Abstract:
Modern manufacturing technologies bear not only potential to revolutionize the manufacturing but also the construction industry. At the press of a button, we can build robotic components and architectural-scale structures of nearly unbounded complexity. With the aid of computational design tools leveraging physical simulation and optimization, we can exploit this available complexity to its full potential and create characters and structures that could not feasibly be designed manually.

In this talk, I will discuss techniques that aid with the design of kinetic wire characters and 3D printed architectural ornaments with stunning detail. The wire characters are tailored for fabrication on consumer-grade CNC bending machines while the ornaments are optimized for printing with large-scale binder jetting technologies. These techniques will serve as examples to demonstrate how one can utilize computation to navigate complex design spaces, identify optimal values for discrete and continuous design parameters, and safeguard against physically infeasible or structurally unsound designs.

About the Speaker:
Moritz Bächer is a Research Scientist at Disney Research where he leads the Computational Design and Manufacturing group. His research interests lie at the intersection of computer graphics and digital fabrication, spanning a wide range of computational aspects therein: computational and interactive design, physically-based and geometric modeling, and data-driven techniques. He applies his knowledge to tackle problems at the toy, animatronic, and architectural scale. Before joining Disney, he received a Ph.D. from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and graduated with a Masters from ETH Zurich. His work has recently been featured as research highlight in the Communications of the ACM.

Due to legal reasons, we were not allowed to stream or record the talk.

Abstract:
After briefly recalling the milestones in the history of 3D reconstruction, and describing the reconstruction pipeline implemented in 3DF Zephyr, I will survey some extreme 3D reconstruction cases that we came upon, ranging from
intra-oral to outer space, including deep water wrecks and destroyed artefacts.

About the Speaker:
Andrea Fusiello is Associate Professor at the University of Udine, Italy (since 2012), where he teaches Fundamentals of Computer Science (undergraduate) and Computer Vision (graduate). He was Associate Professor at the University of Verona, Italy (2005-2011), visiting professor at the University of Bourgogne (2008, 2017), and EPSRC research fellow at Heriot-Watt University, GB (1999). He received his M.S. in Computer Science from University of Udine, Italy, and his PhD in Computer Engineering from the University of Trieste, Italy in 1999. In 2011 he founded a start-up company, 3Dflow srl, in the area of computer vision and photogrammetry. His current research interests include computer vision, image analysis, 3-D model acquisition, and image-based rendering.

Abstract:
The heart of a camera and one of the pillars for computer vision is the digital photodetector, a device that forms images by collecting billions of photons traveling through the physical world and into the lens of a camera. While the photodetectors used by cellphones or professional DSLR cameras are designed to aggregate as many photons as possible, I will talk about a different type of sensor, known as a SPAD, designed to detect and timestamp individual photon events. By developing computational algorithms and hardware systems around these sensors, we can perform new imaging feats, including the ability to (1) image the propagation of light through a scene at trillions of frames per second, (2) form dense 3D measurements from extremely low photon counts, and (3) reconstruct the shape and reflectance of objects hidden from view.

About the Speaker:
Matthew O'Toole is an Assistant Professor with the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focus is on computational imaging, a highly multi-disciplinary topic that uses novel combinations of computation, electronics, and optics to overcome the limitations of conventional imaging systems. He was a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow with the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. Prior to that, he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto with the Department of Computer Science, where his thesis received the ACM SIGGRAPH Outstanding Dissertation Honorable Mention award. His work also received two runner-up best paper awards (CVPR 2014, ICCV 2007) and two best demo awards (CVPR 2015, ICCP 2015).

Abstract:
High dynamic range (HDR) imaging offers an enhanced visual experience, but may require display hardware that uses more power than standard dynamic range (SDR) displays. This is undesirable from an environmental point of view. In mobile applications such display hardware may put extra demands on battery performance. Instead, we ask ourselves whether the visual experience associated with HDR displays can be simulated on SDR displays without incurring extra costs in terms of power consumption.

About the Speaker:
Erik Reinhard is Distinguished Scientist at Technicolor R&I since July 2013 prior to holding various academic positions at universities and research institutes in Europe and North America. He was founder and editor-in-chief of ACM Transactions on Applied Perception, and authored books on high dynamic range imaging, color imaging, computer graphics and natural image statistics. He enjoys research that spans different disciplines, including color science, high dynamic range imaging and human visual perception. He has published more than 100 papers in these areas, and was member of more than 50 program committees. He was program co-chair of 6 conferences and workshops, including the Eurographics Symposium on Rendering 2011. He delivered key notes at Eurographics 2010, the Computational Color Imaging Workshop 2011, and the IS\&T European Conference on Colour in Graphics, Imaging and Vision 2012. He has been a speaker in more than 15 courses and tutorials, of which 10 were delivered at SIGGRAPH.

Abstract: 
Design science research is a problem-driven approach characterized by the systematic analysis, design, creation, and evaluation of digital artefacts. Visualization and Visual Analytics aim to amplify cognition, but simply producing images is no guarantee that complex visualizations will be understood and are useful for gaining insights. Therefore, a human-centered approach is essential and should follow four main principles: early focus on users and tasks, design for human perception and cognition, continuous evaluation, as well as iterative design & refinement. But merely producing artefacts is not the only aim of design science research. To generate knowledge, models, and theories is as important in order to generalize insights and make them explicit and systematic for others to build on top of it. In this talk, several research projects will be presented to exemplify different aspects of Visual Analytics as design science discipline.

