We are producers, technologists, theatrical designers, artists, game designers, movers and shakers.

We are Evil Geniuses.

As recent graduates of Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center, we have experience in many fields of entertainment: from traditional video games to theme park design and production.

Learn more about us below. Don’t worry, we won’t bite.

Tracy Brown recently left 13 years of corporate life to pursue her Masters at the ETC and a career that will allow her to be both creative and quantitative. Having earned her degree, she consulted in technology for years before becoming the director of information security for American Eagle Outfitters. In this capacity, she channeled a childhood hero (Nancy Drew) to help protect the secrets of denim and retail branding while keeping hackers at bay. She was also the director of IT for ae.com bringing the website to a profitable state during the .dot com bust.

Tracy and technology became one in the early 80’s when she taught herself programming on her TI 99/4A. She won state programming fairs for graphical simulations such as ‘A Volcanic Eruption’ and ‘The Dissection of a Frog’ programmed in BASIC. During this same time, an Atari 2600 entered her life and on a mission to end an informal competition in middle school, she spent an entire Saturday playing Pac-Man until she flipped the score - which she expected to be to 100,000 only to discover that it reset to 0. Pitfall and the crocodile heads sent her away from consoles and into casual games on the PC until she discovered Doom in her freshman year at Penn. Deciding between Doom and Calculus (she chose poorly), she put down the FPS genre to focus on college. In her spare time (what little she has left), Tracy plays FPS games competitively with the PMS Clan - the largest, all female gaming clan – and currently leads their Call of Duty 4 PC division.

She is a professional speaker on topics of information security and works with the FBI and organizations advising on the issue of cyber security. She is considered a chief problem solver and has also been a soloist, television host, llama trainer, writer, and event coordinator. She considers this phase, Life v2.0.

Rich Marmura is the Game Designer for Evil Genius Designs.

Prior to Schell Games, Rich worked on several projects at Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC). While at the ETC Rich designed interactive installations, themed environments and iPhone games. He additionally served as a head teaching assistant for the Building Virtual Worlds (BVW) course.

Rich has a BA in Theater and Political Science from Westminster College and a Masters of Entertainment Technology from Carnegie Mellon University. He would also like it known that though he is an Evil Genius...he is surprisingly nice.

Rich also works at Schell Games as a Game Designer on PixieHollow.com a massively multiplayer online game for girls ages 6 to 12.

Erica Sandbothe arrives at Evil Genius fresh from Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science. As an undergraduate, Erica focused her studies on computer graphics, computer vision, and machine learning. In her senior year, she took the Building Virtual Worlds class at the Entertainment Technology Center, where she first met the Evil Genius group.

Over her summers, Erica interned with TerraSim Inc. and Intel R&D labs, doing computer vision research on images ranging from aerial photography to board games. She also headed the Computer Science side of Carnegie Mellon Robotics Club's RobOrchestra project for three years, where she developed algorithms that would allow robots to improvise music.

Erica spends her free time writing, drinking tea, and feeding sparrows.

Ali Spagnola joins the Evil Genius Designs team as an Artist and Designer.

Prior to becoming an Evil Genius, Ali worked at Sim Ops Studios. There she created graphics and web designs as well as composed music and sound effects. During that time she also worked with Schell Games on the Toy Story Mania ride installed in Walt Disney World and Disneyland. For this interactive 3D park ride, Ali created LCD screen designs and animations.

Ali obtained her BFA in Art from Carnegie Mellon University. While studying art she also had a focus in Music Theory which propels her sound design.

In her free time Ali enjoys acrylic painting and running.

Chris Stagno joins Evil Genius Designs as a Game Designer and Producer, after earning his Master's Degree from Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center.

Prior to joining EGD, Chris worked with the Fred Rogers Center to create an iPhone application called Mad Dash that encouraged physical activity and creativity for parents and pre-school aged children, promoting a healthy lifestyle and positive media creation at an early age.

Chris has a Bachelor of Fine arts in English from St. Olaf College, bringing his editing and analysis skills to his work as a designer at EGD.

During all portions of his life Chris has been an avid gamer from video games to board games, and gives back to the community working as a Judge for Magic: The Gathering.

Ryan Myers is a programmer and long-time gamer.

Before becoming Evil (officially, anyway), Ryan worked at SilverTree Media on multiple projects including Pixie Hollow, a massively multiplayer online game for young girls, and Cordy, a physics-based puzzle platformer. Prior to that, he developed features of a research application for a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's HCI department.

Ryan attended Brown University, where he decided he wanted to be a game programmer after his introductory programming course in his first semester and reinforced that decision while working on a game for an independent study in his last semester. He holds an Sc.B. in computer science.

Robyn Gray is currently a rising senior in Carnegie Mellon University's undergraduate Bachelor of Computer Science and Art program. Thus far her studies are focused on ETA (Electronic Time-based Art) and computer graphics. Although she considers herself more artist than programmer, she enjoys the alternate perspective a computer science background can bring to art.

Robyn worked a little with the Evil Genius team prior in conjunction with their Get In Line work for CMU's Spring Carnival, 2009. She has done UI design and 2d art for a few undergraduate created games, as well as logo design and advertising for CMU's Spring Carnival Committee.

She loves animating, doodling, and writing and hopes to pursue all three wherever she ends up.