Project Partners - Beneficiaries
University of Cyprus (CY)
The University has a student population of 7000 (2000 graduate) and it is considered to be the leading university and the most active research institution in Cyprus. UCY ranks relatively high internationally (for example, placed in the 351-400 group for 2018-2019 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings). UCY currently delivers up to 350 externally funded research projects, including several FP7 and H2020 projects, and 10 ERC Grants, as well as national and regional research programmes. The Department of Computer Science has 21 faculty members, and 100 postdoctoral researchers and PhD students, publishing more than 100 journal papers per year and attracted a total funding of more than 30M Euro since 2004.
Contact person: Yiorgos Chrysanthou
Email: yiorgos@cs.ucy.ac.cy
Web: http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~yiorgos
ESR1: Nefeli Andreou
Email: andreou.nefeli@ucy.ac.cy
Web: http://nefeliandreou.github.io/
ESR2: Marilena Lemonari
Email: lemonari.marilena@ucy.ac.cy
Web: http://www.linkedin.com/in/marilena-lemonari-b78a83151
Other Team Members: Andreas Aristidou, Panayiotis Charalambous
Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (ES)
UPC is a public institution dedicated to higher education and research, specialized in the fields of engineering, architecture and science. UPC offers 48 doctoral programs, 74 master’s degree, 71 undergrad degrees and has enrolled over 30,000 students. The Research Centre for Visualization, Virtual Reality and Graphics Interaction (ViRVIG) performs research, education and training activities in visualization, computational geometry, animation, simulation, rendering, virtual reality and advanced interaction. ViRVIG has participated in many Spanish Funded Projects receiving over 1M in the last decade, and European Projects such as PRESENCIA.
Contact person: Nuria Pelechano
Email: npelechano@cs.upc.edu
Web: https://www.cs.upc.edu/~npelechano/
ESR1: Rafael Andrés Blanco Guerra
Email: rafael.andres.blanco@upc.edu
Web: https://rafaelblanco25.github.io
ESR2: Haoran Yun
Email: haoran.yun@upc.edu
Other Team Members: Carlos Andujar
INRIA (FR)
Inria is the only French public research body fully dedicated to computational sciences. It is a national operator in research in digital sciences and is a primary contact point for the French Government on digital matters. Inria's missions are to produce outstanding research in the computing and mathematical fields of digital sciences and to ensure the impact of this research on the economy and society in particular. Inria covers the entire spectrum of research at the heart of these activity fields and works on digitally-related issues raised by other sciences and by actors in the economy and society at large. Beyond its structures, Inria's identity and strength are forged by its ability to develop a culture of scientific innovation, to stimulate creativity in digital research.
Contact person: Julien Pettré
Email: julien.pettre@inria.fr
Web: http://people.rennes.inria.fr/Julien.Pettre/
ESR1: Vicenzo Abichequer Sangalli
Email: vicenzo.abichequer-sangalli@inria.fr
Web: https://team.inria.fr/rainbow/fr/vicenzo-abichequer-sangalli/
ESR2: Tairan Yin
Email: tairan.yin@inria.fr
Other Team Members: Ludovic Hoyet, Marc Christie
University College London (UK)
UCL is one of the UK’s major research universities. It is often ranked in the top twenty world universities on a variety of metrics; UCL ranked seventh in the world in the QS World University Rankings (2016/2017). UCL’s Department of Computer Science (UCL CS) is one of the UK’s largest computer science departments. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, UCL CS was ranked as the UK’s best performing CS research department.
The UCL CS Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics (VECG) group is a worldleading group in interactive computer graphics systems. The group has particular strengths in real-time computer graphics systems, geometric processing, material capture and processing, mixed-reality systems and novel interface devices including haptics. The group has a very strong presence at leading conferences in the field, including ACM SIGGRAPH, ACM CHI, IEEE VR and ACM/IEEE ISMAR.
