Our Team

Lucas Cassels

Co-Founder

Lucas obtained his Computer Science degree from Harvard, where he was a teaching assistant and undergraduate researcher (and arguably took more physics classes than he had time for). Since then, he's become an expert on low-level performance-critical systems in the AV space, most recently developing the mapping and networking tool suite for Nuro, the autonomous delivery startup.

He joined Brad in developing the prototype for Expanse Volumetrics in 2022, bringing his deep knowledge of high performance computing and outsider perspective to the challenging problem of real-time volumetric rendering.

Brad Guesman

Co-Founder

Brad got interested in computer graphics during his undergraduate years at Brown, where he studied Physics and Computer Science, TA'ed for Andy Van Dam's computer graphics fundamentals course, and did research on differentiable rendering. He has since built a career in graphics and simulation technology, most notably at Activision on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), and at NVIDIA on the DRIVE Sim project.

Alongside his work at NVIDIA, Brad developed Expanse Skies for Unity HDRP, an atmosphere rendering toolkit that was the progenitor of Expanse Volumetrics. Following its release on the asset store in 2021, Expanse quickly amassed a large user base. Since then, multiple games have shipped with Expanse, including Sons of the Forest, a critically acclaimed survival-horror game with 400,000 active monthly players.

Habib Zargarpour

Advising and Testing - Cinematic VFX

Habib is currently a visiting professor at the USC school of Cinematic Arts. Something of a legend in the field, his credits range from pioneering VFX blockbusters like Twister (1996) to modern visual masterpieces like Blade Runner 2049 (2017). Over the course of his career he's received two Oscar Nominations, two BAFTA awards, and one VES award, and has experience across film, TV, and games/AR/VR.

Habib joined on as an advisor for the project in 2024, providing key guidance for product development and vision.

Amelia Chenoweth

Advising and Testing - Cinematic VFX

Amelia is a veteran VFX artist who built an impressive catalogue of work during her tenure at Lucasfilm's Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), contributing to blockbuster films like Black Panther (2018), Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013), and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007). Since her time at ILM, she has branched out into more diverse applications of VFX, most recently as CG supervisor at Evil Eye studios, where she led production of cinematic content for the hit battle royale game Fortnite.

Amelia has been providing hands-on guidance for Expanse since mid-2024, steering the course of the product to align with the needs of VFX artists working in Unreal Engine 5.