Laurent Noel

Laurent teaches a number of software engineering related modules. He assists with student's professional development by providing industry insight and running realistic mock job interviews. He is pursuing research in the real-time visualisation of astrophysics simulation time series in VR.

Laurent has been involved in computer games development since childhood and published his first title as a young teenager. After graduating, he took a development role in a Sheffield games company and developed the first 3D football game, being the first to use motion capture for consumer computing. He also contributed to graphics technology for several other games and worked with international companies to help develop and test the first consumer-level GPUs.

From this success, Laurent co-founded his own games development studio in Glasgow, and began working with Sega and Eidos on AAA PC and console titles. Laurent was technical director of the studio and employed 200 people.

During this time, Laurent was approached by the BBC to help promote computer games development in schools, and later helped validate the first computer games development degree at Abertay University. From this experience, he became interested in helping establish a more rigorous academic route for those wishing to enter the games industry, which had often relied on self-taught applicants. This led him to UCLan, where he has been able to help lead the development of one of the country's most rigorous technical courses for budding games developers.