About the Speaker:
Wolfgang Aigner is scientific director of the Institute of Creative\Media/Technologies (IC\M/T) at St. Poelten University of Applied Sciences, Austria and adjunct professor at TU Wien, Austria. In 2013 he received his habilitation in computer science for his work on “Interactive Visualization and Data Analysis: Visual Analytics with a Focus on Time” from Vienna University of Technology, Austria. Wolfgang is an expert in Information Visualization (InfoVis) and Visual Analytics (VA), particularly in the context of time-oriented data. He performs research on concepts, methods, and software prototypes that support humans in dealing with large and complex information structures, to make them more comprehensible, facilitate exploration, and enable knowledge discovery. Wolfgang has authored and co-authored more than 125 peer-reviewed publications and he was involved in the acquisition and execution of a number of funded basic and applied research projects at national and international levels. His main research interests include visual analytics and information visualization, human-computer interaction (HCI), and user-centered design.

Website: http://mc.fhstp.ac.at/people/wolfgang-aigner

Abstract:
Among the various flavors of shape analysis, shape approximation methods offer versatile frameworks to capture the essence of a 3D shape with a compact set of numbers, sometime called proxy. In this talk, I will give an overview of recent results we achieved regarding shape approximation of 3D surfaces, including Sphere Meshes, which help simplifying complex objects at extreme levels, providing multi-resolution spatial interfaces for interactive modeling systems and automatic processing chains. I will also discuss constrained approximation with Bounding Proxies, which leverage mathematical morphology for generating simplified meshes that contain their input and can be used for physical simulation, cage-based deformation or level-of-detail rendering. Finally I will extend the discussion to the general graphics pipeline and give insights on how shape proxies can be key components for numerous applications in the era of massive 3D models and smart computer graphics tools.

About the Speaker:
Prof. Dr. Tamy Boubekeur is a Full Professor in Computer Science at Telecom ParisTech, Paris-Saclay University, Paris, France, where he leads the 3D computer graphics group. His research focuses on shape modeling, image synthesis and interactive systems. From 2004 to 2007, he was a member of INRIA Bordeaux, France, and a regular invited scientist at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Bordeaux in 2007. Then, he joined TU Berlin in Germany as an Associate Researcher. In 2008, he joined the "Image Data Signal" Department of at Telecom ParisTech as an Associate Professor where he founded the Computer Graphics Group. He received his Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR) in Computer Science from University ParisSud in 2012. He became Full Professor at Telecom ParisTech in 2013. Tamy has published a number of articles in top-ranked international conferences and journals in computer graphics and computer vision, and received several international scientific awards. He has been member of a number of international scientific committee, including SIGGRAPH, SIGGRAPH Asia, EUROGRAPHICS, EGSR, SGP, HPG, SMI and I3D. He is also Allegorithmic’s Chief Scientist and holds a second, part-time Professor position at Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, France. More information at www.telecom-paristech.fr/~boubek.

Abstract:
Single-cell analysis through mass cytometry has become an increasingly important tool for immunologists to study the immune system in health and disease. Mass cytometry creates a high-dimensional description vector for single cells by time-of-flight measurement. In this talk we will discuss several hierarchical approaches to the interactive exploration of large single cell data using a combination clustering and t-Distributed Stochastic Neighborhood Embedding (t-SNE) as well as the recently introduced Hierarchical Stochastic Neighborhood Embedding (HSNE). Based on the application to a study on gastrointestinal disorders we show hat HSNE efficiently replicates previous observations and identifies rare cell populations that were previously missed. Finally we will discuss CyteGuide, a tool to guide the exploration of HSNE hierarchies.

About the Speaker:
Thomas Höllt received the Diplom (MSc) in computational visualistics from the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany, in 2008, and the PhD in computer science from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia, in 2013. He holds positions as an Assistant Professor in the Computational Biology Center (https://www.lcbc.nl) at the Leiden University Medical Center and as a research fellow at Delft University of Technology.

Abstract:
For mixed reality applications, where reality and virtual reality are spatially merged and aligned in interactive real-time, we propose a voxel representation as a rendering and interaction method for the near future. We show that voxels—gap-less volumetric pixels in a regular grid in space—allow for an actual user experience of a mixed reality environment. We demonstrate that a low fidelity voxel representation can lead to sufficient levels of presence and co-presence.
We argue the case for voxels by (1) conceptually defining and illustrating voxel-based mixed reality, (2) presenting a low resolution and fully functioning prototype, (3) empirically exploring the user experience, (4) describing the computational feasibility, and (5) finally discussing future directions for voxel-based mixed reality. If everything is based on voxels, even if coarse, visual coherence is achieved inherently.

About the Speaker:
Holger Regenbrecht is a Professor at the Department of Information Science at the University of Otago. He obtained his doctorate from Bauhaus University and has been working in the fields of virtual and mixed Reality for 20 years. He was initiator and manager of the Virtual Reality Laboratory at Bauhaus University Weimar (Germany) and the Mixed Reality Laboratory at DaimlerChrysler Research and Technology (Ulm, Germany). Now he co-leads the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Otago.
Dr Regenbrecht's research interests include human-computer interaction (HCI), applied computer science and information technology, (collaborative) augmented reality, 3D teleconferencing, psychological aspects of mixed reality, three-dimensional user interfaces (3DUI) and computer-aided therapy and rehabilitation. In those areas he has published one hundred peer-reviewed articles. His current work focuses on translational ICT research, in particular for health and wellbeing and on understanding computer-mediated realities.
He is a member of several international professional groups and serves as an editorial board member, reviewer and auditor for a number of conferences, journals and institutions. Holger is the current head of the Information Science department.