Alex Rigopulos

Alex Rigopulos is the cofounder of Harmonix Music Systems, Inc., a Boston-based video game development studio specializing in music games. Harmonix is best known as the creator of both Guitar Hero and Rock Band—two of the most successful franchises in the history of video games—and in 2008, Rigopulos and his cofounder were included in Time Magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2021, Harmonix was acquired by Epic Games, makers of the cultural phenomenon Fortnite. Rigopulos now serves as studio head at Harmonix, where a new generation of music experiences is being brought to Fortnite. 

Prior to cofounding Harmonix, Rigopulos studied music composition as an undergraduate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), earning his Bachelor of Science in music and theater arts in 1992, and he returned to MIT to study computer music in graduate school at the MIT Media Lab, earning a Master of Science in media arts and sciences in 1994. Rigopulos also attended the Berklee Five-Week Summer Performance Program in 1987.