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. The NIHF exhibit is being presented in partnership with the USPTO and the Black Inventors Hall of Fame.

Beyond his own achievements, Lanny feels a responsibility to help others recognize and magnify their own talent and creativity. He has often spoken at schools from the university level to grade schools to encourage young people, especially people of color, to consider careers in the sciences and themed entertainment and he has mentored dozens of young people over the years, almost all of whom have gone on to successful careers at The Walt Disney Company and elsewhere.

Darwesh Singh is driven by a passion for learning and a dedication to pushing boundaries. Starting his career at just 14, Darwesh quickly became known for his ability to solve complex tech problems. He made waves early on by founding Bolt Graphics in 2020 after a decade of designing data centers and cloud environments for Fortune 500 companies. His mission? To tackle performance issues with heavy-duty tasks like simulations and 3D graphics while also reducing power consumption.

In 2014, Darwesh developed a solution for hardware-accelerated path tracing after witnessing the lengthy rendering times for visual effects in movies. This breakthrough laid the groundwork for Bolt Graphics as the demand for cinema-quality visual effects grew and existing solutions lagged in performance and efficiency. Bolt Graphics’ mission is to revolutionize the tech landscape by addressing the increasing power consumption and costs associated with HPC workloads. Bolt is building Zeus, a GPU for rendering, HPC, and gaming that supports expandable memory, on-board ethernet, and can act as a standalone PC.

Today, Darwesh continues to drive Bolt Graphics forward, constantly asking, “Why do we do it this way?” and “How can we do it better?” His vision for a more efficient and environmentally sustainable approach to technology continues to challenge the status quo and inspire innovation across the tech industry.