Newton Lee

2006 Scholarship Awards at the American Film Institute

Quincy Jones

Dr. Alan Kay

Oscar winner Richard Edlund

Roy E. Disney

The Boys & Girls Club's Back to School and Christmas Shopping Spree

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg at USC

Newton Lee is the co-author of Disney Stories: Getting to Digital (Springer 2012) which Dr. Alan Kay describes as "an affectionate portrait of how 'the mouse' learned to use the mouse."

Lee is the founding president of Institute for Education, Research, and Scholarships - a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity organization dedicated to improving society by providing resources to high achieving students, scientific researchers, nonprofits, and educational organizations. He is the founder and co-editor-in-chief of Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Computers in Entertainment - a nonprofit educational publication to promote research and development in all aspects of entertainment technology. The magazine has garnered the support of more than 100 leading professionals and scholars representing major universities, Hollywood studios, and Fortune 500 companies. Many of whom have won the Academy Awards, Emmys, and Grammys. He has interviewed many Hollywood celebrities such as Roy E. Disney, Quincy Jones, and George Lucas.

As the founding director of the NUS Hollywood Lab for interactive digital media R&D and technology commercialization between Singapore and the US, he has worked with former Disney Fellows Dr. Alan Kay and Dr. Danny Hillis, and former WDI R&D chief Bran Ferren.

As a senior producer and engineer at Disney Online, he founded the Disney Online Technology Forums in 2001 and developed over 100 games and activities for the award-winning web site Disney.com and Disney's Blast, as well as enhanced-TV programs for ABC's "Summer Jam Concert" and Disney Channel's "In Concert."

As a computer scientist and researcher at AT&T Bell Labs, he created expert systems for telecommunication networks as well as experimental design in off-line quality control. He was invited by the MIT School of Engineering to give a lecture on his work.

A pioneer in CD-ROM development, he created one of the first object-oriented scripting languages and cross-platform multimedia compilers for interactive CD-ROMs. He co-developed 11 CD-ROM titles including the award-winning bestsellers "The Lion King Animated Storybook," "Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree," and "Lamp Chop Loves Music." He and two of his colleagues received the 1995 Michigan's Leading Edge Technologies Award.

He was a juror for the first-ever 2003 Advanced Media Technology Emmy Awards, a member of the Disney VoluntEARS Leadership Council in 2005, a vice president of community development at Burbank Junior Chamber of Commerce (Jacyees) in 2000, and a co-chairman of three international conferences on entertainment technology.

Being active in community service with the Boys & Girls Club, Revlon Run/Walk for Women, scholarship pageantry, charity fashion shows, and many volunteer organizations, he has been honored with two outstanding community development awards from the California Junior Chamber of Commerce, and four volunteer project leadership awards from The Walt Disney Company.

He has coauthored Disney Stories: Getting to Digital (Springer 2012), a book chapter in Machine Learning and Uncertain Reasoning (Academic Press 1990), and two dozen research papers on software applications in pharmacology, medical science, national security, quality control, telecommunication, library science, the Internet, and computer games. Some of his publications are listed online at the DBLP Bibliography Server.

He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Virginia Tech with a B.S. and M.S. degree in Computer Science, and he earned a perfect GPA from Vincennes University with an A.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and an honorary doctorate in Computer Science. His graduate thesis won an ACM Scholarship Award and led to the creation of the first commercial artificial intelligence product from AT&T Bell Labs.

While in graduate school, he interned and worked as a research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses where he conducted military standard Ada research for the US Department of Defense (DoD) and counterterrorism research for the multi-agency joint projects involving the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), National Security Agency (NSA), and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

He currently serves on various advisory boards at the Art Institute of California, Digital Hollywood, UCLA, USC, Virginia Tech, and other educational organizations worldwide. He resides in Los Angeles with his wife.