Contact person: Anthony Steed
Email: a.steed@ucl.ac.uk,
Web: https://wp.cs.ucl.ac.uk/anthonysteed/
ESR1: Klara Brandstaetter
Email: k.brandstatter@ucl.ac.uk
ESR2: Lisa Izzouzi
Email: l.izzouzi@ucl.ac.uk
Other Team Members: David Swapp
Trinity College Dublin (IE)
Trinity College Dublin is recognised internationally as Ireland's leading university and as one of the top universities in the world. The Graphics, Vision and Visualisation group (GV2) in the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) is an internationally active research group dedicated to carrying out innovative research in computer graphics, computer vision and all aspects of visual computing. TCD will lead the work on evaluation of the appearance, motion and behaviours of virtual characters. TCD will also work on developing new tools for creating realistic motions and variety for individuals, groups and crowds of virtual characters.
Contact person: Carol O'Sullivan
Email: carol.osullivan@scss.tcd.ie
Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (DE)
The MPI for Intelligent Systems hosts over 500 international staff members. The Perceiving Systems (PS) department is home to over 50 members and is a leading research lab in computer vision. The core research of PS focuses on learning digital humans that can perceive, learn, and act in virtual 3D worlds. This involves capturing the shape, appearance, and motion of real people as well as their interactions with each other and the 3D scene. This is used to learn generative models of people and their behavior and evaluate these models by synthesizing realistic looking humans behaving in virtual worlds. The Perceiving Systems department has a very strong presence at leading conferences in the field, including ACM SIGGRAPH, ACM SAP, ECCV, ICCV, and CVPR.
Contact person: Michael Black
Email: black@tuebingen.mpg.de
Web: https://ps.is.mpg.de/~black
ESR1: Yuliang Xiu
Email: yuliang.xiu@tuebingen.mpg.de
Web: https://is.mpg.de/person/yxiu
ESR2: Radek Daněček
Email: radek.danecek@tuebingen.mpg.de , danekradek@gmail.com
Web: MPG Website , Google Scholar, ResearchGate, LinkedIn
Other Team Members:
Timo Bolkart (timo.bolkart@tuebingen.mpg.de)
Dimitrios Tzionas (dimitris.tzionas@tuebingen.mpg.de)
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm (SE)
KTH is responsible for one third of Sweden’s capacity for technical research and is the country’s largest organizer of technical/engineering education at university level. KTH is organized into ten Schools, each covering a major field of engineering science. KTH education and research cover a broad spectrum – from natural sciences to all branches of engineering plus architecture, industrial economics, urban planning, work science and environmental technology. In addition to the research carried out by KTH’s Schools, a large number of national Competence Centers are located at KTH. Various research foundations also finance a number of research programmes.
Contact person: Christopher Peters
Email: chpeters@kth.se
Web: https://www.kth.se/profile/chpeters
ESR1: Kiran Chhatre
Email: chhatre@kth.se
Web: https://www.kth.se/profile/chhatre
Other Team Members:
Jonas Beskow (beskow@kth.se)
Ecole Polytechnique (FR)
École Polytechnique is a leading French institute which combines top-level research, academics, and innovation at the cutting-edge of science and technology. This Grande École attracts the most talented students not only from France, which are selected in number of about 3000 in total. Among its alumni there are three Nobel prize winners, one Fields Medalist, three Presidents of France and many CEOs of French and international companies. Polytechnique occupies top positions in world ranking for universities, as QS World University 2017 where is 59th overall, 22nd in Maths, and 6th for Employability. Among small universities, it has been classified 4th in Times Higher Education worldwide Ranking 2017.
The Faculty is composed by 1100 teacher and professors, while Research Staff comprises 1600 persons, including 500 PhD students. Every year about 1350 papers are published, the 60% in collaboration with international laboratories. The research strategy is implemented with 22 laboratories, 21 of which are joint research units with the CNRS, such as the host laboratory LIX – Laboratoire d’Informatique. Ecole Polytechnique has also a strong record in receiving and managing EU projects.
