DNEG has appointed Paul Salvini as Global Chief Technology Officer as part of the next stage of the firm’s global development. The company has expanded substantially in recent years, adding several new business lines, new facilities in North America and India, and growing to over 7,000 employees across its global offices.
In his new role, Paul will be responsible for developing a new, innovative vision for the company, managing its global systems and R&D teams and overseeing initiatives across all of its key services – visual effects for film and episodic content, feature animation, stereo conversion, virtual production and its ReDefine division, which serves expanding international markets and independent filmmakers.
Outgoing CTO Graham Jack, who has been with the company since 2002, is assisting with the transition of responsibilities.
Based in Canada, Paul has more than 25 years of experience in corporate roles including 15 years as CTO at SideFX, where he oversaw and guided the development of the industry-standard visual effects and animation software tool Houdini from beta onwards. He also spent several years as CTO of audiovisual technology leader Christie Digital, where he was a key member of the global executive team, providing strategic and technical direction to the company’s 1,500 employees across 18 countries as well as conducting fundamental research into display systems in order to secure early IP for the company.
Most recently, Paul was CEO of The Accelerator Centre, a not-for-profit business accelerator that provides guidance, mentorship and support for technology start-ups, ranked in the Top 5 for companies of its type worldwide and number one in Canada. The company has helped launch and support over 120 technology-based businesses in the last few years, working in a wide range of areas from data science, AI, computer vision and robotics to autonomous vehicles.
“Technology and science continues to play a more important role in the art and creativity of storytelling,” Paul said. “I’ve been fortunate enough to have had a hand in many firsts during my career in the entertainment industry – from enabling collaboration for a newly emerging global talent-base of artists and technicians, to the development of software and processes that have fundamentally changed what is possible to achieve digitally. I feel that we are on the cusp of the next big change in our industry, and it is an honour for me to have the opportunity to explore the possibilities with DNEG.”
As well as his professional experience, Paul also has a strong academic research background. He served as Associate Vice President of Research Commercialization at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. He holds a Bachelor of Mathematics in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo and an MBA, MASc and PhD (specialising in the computer simulation of complex systems) from the University of Toronto.
DNEG CEO Namit Malhotra said, “Paul has a huge breadth of technical, academic and managerial experience and an entrepreneurial edge which makes him a great addition to our senior team as we begin the next phase of DNEG’s journey.
“His industry credentials speak for themselves, and his academic and professional experience in fostering technical innovation, guiding research and development, mentoring creators and securing and commercializing IP reflects and supports our ambitions as we move forward in a very changed industry landscape.” www.dneg.com
