Director and designer Robert Stromberg sits at the very pinnacle of Hollywood visual effects work, having won Academy Awards for Best Art Direction for Avatar and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland— two of the top ten highest-grossing films in history. He has also won five EMMY Awards for visual effects for “Star Trek” (Both Voyager and The Next Generation), and HBO’s “John Adams” and “Boardwalk Empire.”Both a premier storyteller and digital artist at the forefront of emerging technology, his first film as a director, Maleficent, set global box-office records for live-action directorial debut. “The Martian VR Experience,” which Stromberg directed through his own VRC and RSA Films, made an impact as well. The 20-minute interactive companion piece to Ridley Scott’s The Martian film has thus far won an AICP NEXT honor for VR and a Cannes Silver Lion in Digital Craft. Stromberg’s expertise extends to brand advertising as well, with directing credits for Mercedes, GE and Intel. His long-form content for Intel’s What Lives Inside campaign, won three Cannes Lions in 2015.Stromberg grew up in Carlsbad, CA., the son of horror director and visual effects cameraman William R. Stromberg. The younger Stromberg entered the business as a matte painter in 1987 on such films as Tremors and A Few Good Men. He excelled in the exploding field of visual effects and digital production, garnering over 100 production credits on films including Addams Family Values, From Dusk Till Dawn, Dragonheart and Courage Under Fire.In 1998 he formed his own VFX company Digital Backlot, where he worked with top Hollywood filmmakers including Steven Spielberg (Catch Me If You Can), Steven Soderbergh (Solaris), Martin Scorsese (The Aviator, Shutter Island), and Robert Zemeckis (What Lies Beneath, Cast Away).