Developing for the metaverse

Deepa is an Engineering Director in the Metaverse org, within Reality Labs. She has been at Meta for the last 10+ years and is passionate about building and scaling organizations, solving complex engineering problems, and conceptualizing & building innovative products. At Meta, she has experience building and leading teams on 0->1 as well as large-scale products spanning product, infrastructure, ML and VR.

Niti Hantaweepant, Software Engineering Manager: Niti has been at Meta for more than 8 years and currently is part of Reality Labs team working on a new hardware product. She has various background ranging across the stack from backend systems/platform, full stack product to frontend experience at scale.

Parth is an engineering leader in Meta Virtual Reality working on helping people seamlessly experience Virtual reality by themselves and with others. Before VR, Parth worked on Instagram building out the Discovery and Shopping products. Prior to joining Meta he worked at Bloomberg helping build their Search and AI teams.

Timon has been at Meta for almost 8 years and leads the Avatars and Identity engineering organization. These teams build the avatar system that allows millions of people to represent themselves and engage in Metaverse experiences across VR, AR, desktop, and mobile devices.

Bijal is a Technical Program Manager within Reality Labs VR Ecosystem team. She supports the team that focuses on building awesome software experiences that help developers run thriving businesses and users enjoy their buying experience in VR. Prior to Meta, she has held different TPM positions including leading teams at Nuance Communications (Microsoft), Amazon and Qualcomm.

Katya is a Design Manager in London and currently support the design team for Metaverse Avatars. Prior to this, she led the design for 360 Media, software suite, Spatial Workstream, Horizon, and the Oculus Social Platform. Katya loves working at the intersection of physical and digital experiences and is passionate about making the metaverse a safe, inclusive, and diverse place.

Ravi has spent his career working on technologies and platforms for representing the physical world with virtual 3D model and simulations spanning a wide range of use cases from engineering to entertainment. For three years prior to joining Meta, he built and supported the Creator Platform at Roblox. Prior to that, Ravi was at Autodesk for a decade in various product management roles including leading product management for the flagship product, AutoCAD. Ravi supports the Experiences and Marketplace pillars in Avatars and Identity that focus on how users create their avatars, how they express using their avatars and how creators can serve the needs of users across Meta’s Family of Apps and VR.

Sagar is a Product Design Prototyper at Meta, and works on the VR operating system for Quest. He’s been at Meta for three years, and has worked on several products across our portfolio, including Quest TV, Horizon Venues, and more. Sagar also works on programs and classes that help Designers bring their work from traditional design tools into AR and VR.

Tim has worked in the wearable AR space for over 10 years, starting in the early days of Microsoft’s HoloLens before moving to Meta’s AR R&D org and then eventually into Meta’s AR & VR product org – Reality Labs. He supports hardware UX, human factors, & pathfinding research teams in Reality Labs, which explore the human, environmental, and sociocultural factors that influence AR/VR technology’s role in human connection. Tim received his PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Georgia Tech.

Leslee is a producer for Beat Saber, assisting the Beat Games team with day-to-day development and their cross-functional efforts across Meta. Deeply passionate about game development, Leslee has spent over a decade at other game studios including Riot Games, 2K, and Scopely doing both game production and narrative design before joining Meta last year.

Hello, I’m Mat Kraemer, head of design from Sanzaru. I have been in games for over 25 years. I have worked on everything from Nintendo 64 games to the world of Sly Cooper and Sonic the Hedgehog. Sanzaru has been working with Meta developing VR games since 2016. Our most recent release is the deep narrative driven action-adventure RPG Asgard’s Wrath. I absolutely love creating games and our team eats, sleeps and lives game creation. Creating games in VR has been an incredible journey. Our team is always looking to push the boundaries of what is possible in VR. I want to wow players with what is possible in VR and push the boundaries beyond what anyone has expected from the medium.

Ruth is an Executive Producer and manager on the Oculus Studios team. She helped start her team prior to Meta’s acquisition of Oculus, 8.5 years ago while working on her master’s degree at Stanford. In the VR space, she’s worked on some of the most notable gaming IP within franchises like Jurassic World, Star Wars and Marvel, to creating engaging entertainment experiences with Cirque du Soleil, Lebron James and even our former presidents. She's a champion of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts at Meta in the education and gaming space and enjoys being a mentor to students interested in careers in the Metaverse.

Tim Moss oversees the Core Engineering Team, which focuses on and supports efforts within Oculus Studios (Beat Studios, Downpour, BigBox, Sanzaru, Ready at Dawn, Twisted Pixel, Armature, and Camoflaj).

Tim has an attention to detail for the craft of games. He was a founding member of Sony Santa Monica, on the 'God of War' franchise. He oversaw the programming team and the technical decision making, with a heavy bias towards gameplay. In his 15 years there, games got more complex. Tim maintained a great engineering team with a set of core values, that produced a string of AAA hits. He learned many lessons about culture, leadership, and effectively managing and growing people.

After Sony Tim moved to Riot Games in 2015, where he learned about the realities of running a Live Game as a Service, and dealing with the enormous scale and complexity of 100m installs. In 2019 he joined Stadia Games @ Google leading efforts to integrate ML into video games.

