2021 Guest Speakers

Meet Your Kickoff and Closing Guest Speakers for the 2021 Virtual California Science Education Experience!

Stuart Sumida is a biologist and paleontologist who earned his bachelors and doctoral degrees from UCLA, and later did postdoctoral work at the University of Chicago. He is now a professor of Biology at the California State University campus in San Bernardino. He studies animal structure, function, and evolution; he has written three books and nearly 100 peer-reviewed publications.

He has worked as an animal and human anatomical consultant to animation and VFX studios for over 25 years, first working with Walt Disney Feature Animation on Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, and others.Since then he has worked with DreamWorks, SONY ImageWorks, DreamQuest, PIXAR, Blue Sky, MPC, FrameStore, Double Negative, Guerrilla Games, RockSteady Games, Walt Disney Imagineering.He has worked on over 60 feature films, including the first and last Harry Potter films, the How to Train Your Dragon films, Life f Pi, Ratatouille, the first Guardians of the Galaxy, Greatest Showman, Jumanji, Zootopia, Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom, on Kong Skull Island, and others.

Most recently he is credited for his work on the Mr. Mittens character in PIXAR’s academy-award winning film Soul, and he has been working with Tangent Animation on the fourth season of The Dragon Prince and with FrameStores on characters for season four of His Dark Materials for BBC and HBO.