Alex McDowell

Alex McDowell RDI is an award-winning designer and storyteller working at the intersection of emergent technologies and experiential media. He is the creative director of 5D Global Studio, where he and his team design immersive story worlds and their end products for industries and institutions. As director of the USC World building Media Lab, McDowell and his interdisciplinary students build future worlds for storytelling across multiple platforms. He also leads the USC 5D Institute, a renowned, multidisciplinary knowledge space. McDowell has 30 years experience as a production designer in feature films, and serves on the executive board of the Academy of Motion Pictures Designers Branch. As a visiting artist to the MIT Media Lab, he designed the robotic opera, "Death and Powers.” In 2006 he was awarded Royal Designer for Industry by the UK Royal Society of the Arts. He was recently honored as USC William Cameron Menzies Endowed Chair in Production Design by George Lucas.