Michael Bronstein, University of Lugano, Switzerland / Perceptual Computing, Intel, Israel

Abstract:

The last decade has witnessed a series of technological breakthroughs in the acquisition, processing, and analysis of 3D geometric data, enabling applications that are revolutionizing our way of interaction with computers and pushing the boundaries of computer vision applications to super-human abilities. In this talk, I will tell a personal account of academic and industrial research in this exciting field.

Bio:

Michael Bronstein is a professor in the Faculty of Informatics at the University of Lugano (USI), Switzerland and a Research Scientist at the Perceptual Computing group, Intel, Israel. Michael got his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering (2002) and Ph.D. in Computer Science (2007), both from the Technion, Israel. His main research interests are theoretical and computational methods in spectral and metric geometry and their application to problems in computer vision, pattern recognition, computer graphics, image processing, and machine learning. His research appeared in international media and was recognized by numerous awards. In 2012, Michael received the highly competitive European Research Council (ERC) grant. In 2014, he was invited as a Young Scientist to the World Economic Forum New Champions meeting, an honor bestowed on forty world's leading scientists under the age of 40. Besides academic work, Michael is actively involved in the industry. He was the co-founder of the Silicon Valley start-up company Novafora, where he served as VP of technology (2006-2009), responsible for the development of algorithms for large-scale video analysis. He was a co-founder and one of the principal inventors and technologists at Invision, an Israeli startup developing 3D sensing technology acquired by Intel in 2012. His technology is now the core of the Intel RealSense 3D camera integrated into new generation computers.