Contact person: Marie-Paule Cani
Email: marie-paule.cani@polytechnique.edu
Web: https://www.lix.polytechnique.fr/geovic/members/marie-paule_cani/index.html
ESR1: Ariel Kwiatkowski
Email: ariel.kwiatkowski@polytechnique.edu
ESR2: Eduardo Alvarado
Email: eduardo.alvarado-pinero@polytechnique.edu
Other Team Members:
Damien Rohmer (damien.rohmer@polytechnique.edu)
Vicky Kalogeiton (vicky.kalogeiton@lix.polytechnique.fr)
Silversky3d (CY)
Silversky is a Cyprus-based SME established in 2004 as a spin-out company from the University of Cyprus following successful funding from the European Research Council (ERC). The company develops innovative applications in VR based on research from Cognitive/Clinical Psychology and Neuroscience, e.g., tools for the training of cognitive processes, for improving social skills etc. In addition, it offers services to professionals and scientists who can benefit from advanced visualization and interaction with virtual environments.
Contact person: Marios Avraamides
Web: https://silversky3d.com/
Other Team Members: Kleanthis Neokleous, Alexandros Andreou
Industrial Partners
Treedy’s SPRL (BE)
Treedy's unique scanners and algorithms provide brands and their customers with the right size first time round, thereby growing brand loyalty and future purchase intent - moving from ‘fit anxiety’ to ‘fit certainty’. It also enables brands to engage deeper with their customers and to bridge the gap between the online and the in-store fashion experience. Today, Treedy’s technology - recognized for its reliability, affordability and overall excellence - is already in use with household global brands such as Amazon, Zalando and Nike. Treedy’s revolutionary 3D scanning technology seeks to create a virtuous circle between customers and clothing brands thanks to rapidly deployable and scalable solutions that are genuinely ‘sized’ for the circular economy.
Amazon Development Center Germany GmbH (DE)
Amazon.com, a Fortune 500 company, seeks to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavours to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon has several research and development sites across the world. The newly established amazon research site in Tübingen offers both an active internship program for international PhD students and offers an academic postdoctoral program in cooperation with different universities. Most researchers are PhD level and have experience with supervision of students from different backgrounds.
British Broadcasting Corporation (UK)
BBC will be involved in the project in the field of Broadcast and media R&D, including new forms of media such as VR and AR. Prof. Graham Thomas has been with BBC R&D since 1983 and is now Head of Immersive & Interactive Content Section. His work in virtual studios, broadcast graphics and VR included leading the FP7 RE@CT project (image-based motion capture for interactive content), and Innovate UK projects REFRAME (Location Performance Capture for Real-Time Enriched Media) and EIST (Enabling Interactive Storytelling). His work has led to several commercial products including the Queen’s Award-winning Piero sports graphics system. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Surrey, and holds over 20 patents.
Golaem
Golaem develops artist-friendly crowd, layout, and previsualization tools. Golaem makes it easy and affordable to populate 3D scenes with directable characters or objects, from a few to thousands. Hundreds of Visual Effects and Animation studios from all over the globe use Golaem to bring life to commercials, episodic productions, feature films and games. Golaem’s portfolio includes TV series such as Game of Thrones, the Japanese manga One Piece and a slew of blockbusters such as Marvel’s Black Panther, Thor, Spiderman and Pirates of the Caribbean, to name but a few.
Golaem received a Technology and Engineering Emmy® Award in 2019, a Primetime Engineering Emmy® Award in 2021 and the Innovation Prize from the French Academy of Cinema Arts and Techniques in 2020.
Ubisoft
Ubisoft is a creator of worlds, committed to enriching players’ lives with original and memorable entertainment experiences. Ubisoft’s global teams create and develop a deep and diverse portfolio of games, featuring brands such as Assassin’s Creed®, Brawlhalla®, For Honor®, Far Cry®, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon®, Just Dance®, Rabbids®, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six®, The Crew®, Tom Clancy’s The Division® and Watch Dogs®. Through Ubisoft Connect, players can enjoy an ecosystem of services to enhance their gaming experience, get rewards and connect with friends across platforms. With Ubisoft+, the subscription service, they can access a growing catalog of more than 100 Ubisoft games and DLC. For the 2020–21 fiscal year, Ubisoft generated net bookings of €2,241 million. To learn more, please visit: www.ubisoftgroup.com.
