CurriculumVitae: Marco Fyfe Pietro Gillies
double first BA in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge
PhD in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge
6 years as a Research Fellow at UCL
of which 3 years were in close collaboration with BT
Intelligent systems applied to interactive media
Simulation of social interaction for interactive animated characters
Machine learning applied to computer animation
Took a leading role in the successful EPSRC proposal EP/D505542/1 (in Collaboration with the University of Cambridge)
A major role in drafting UCL's work package in the successful EU FP7 IP, PRESENCCIA
Named Researcher on the successful EPSRC proposal Eye Catching
Short-listed for an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship
3 journal papers (all as first author, 2 refereed, 1 invited)
8 refereed papers in published conference proceedings (6 as first author)
13 refereed conference papers (9 as first author)
10 filed patent applications, 6 as first author
Lecturing on computer animation as part of a wider course, planned a 6 lecture sub-course from scratch and marked exam questions. Also contributed shorter sections of 2 other courses. I have also given individual lectures on another computer graphics course.
Numerous tutoring and demonstrating jobs including tutoring computer graphics for 3 years and example classes in general programming based on java, the second involved assessing student practicals.
Supervised 6 masters projects and 4 undergraduate projects in computer graphics and 1 Msc group project. Mentoring/overseeing 2 PhD students.
Member of SIGGRAPH, Eurographics and AISB
Member of the organizing committee of Intelligent Virtual Agents 2003
Programming committee/reiviewer for numerous conferences
3 Years close collaboration with BT in their Adastral Park campus
Address:
209c Camberwell Grove
London SE5 8JU
Mob: 07710466273
email: m.gillies@ucl.ac.uk
web-page: www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/m.gillies
Date of Birth: 5/9/75
Nationality: British/Italian
Nov 2001-present: Research Fellow at UCL, Department of Computer Science
I am working as a Research Fellow at University College London in the department of computer science with the Graphics and Virtual Environments group. I have worked on three main projects during my time at UCL. Firstly I collaborated with BT plc at the UCL@Adastral Park Campus in Ipswich (during which time I applied for 6 patents). My work at BT involved the interface between long term university research and industrial requirements. I was responsible for organising a project on future research directions that involved input from a whole research team at BT. I then worked on the EU framework 5 PRESENCIA project. I am currently working on an EPSRC funded Project “Empathic Avatars” in collaboration with the University of Cambridge. This project focuses on combining affect sensing with real time character animation in order to produce emotional believable characters.
Sept 1997 – Jan 1998: Multimedia programming for Longman Logotron
I wrote a multimedia educational package for Schools, based on the BBC educational series
August 1996: Research Assistant at Imperial College London
I worked on a computer graphics/medical simulation project.
I have consulted for BT plc on Virtual Character research (involved in the Tara graphics engine, and the EDRAMA Department of Trade and Industry funded collaborative project) .
Academic Community
A member of three academic associations, Eurographics, ACM SIGGRAPH and The Society for Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour.
Served on the organizing committee of the 4th International Working Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, Irsee, Germany, September 2003
Programme committee and reviewer for numerous conferences including ACM Siggraph, Eurographics, and Intelligent Virtual Agents.
Education
1998-2001: Postgraduate at Cambridge University Studying for a PhD at the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory.
I studied under Dr Neil Dodgson as part of the Rainbow Computer Graphics Research Group with EPSRC funding. The title of my dissertation was: “Practical Behavioural Animation Based on Vision and Attention”. Won an Isaac Newton bursary for 3 years of my PhD (in addition to the EPSRC funding).
1994-1997: Undergraduate at Cambridge University
Read Computer Science at Churchill College Cambridge. I received First Class Honours in all three years of my course. I was ranked 6th in the entire University in my Final year. My Dissertation was entitled "Muscle-Like Deformations for Articulated Figures". It was a model of how to represent limbs with deformable muscles for computer animation. I used Inverse Kinematics to control the limb and Free Form Deformations to perform the Muscle Deformations. Received college scholarships in my 2nd and 3rd years.
1984-1994: Dulwich College, London
I received A grade A-levels in Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Physics and Italian and 12 GCSEs.
2005-present: Curriculum development and teaching at UCL
I have lectured part of two courses “Advanced Modelling, Rendering and Animation” that is taught to both 4th year undergraduates and masters students and “Multimedia Computing”, aimed at both computer science and non computer science undergraduates. In both courses I teach sections relating to computer animation. I am responsible for planning and preparing the material for my section of the course. In order to give the students a proper feel for the material I used a number of animations and live demoes of the concepts involved. I was also responsible for setting and an exam question and a piece of coursework for each course and for assessing these in the “Advanced Modelling, Rendering and Animation” course. I have also given individual lectures in other computer graphics courses.
2006: Eurographics State of the Art Report
I presented a state of the art report on expressive intelligent characters at the Eurographics 2006 conference. The material from this presentation later fed into the courses I teach.