Bruno leads the Wireless Technologies group within the Meta Reality Labs (RL) organization. This multi-site team gathers all the expertise in wireless (RF, Antenna, Design, Verification and Test, Certification, Standards, Spectrum Policy, Modem Firmware and Systems) and owns the definition, development and validation of every wireless interface across the whole RL product portfolio (Meta Quest, VR, and Ray-Ban Stories). Before joining Facebook/Meta, Bruno spent most of his career in Europe, working for Motorola and pioneering on the 2G, 3G and 4G technologies and also on the IoT startup scene, creating groundbreaking device designs, ranging from NB-IoT connected garbage sensors to sub-GHz ultra low power animal trackers. Bruno earned a Masters Engineering in Telecommunications from the University of Cantabria, one of the leading RF and Networking colleges in Spain.

Elene Terry Supports the Silicon Accelerator Team, a team devoted to building the most innovative, lowest power silicon IPs on the planet. These IPs enable Meta to build custom silicon enabling the form factors necessary to bring the Metaverse to reality. The silicon teams include experts in algorithms, architecture, microarchitecture, design, verification, physical design, validation and firmware. Prior to Meta, Elene ran silicon architecture teams for both datacenter products and AR products at Microsoft. She’s committed to building collaborative, inclusive, creative teams.

Kristen has wanted to be a product designer since she was about 10 years old when she was challenged by her father to create something that could bring her laundry upstairs faster and easier than carrying it. That first try wasn't quite a success, but it led her to a robotics team, then Georgia Tech for her Mechanical Engineering Degree. Post college she spent some time designing heat exchangers for glass factories, then moved on to lighting design for 8 years. During that time, she became an engineering manager and got her EMBA. Finally, after being very interested in the theories of the metaverse, she joined META. She's currently the PDE Manager for the next headset in the Quest Line of products. In the next month, she'll be celebrating her first metaversary!

Nada O'Brien is a Director in the Display & Optics division at Reality Labs, Meta, leading the team that design, develop, and productize the optical components and optical modules for AR Glasses. Nada has been at Meta for 6 years. Prior to that she was with Viavi Solutions (previously known as JDSU and before that was known as Optical Coating Lab., Inc). for 20+ years, where she held positions in research, product development, and product management, for optical coating products used in fiber optics communication, projection display and defense industries. Nada holds a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Materials Science & Engineering from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Trine University. Nada is an inventor on 23 patents. On weekends, she spends time with family and enjoys the Pacific Northwest through rowing and kayaking.

Paula Cuneo is Director of Social Impact Marketing for Horizon Worlds and Avatars at Meta Reality Labs, working to center equity, inclusivity, accessibility, and authentic representation in Marketing and Community Programming. Her mission is to help build the foundation for a safe, inclusive, equitable, and fun metaverse for All.

Paula is a creative marketer who builds breakthrough programs, unique experiences, and welcoming spaces for All. She is a well-known personality in the video gaming and tech industries working for 20+ years across Production, Business Development, Licensing, Experiential, and Transmedia Marketing. She has helped launch games like Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk Pro Skater, Call of Duty, and Spider-Man and has worked with partners like Jeep, Puma, Coca-Cola, and Birdhouse to make games authentic and relevant to a broader audience.

Paula is part of the VR Vanguard, the folks that spurred the second wave of Virtual Reality. She is a member of the team that launched the DK2, the Oculus Rift, the Touch Controllers, Gear VR, the Oculus Go and Quest, and now the metaverse.Paula has envisioned and launched programming that nurtures a diverse VR creator ecosystem and drives the industry forward including Oculus Connect, the largest global XR developer conference, VR for Good, a program that showcases the many ways that VR is good for the world and Oculus Creators Lab, an experience production laboratory for VR storytelling that elevates people and social issues, and executive produced more than a dozen VR films and experiences that have premiered at Sundance, Tribeca, Cannes, and the Venice Film Festival.

At Meta, Vishal Shah leads the product, engineering, design and content teams that are building for the metaverse. His Metaverse Product Group oversees platforms like Horizon Worlds and drives cross-company efforts like Avatars to bring the metaverse to life across Meta’s family of apps. Prior to this, Vishal spent 6 years at Instagram, where he most recently served as its Head of Product overseeing all consumer and monetization products.

Prior to Meta, Vishal spent 10 years at Turn, pioneering programmatic advertising and marketing technology in roles across engineering and product. Vishal holds degrees in Computer Science and Business from the University of California, Berkeley and resides in the Bay Area with his wife and their two boys. You can find him on Instagram and Twitter.

Felix Anthony Navarro Jr. is Product Manager within the Reality Labs Core Software Team which focuses on building foundational software and Apps for the Oculus Quest 1 and Quest 2 Virtual Reality Headsets. Felix is also the founder of Meta's Afro-Latinx group and is a co-founder of “Level Up by Facebook,” (now known as Meta Elevate) which is a program at Meta dedicated to growing minority-owned small businesses through training and mentorship. Prior to Meta, Felix spent five years at Goldman Sachs, and prior to Goldman Sachs, Felix graduated from the City College of New York as Valedictorian of the Division of Social Sciences. Outside of Meta, Felix is the founder of FN Speaks LLC, which is a motivational speaking and coaching company specializing in helping businesses and individuals drive meaningful community impact. On his down time, Felix can be found in VR, planning his next thrill seeking adventure (see Wing Walking), or working on his first book.