People

Davis van Bakergem is the founder of Grove Oz Biz, LLC and the inventor of Group Portrait Maker. For over twenty years, he was the Director of the Urban Research and Design Center at Washington University’s School of Architecture. His funded work in the URDC involved digital media, videodisc production, virtual cities, virtual museums and many campus planning and design projects. Recently, he has been directing the development of the Group Portrait Maker phone app which is the sole product of Grove Oz Biz, LLC (an Opportunity Zone startup).

University of Virginia, Washington University, Harvard University

Katherine van Bakergem is a cartoon and caricature artist and the inspiration for the development of Group Portrait Maker (GPM). For several decades, she has created a collection of wonderful drawings and has been the artistic advisor for the Group Portrait Maker.

Saint Lawrence University, University of Hawaii

Debayan Deb, PhD is a consultant, contractor and developer of several components of the GPM image pipeline. His PhD dissertation involved the development of warpGAN, a generative adversarial network which can process any selfie type photo and generate a artistically rendered caricature of the subject. His team has developed several phone applications for commercial markets.

Michigan State University

Erik Tomasic, is a software engineer for Grove Oz Biz and the Group Portrait Maker. His recent work and knowledge of natural language processing has been crucial for the development of GPM. He has applied his knowledge of NLP principles and techniques to our image pipeline. He has developed the pathway from selfie to inserGAN for our project.

Washington University, University of Washington

Felix Moreno is an undergraduate fashion student in the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University. He is Grove’s leading fashion design developer and is responsible for creating the data sources for the avatars in GPM. He is developing techniques using Browzwear for generating garment designs and characters for GPM. Grove Oz Biz is a development partner with Browzwear.

Washington University

David Koller, PhD is a computer scientist who has provided critical review and advice for the development of GPM. He has been involved in the production and coding for the submillimeter scan of Michelangelo’s David for the Italian government, the city form generator of the Virtual City Project and a physical facilities scanning startup on the east coast. Currently, he provides invaluable advice regarding the development of convolutional neural nets, GANs and diffusion models.

Purdue University, Georgia Institute of technology, Stanford University

Ron King, PhD, is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting at Washington University. While at Washington University he has taught accounting courses in the Undergraduate, MBA, and Masters of Accounting Programs. He now focuses his teaching at the Executive MBA level. His current research interests are in the area of teaching and learning. Ron is active in the St. Louis start-up community, he is an angel investor and has served as a board member for several companies. Ron provides business strategy and tactics advice to Grove Oz Biz, LLC

University of Arizona

Mary Ruppert-Stroescu, PhD, wrote her dissertation, on the interaction between creativity and technology for fashion design in the 21st century. Her current research focuses on the study and application of wearable electronic textile-based sensing systems that address issues of health and well-being.She holds intellectual property protection for four inventions and has presented her research and creative scholarship at national and international conferences. Mary provides advice and direction on GPM issues related to fashion design and its industry.

University of Missouri

Patti Williams, JD is an expert in business law, having served companies large and small in industries including, energy, healthcare, manufacturing, technology, cannabis and more. She is a life-long hobbyist of game-theory, a tech geek (which enables more predictable and efficient legal services), and an avid bird-watcher. She asks a lot of questions, never shies away from a microphone, and is the one-time winner of a velcro jumping contest. She understands how business works. She has public company board level experience. She loves the courtroom. Patti provides excellent legal advice for our startup, Grove Oz Biz, LLC and has has helped us avoid doing something really dumb. A real VIP for us.

Saint Louis University, Washington University

Bruce Lindsey served as dean of the College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design in the Sam Fox School from 2006-2017. He was the head of the School of Architecture at Auburn University from 2001-2006. He was a member of the faculty in the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University from 1987-2001 and served as associate head of the School of Architecture from 1994-2001. His design practice as an architect has spanned 40 years and his work as a crafts person and photographer has spanned 45 years.
Bruce provides the Group Portrait Maker development team with insightful and practical advice. “Hey Bruce, what do you think of this version?”

Yale University

Browzwear – For fashion designers and manufacturers around the world, Browzwear’s 3D solutions for apparel design, development and merchandising are the key to a successful digital product lifecycle. Through the power of true-to-life 3D, designers, developers, production and marketing can collaborate effectively to get creative products to market efficiently. Grove Oz Biz was awarded a developer partnership agreement and is using Vstitcher and Lotta in GPM’s image pipeline. With custom scripts, a new data model for a collection of garments for various climates will be developed.