Daniel Sahl is the associate director of UNLV's Center for Gaming Innovation.

Sahl is an expert on tourism, gaming, slot machines. He has published numerous papers at academic conferences and journals, and his most recent research examined the convergence of video game design with present-day slot machines and how these new games impact the player’s experience.

Sahl has worked with the Center for Gaming Innovation from its inception: first as a student in the class, then as the graduate assistant, and now as the associate director. To date, he has filed six gaming patent applications as either a sole inventor or a co-inventor.

Robert Rippee is a nationally recognized authority on the hospitality industry, particularly technology innovation, esports, and business and product development. He is often called upon by local and national media to provide context to emerging trends in hospitality, esports, robotics, artificial intelligence, and other technology applications in the service industry. 

Rippee directs the Hospitality and Esports Lab within UNLV's International Gaming Institute and is former senior vice president of marketing for Las Vegas Sands Corporation. The lab is project-oriented and guides students from an array of disciplines through the innovation process. The lab’s environment is one of the unique learning environments at UNLV, combining the development of disruptive innovation with guidance from subject matter experts in esports, robotics, artificial intelligence, experience design, virtual reality, augmented reality, blockchain, and more. 

Rippee is active as a board advisor, mentor, and consultant to several early stage and mature technology startup companies. He is also a veteran, having served as a pilot in the United States Navy. 

Alan Feldman is one of the world’s leading experts on responsible gaming.

As Distinguished Fellow in Responsible Gaming for UNLV’s International Gaming Institute, Feldman develops programs and policies to advance related knowledge and capabilities within the industry and regulatory community.

Feldman spent nearly 30 years in the gaming industry with MGM Resorts, where he recently spearheaded the launch of GameSense, an innovative, player-focused responsible gambling program that encourages players to adopt behaviors and attitudes that can reduce the risk of developing gambling disorders. This landmark program is now available at all of MGM’s U.S. properties.

A frequent speaker on responsible gaming at conferences, universities and media events around the world, Feldman serves as Chair of both the National Center for Responsible Gaming as well as the Nevada Advisory Committee on Problem Gambling. He also serves as a member of the Gambling Research Advisory Committee for the Massachusetts Gaming Commission.

In 2002, the Casino Management Association honored Feldman as the Gaming Professional of the Year and in 2009, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Gaming Communications from the American Gaming Association.

Becky Harris is a recognized expert on gaming policy and regulation, legislative affairs, and workplace sexual harassment prevention.

Harris is often called upon nationally to discuss discuss policy and regulatory issues relating to legal sports wagering. As an academic fellow with an emphasis in the study of sports betting, Harris collaborated with stakeholders to finalize the formation, launch, and first convening of the U.S. Sports Betting Forum, an outlet designed to provide a neutral forum in which stakeholders can convene to discuss policy and regulatory issues relating to legal sports wagering.  

She also recently served as the first female Chair of Nevada Gaming Control Board, regarded as the gold standard in gaming regulation worldwide. During her tenure, she helped guide the Board through a number of controversial matters including sexual harassment issues within the industry, challenges involving the legalization of recreational cannabis and its relationship to gaming regulation, the repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), the emergence of sports betting across the United States, and various Wire Act issues.  

Harris represented State Senate District 9 in Clark County for two legislative sessions and two special sessions. During the 2017 Legislative Session, she served on the Finance, Judiciary and Education Committees.  In 2015, she served as Chair of the Education Committee, Vice Chair of the Judiciary Committee and as a member of the Commerce, Labor and Energy Committee. Additionally, she served as the Treasurer of the National Council of Legislators from Gaming States and was selected to chair its Responsible Gaming Committee.

While practicing law in Las Vegas, Harris' areas of focus included counseling business clients in entity formation; maintaining compliance with state and local regulations; contract negotiations, commercial leases, and dispute resolution. She is sought after as a speaker worldwide on issues related to gaming policy, regulation, and leadership.  

