Daniel ThalmannProf. Daniel Thalmann is Honorary Professor at EPFL and Director of Research development at MIRALab Sarl. He has been Visiting Professor at The Institute for Media Innovation (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) from 2009 to 2017. He is a pioneer in research on Virtual Humans. His current research interests include Real-time Virtual Humans in Virtual Reality, crowd simulation, and 3D Interaction. Daniel Thalmann has been the Founder of The Virtual Reality Lab (VRlab) at EPFL, Switzerland, Professor at The University of Montreal and Visiting Professor/ Researcher at CERN, University of Nebraska, University of Tokyo, and National University of Singapore. Until October 2010, he was the President of the Swiss Association of Research in Information Technology and one Director of the European Research Consortium in Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM). He is coeditor-in-chief of the Journal of Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds, and member of the editorial board of 6 other journals. Daniel Thalmann was member of numerous Program Committees, Program Chair and CoChair of several conferences including IEEE VR, ACM VRST, and ACM VRCAI. Daniel Thalmann has published more than 500 papers in Graphics, Animation, and Virtual Reality. He is coeditor of 30 books, and coauthor of several books including 'Crowd Simulation' (second edition 2012) and 'Stepping Into Virtual Reality' (2007), published by Springer. He received his PhD in Computer Science in 1977 from the University of Geneva and an Honorary Doctorate (Honoris Causa) from University Paul- Sabatier in Toulouse, France, in 2003. He also received the Eurographics Distinguished Career Award in 2010 and the 2012 Canadian Human Computer Communications Society Achievement Award. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Thalmann
Jauwairia NasirI am a doctoral candidate and a Marie Curie ITN Fellow in the field of Robotics at Computer-Human Interaction for Learning and Instruction Lab at EPFL where I currently work towards building Human-Robot Interaction technologies, leveraging AI, to help improve learning environments for kids. I did my Masters in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from KAIST, South Korea and my Bachelors in Electronics Engineering from School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (SEECS) NUST in Pakistan. During my Bachelors and Masters degrees, my research revolved around path planning algorithms for mobile robots and autonomous household robots for elderly, respectively.As the Women in AI (WAI) Education Lead in Switzerland, I organize WAI educational activities in the country such as WaiCAMPs and am also a part of WAI’s Global Education Task Force. I am passionate about causes such as safe and unbiased AI, education for all, and discrimination free society.