Nadia Magnenat Thalmann

Nadia Magnenat Thalmann received an MS in Psychology, an MS in Biology and a Master in Biochemistry at the University of Geneva. She obtained a PhD in Quantum Physics in 1977 from the same university. She started her career as an Assistant Professor at the University Laval in Canada, then became a Professor at HEC,[3] University of Montreal until 1988. In 1989, she moved to the University of Geneva where she founded the MIRALab laboratory.

She is currently Director of the Institute for Media Innovation at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Thalmann has authored and co-authored more than 600 papers in the area of Virtual Humans, social robots, VR, and 3D simulation of human articulations (CV[4]). She has participated in more than 45 European research projects[5] and led quite a few of them.[6] She has served the Computer Graphics community by creating the Computer Animation and Social Agents (CASA) in Geneva in 1988, as well as managing Computer Graphics International (CGI), both of which are internationally well known conferences.[7] She is the editor-in-chief of the journal The Visual Computer published by Springer, Germany[8] and co editor-in-chief of the Computer Animation Journal published by Wiley.[9]

Nadia Magnenat Thalmann has made numerous research contributions in the general area of computer graphics and is best known for her work on simulating realistic virtual humans. She also made early contributions in computer graphics during her PhD by simulating and visualizing 3D electronic densities of the Schrödinger equation's approximate solutions (1977).[10][11] Later on, she pioneered the modelling of realistic Virtual Humans, particularly producing the first simulation of a 3D version of Marilyn Monroe[12][13][14][15][16][17][18] in the film Rendez-vous in Montreal (1987)[19][20][21][22][23][24] This film was shown in world premiere at the Place des Arts in Montreal to celebrate 100 years of engineering in Canada.[25] She also showed her film at the Modern Art Museum in New York in 1988 along with Canadian computer artists.[26]

She published several landmark papers on facial and body deformation methods[20][21][27][28] and cloth simulation.[29][30] She made several original contributions in MRI segmentation methods correlated with clinical findings.[31][32][33] She also modelled the simulation of Virtual Ballerinas where their hip cartilage deformations can be visualized while dancing.[34][31] She further demonstrates see-through knee articulations of real soccer players.[35] Since 2008, she has started at MIRALab, University of Geneva, a research with the humanoid robot EVA and demonstrated a first model of a realistic robot showing emotions and having a memory model.[36] More recently, she has worked on the social autonomous robot Nadine,[37][38] modeled in her image, that is able to speak, recognize people and gestures, express mood and emotions, and remember actions.[39] Nadine has been shown at the ArtScience Museum, in the exhibition HUMAN+: The Future of our Species, in Singapore, which has attracted more than 100 000 visitors.[40][41]

Thalmann has received more than 30 honors and awards[6] such as "Woman of the Year",[42][43] for early original contribution in computer graphics in Montreal (1987). More recently, she was awarded a Doctor Honoris Causa in Natural sciences from Leibniz University Hannover (2009),[44] an Honorary Doctorate of the University of Ottawa[45] (2010) and a Career Achievement Award from the Canadian Human Computer Communications Society[46] in Toronto (2012). The same year she received the prestigious Humboldt Research Award[47] in Germany, given to academics whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future. She has also produced several award-winning films, among them "Virtual Marilyn" at the Golden Camera Ceremony in Berlin.[48] She was also selected as a Pioneer in Information Technology at the Heinz Nixdorf Computer Museum's Electronic Wall of Fame in Germany.[49] Her film "High Fashion in Equations" has won the CGI 2007 Best International Scientific Video award[50] and was shown in the SIGGRAPH Electronic Theatre in the same year.[51] Nadine, her Social Robot, has received more than 1.2 million video views online, and over 200 publications in international media.[52]

The following filmography contains a hundred of films demonstrating the interdisciplinary research of Nadia Magnenat Thalmann and her team in Virtual Humans, Social Robots, Cultural Heritage, 3D Fashion shows, 3D medical patients, and early Mixed Reality.

• Nadia’s List Of Publication
• Full CV
• Media coverage on Nadine - Social Robot