Ronan BoulicI come from Brittany, France, where I have completed my PhD degree in Computer Science in 1986 from the University of Rennes, France, at the INRIA-IRISA research institute. I also received the Habilitation degree from the University of Grenoble, France, in march 1995. I was hired in 1989 as First Assistant in the VRLAB, I became scientific collaborator, and senior researcher. I'm presently Senior Scientist (MER) and leader of the Immersive Interaction research Group (IIG). I'm co-author of around 150 research papers among which 43 appeared in international peer-reviewed journals. I have contributed to multiple SNF projects and EU projects. Please check iig.epfl.ch for more details.
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 Heinrich HofmannOriginaire de Mellingen (AG), Heinrich Hofmann est né en 1953. Après des études d'ingénieur en soudures (Ing. grad.) à Duisburg (D), et d'ingénieur en science des matériaux à la Technische Hochschule de Berlin, il obtient le titre de docteur ingénieur en 1983 pour une thèse dans le domaine des matériaux.De 1983 à 1985, il travaille comme assistant scientifique au Laboratoire de Technologie des Poudres de l'Institut Max Planck pour la science des matériaux à Stuttgart. En 1985 il entre au Centre de Recherche et Développement d'Alusuisse-Lonza à Neuhausen-am-Rheinfall, en tant qu'ingénieur consacré à la recherche dans l'étude et le développement des procédés de synthèse des poudres céramiques.En 1993 il entre à l'EPFL en tant que professeur extraordinaire et directeur du Laboratoire de technologie des poudres du Départmeent des matériaux. Son enseignement porte sur les céramiques I (procédés) et les phénomènes de transfert. Son domaine de recherche couvre la synthèse des poudres minérales, leur caractérisation et la modification des surfaces, ainsi que la mise en forme et le frittage. Ses recherches incluent aussi les matériaux nanostructurés (composites semi-conducteurs et polymères) et la métallurgie des poudres. Hofmann Heinrich, Prof. Dr.-Ing. got his PhD in Material Science with a thesis prepared at the Powder Metallurgy Laboratory at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart. In 1985 he joins the R&D center of Alusuisse-Lonza Services AG, at Neuhausen-am-Rheinfall. In 1993 he joins the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology as Professor and Director of the Powder Technology Laboratory at the Department of Materials science and engineering. His research area includes the synthesis of nanostructured materials based on nanoparticles and the modification of surfaces with nanoparticles using colloidal methods. The fields of application of such materials are medical and biological, (drug delivery, hyperthermia, cell separation, biosensors), electronics and sensors.
Alexandre Massoud AlahiAlexandre Alahi is currently an Assistant Professor at EPFL. He spent five years at Stanford University as a Post-doc and Research Scientist after obtaining his Ph.D. from EPFL. His research enables machines to perceive the world and make decisions in the context of transportation problems and smart environments. He has worked on the theoretical challenges and practical applications of socially-aware Artificial Intelligence, i.e., systems equipped with perception and social intelligence. He was awarded the Swiss NSF early and advanced researcher grants for his work on predicting human social behavior. He won the CVPR Open Source Award (2012) for his work on Retina-inspired image descriptors, and the ICDSC Challenge Prize (2009) for his sparsity-driven algorithm that has tracked more than 100 million pedestrians to date. His research has been covered internationally by BBC, abc, PBS, Euronews, Wall street journal, and other national news outlets around the world. Alexandre has also co-founded multiple startups such as Visiosafe, and won several startup competitions. He was elected as one of the Top 20 Swiss Venture leaders in 2010.
