D-INFK news channel

Professor Markus Gross receives the Eurographics Medal 2024 for his outstanding research contributions, for his contributions to bridging industry and academia and for his leadership in the field at large. Big congratulations!

The treatment of children born with cleft lip and palate typically includes the use of therapeutic intraoral plates before surgical closure of the cleft. Now, researchers from the Department of Computer Science have teamed up with clinical care researchers at the University Hospital Basel to create a digital pipeline that enables the automatic production of the plates.

An AI-based 3D simulation technology developed in the Computer Graphics Lab of Professor Barbara Solenthaler brings life to the characters of Elemental, the latest animated film from Walt Disney Studios and Pixar Animation Studio. The movie was just released in Swiss cinemas.

Gaspard Zoss and Yifan Wang have been awarded the 2023 Eurographics PhD Award for the high quality and impact of their doctoral dissertations. They received their price at the Annual Eurographics Conference that took place at the beginning of May.

PD Dr. Andreas Mueller from University Hospital Basel and Dr. Barbara Solenthaler from the Computer Graphics Laboratory at D-INFK are combining medicine and computer graphics to improve pre-surgical cleft lip and palate treatment.

The ETH Global Lecture "The Wild, Unexpected, Exponential Ride Through Computer Graphics" by Ed Catmull (Pixar / Walt Disney Animation Studios) will take place on November 2. 

Autonomous virtual humans that move and behave naturally are Siyu Tang’s vision. One area from which the computer scientist draws inspiration are our behavioural patterns. Collaboration with architects and surgeons provides further input – and it also reveals the enormous potential of virtual people.

At the Symposium on Geometry Processing, Professor Olga Sorkine-Hornung received a test-of-time award for a paper she wrote fifteen years ago. Congratulations!

An exhibition in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, features ETH Zurich architects who show their vision of utopia - a vertical city built by drones, developed in 2012. Along with computer scientists, including Professor Siyu Tang from our department, they have now populated the structure with autonomous avatars.

The Computer Graphics Laboratory, led by Professor Markus Gross, is working with Align Technology to advance the field of digital dentistry.

D-INFK Professor Olga Sorkine-Hornung has been named an ACM Fellow for her contributions to digital geometry processing, computer animation, computer graphics and visual computing.

Professor Olga Sorkine-Hornung and Professor Torsten Hoefler have been honoured with an ERC Consolidator Grant for the outstanding work in their respective research field.

Mihai Bâce, a doctoral student at the Institute for Intelligent Interactive Systems, has developed with a small group of researchers a system to measure the visual attention paid to a smartphone.

Professor Markus Gross has been invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his technical contributions to filmmaking.

Communicating with photorealistic avatars: Prof. Markus Gross, an expert in the field of visual data processing, explains how telepresence could improve teleconferencing in the near future.

Katja Wolff, a doctoral student at the Interactive Geometry Lab, has developed an algorithm that aligns textile patterns along seams.

Siyu Tang officially joined the Department of Computer Science of ETH Zurich in January 2020 as Tenure Track Assistant Professor of Computer Vision. Get to know her in this short interview.

On March 19, 2019, ETH Zurich presented the Spark Award 2019. The award recognizes the most promising invention that ETH transfer filed for a patent in 2018. Two of the nominated projects came from D-​INFK.

Christian Schüller from the Interactive Geometry Lab has developed a method of designing patterns to assemble 3D objects with only a flat piece of fabric and a zipper.

ETH computer graphics specialists have analysed cloud formation and air flow in high resolution weather situations and visualised a high resolution weather situation in 3D. The aviation industry and meteorologists may be able to benefit from this visualisation method in the future.

In future, patients will be able to see the outcome of dental treatment even before the dentist starts working on their teeth. This is made possible by a “virtual mirror” developed by an ETH spin-off.

Professor Olga Sorkine has won this year’s Rössler Prize for her work in the field of computer graphics. The prize comes with a research award of CHF 200,000.

Researchers at ETH Zurich and Disney Research Zurich have developed a new technique called Computational Thermoforming. It enables them to manufacture plastic replicas of digital 3D models, in which the shape and colour are reproduced in detail. This technique extends the range of digital fabrication methods and represents an efficient and cost-​effective alternative to colour 3D printing.

Computer scientists working in a group led by ETH Professor Marc Pollefeys have developed a piece of software that makes it very easy to create 3D models of entire buildings. Running on a new type of tablet computer, the program generates 3D maps in real time.

Google is working with various universities and other institutions on Project Tango, an initiative to develop mobile devices that can detect surroundings in three dimensions and enable navigation indoors. The first devices are expected to hit the market next year. ETH Zurich has a significant role in the project.

Researchers from ETH Zurich's Computer Vision and Geometry Group transformed a smartphone into a portable digital scanner. In the form of an app, the 3D mobile technology allows users to snap pictures on the fly and scan objects, from a statue to a piece of furniture, or even a person. It also enables scanning in outdoor environments to model arbitrary objects or scenes.

3D shapes are an inherent part of our culture. Almost everyone knows animated movies such as “Shrek”, “Toy Story” or “Despicable Me”. But who has ever created such an animated 3D figure? Only a very limited number of people have ever tried their luck at 3D geometric modeling. In her ERC Starting Grant project “Intelligent Shape Modeling”, Prof. Olga Sorkine intends to simplify the processes of 3D modeling, thus making it accessible to the general public.

Top honour for ETH-Zurich professor and Disney director Markus Gross: he is to receive a “Tech Oscar” from the Academy of Motion and Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) along with three other computer scientists for a procedure they developed which leading special effects studios now use to simulate smoke and explosions in Hollywood films.

A new generation of flying robots is ready: equipped with on-board cameras and a mini-computer, they are capable of navigating indoors as well as outdoors. (German)

UNC and ETH researchers, including Prof. Marc Pollefeys, have created a technique to use millions of images to automatically create 3D models of landmarks and geographical locations.