Brett Abarbanel is the executive director of UNLV's International Gaming Institute, with an affiliate position at the University of California, Los Angeles’s Gambling Studies Program. She has expertise in global gambling and social science applications, and her research covers Internet gambling policy and behavior, esports and gambling, operations and technology, and responsible gambling and community relations.

Abarbanel serves as co-executive editor of the UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal, which publishes internationally relevant gambling research articles representing a broad span of academic disciplines. She is a founding director of the Nevada Esports Alliance, which promotes the development of best practices at the intersection of the esports and regulated gambling industries. In 2021, she was among seven industry expert professionals named to the Nevada Gaming Control Board’s first-ever Esports Technical Advisory Committee, which is responsible for making recommendations to the board on guidelines for maintaining integrity in esports when betting is involved.

In 2015, Abarbanel was honored by the Global Gaming Expo and The Innovation Group with their Emerging Leader Award, and was named to the 2016 Global Gaming Business 40 Under 40 list.

She has been interviewed as a gambling expert for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Discovery Channel and served as a consultant for multiple industry and government entities around the world.

Glenn NP Nowak, associate professor of architecture, is the founder and coordinator of the hospitality design (HD) concentration at the UNLV School of Architecture.  Since the HD Studio’s inception in fall 2010, the entertainment capital of the world has become an extension of the academic studio for students interested in collaborative explorations in design research with leaders in the hospitality industry. Additionally, Nowak has served as the graduate coordinator of the master of architecture program and serves on the board of the American Institute of Architects Las Vegas chapter and other nonprofit organizations. His work and design research often involves community-integrated projects that focus on social, environmental, and economic sustainability.  

Stowe Shoemaker — a professor and former dean of UNLV's William F. Harrah College of Hospitality — is an expert on strategic pricing, revenue management, and customer loyalty programs. He currently serves as special assistant to the UNLV Foundation president, working on fundraising and initiatives that advance new and ongoing external partnerships.

Throughout his career, Shoemaker has helped game developers test market new casino games (both slot machines and table games), developed programs to measure customer satisfaction for casino and hotel firms, and modeled the success and failure of marketing promotions. He has taught marketing as well as the mathematics of casino games. Shoemaker has also authored textbooks on hospitality marketing and helped write the strategic plan to bring health care tourism to Southern Nevada. 

During his 10 years of service as dean, Shoemaker propelled the college to be the leading hospitality program in the U.S., and helped raise more than $40 million to benefit the college and the construction of a new state-of-the-art building. Prior to his deanship, he served as a Lincy Professor at UNLV and the Donald Hubbs Distinguished Professor at the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel Administration at the University of Houston. For many years, he was a member of the executive education faculty at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, and for a time he maintained an appointment in the Division of Diagnostic Imagery at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

David G. Schwartz is a gaming historian. Currently serving as UNLV's ombuds, Schwartz was director of the Center for Gaming Research at UNLV, a hub for scholarly analysis of gambling and gaming issues for many years. His research interests include the histories of gambling, gaming, and games (including video games), Las Vegas and Nevada history, tourism, and conflict resolution.

Schwartz has written seven books, as well as edited or co-edited four others, in his area of specialty — gaming history. Some of his more popular books include At the Sands: The Casino That Shaped Classic Las Vegas, Brought the Rat Pack Together, and Went Out With a Bang,  Grandissimo: The First Emperor of Las Vegas, Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling, and Boardwalk Playground: The Making, Unmaking, & Remaking of Atlantic City. He has served on several state and local groups, including the Nevada Gaming Policy Committee and the advisory boards of the Museum of Gambling History and the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement (Mob Museum).

Additionally, Schwartz is a Certified Organizational Ombuds Practitioner (CO-OP), awarded by the International Ombuds Association, and a trained mediator who leads the UNLV Ombuds Office’s mediation practice and volunteers with the Clark County Neighborhood Justice Center. 

The professor has taught undergraduate and graduate courses for the colleges of Liberal Arts, Law, Honors, and Hospitality and been actively involved with Nevada Promise, McNair Scholars, and other student mentoring groups.