Dr Luke Dicken is Zynga Inc’s Director of Central and Strategic Analytics, where he leads teams in driving innovation across the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Analytics and Data Science, with a particular focus on applications to large-scale business problems. He is also Chair of the IGDA Foundation, a charity by game developers for game developers.

Luke’s journey to the game industry started at age 13 when he fell in love with Artificial Intelligence thanks to a game called Creatures. Luke attended the University of Edinburgh to receive a Bachelor of Science with Honors in both Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science and a Master of Science majoring in Bio-Informatics. He also holds a Master of Research in Autonomous Planning for Automated Systems and a PhD specialising in Artificial Intelligence for video games, both awarded by the University of Strathclyde.

Luke was the founder of the now defunct Robot Overlord Games, a small studio focusing on contract Artificial Intelligence for the games industry. He was the first person outside of North America to be elected to serve on the Board of Directors of the IGDA, between 2013 and 2016. He was named as one of Develop Magazine’s (now MCV) 30 Under 30 for 2013 and was #1 on The Innovation Enterprise’s list of the Top 30 Influential Figures in Gaming Analytics in 2018.

Luke lives in San Francisco, but still swears like he was back in Glasgow.