2001-present: Mentoring/Overseeing PhD students
As part of my research fellowship at Adastral Park I had a role as an mentor for a PhD student in addition to his academic and industrial supervisors. In my current project I am working with a PhD student funded on the same grant. I am working in close collaboration with her and responsible for overseeing her day to day research work.
2002: MSc and undergraduate projects supervision at UCL
At UCL: co-supervision of 6 Masters dissertations and one undergraduate dissertation
Project supervisor for a group project on an MSc program organized by the University of London for British Telecom employees.
1998-2001: Undergraduate Teaching and Supervision at Cambridge University
During my postgraduate degree at Cambridge I taught undergraduate students in various capacities. I assessed first year programming practicals and supervised second and third year students, helping them with their courses. My main subject for supervision was computer graphics but I was also a general supervisor, teaching students on all aspects of computer science. I also acted as a supervisor for 4 undergraduate dissertations.
I have been closely involved in three successful collaborative funding applications. One is an EU Integrated project (PRESENCCIA) I which I had a major role in drafting UCL's work package.
The other was to the UK Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (Empathic Avatars) in Collaboration with the University of Cambridge. In the latter I took the lead in setting up the collaboration and writing the proposal.
I was also named researcher on another successful EPSRC propsal, “Eye Catcher”.
I have also been short listed for a prestigious EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship.
As well as my own main research projects, I have also taken a leading role in research in Virtual Characters in the UCL Department of Computer Science Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics Research Group. I have been involved in most projects related to characters since I came to UCL providing both expertise and software. I have also been involved with collaborations at UCL outside of my group, in particular I set up a fruitful collaboration with the newly formed Centre for Computational Statistics and Machine Learning. I have also collaborated in numerous projects at BT some of which made practical use of my research work, including the eDrama, interactive educational role-play system.
Invited Talks
Panel on Virtual Characters for the PRESENCCIA 2007 PhD student Symposium
Lecturer a the 2007 Fundacion Duques de Soria Seminar (summer school) on Neuroscience
Talked at a Public presentation on Realism and the “Uncanny Valley” in computer animation at the Science Museum Dana Centre
Publications and Conference Presentations (all refereed unless noted)
Journal Papers
Behaviourally Rich Actions for User Controlled Characters, Marco Gillies and Neil Dodgson in the Journal of Computers and Graphics (Elsevier Science) Vol. 28 no 6 2004
Customisation and Context for Expressive Behaviour in the Broadband World, Marco Gillies, I. Barry Crabtree and Daniel Ballin BT Technology Journal Vol 22 no 2 pp 7-17 April 2004 (invited not refereed)
Eye Movements and Attention for Behavioural Animation, Marco Gillies and Neil Dodgson in The Journal of Visualization and Computer Animation. 13: pp 287-300 2002
Book Chapters (refereed)
Semi-Autonomous Avatars, Marco Gillies and Daniel Ballin in Animating Expressive Characters for Social Interaction. Aylett and Canamero eds. (John Benjamins) in press
Published Refereed Conference Proceedings
Expressing Complex Mental States through Facial Expression. X. Pan, M. Gillies, T. M. Sezgin, C. Loscos and M. Slater The Proceedings of the International Conference on Affective Computing 2007 Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (in press)
Applying direct manipulation interfaces to customizing player character behaviour . M. Gillies in The Proceedings of the International Conference on Entertainment Computing 2006 Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Individuality and Contextual Variation of Character Behaviour for Interactive Narrative. M. Gillies, I. B. Crabtree and D. Ballin in The Proceedings of the AISB Workshop on Narrative AI and Games 2006
Direct Manipulation-like Tools for Designing Intelligent Virtual Agents. M. Gillies, D. Robertson and D. Ballin in The Proceedings of Intelligent Virtual Agents 2005 Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence.
Teaching Virtual Characters to use Body Language. D. Friedman and M. Gillies in The Proceedings of Intelligent Virtual Agents 2005 Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence.
A Platform Independent Architecture for Virtual Characters and Avatars. M. Gillies, V. Vinayagamoorthy, D Robertson and A Steed. Ballin in The Proceedings of Intelligent Virtual Agents 2005 Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence. (Poster abstract)
Efficient Clothing Fitting from Data. Marco Gillies, Daniel Ballin and Balázs Csanád Csáji in the Proceedings of the 12th International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics, Visualization and Computer Vision (WSCG) Plzen, Czech Republic 2-6 February 2004
A Model of Interpersonal Attitude and Posture Generation, Marco Gillies and Daniel Ballin in The Proceedings of Intelligent Virtual Agents 2003 Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence.
Other Refereed Conference Papers
Affect Detection from Open-Ended Improvisational Text. Zhang, L., Barnden, J.A., Hendley, R.J. & Wallington, A.M. (Presented in Symposium on Narrative AI and Games, AISB'06 Convention, April 3--6, 2006, University of Bristol, UK.) In T. Kovacs & J.A.R. Marshall (Eds), proceedings of AISB'06 - Adaptation in Artificial and Biological Systems, Vol 3, pp78-85. Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour, UK.
Building Expression into Virtual Characters. V. Vinayagamoorthy, M. Gillies, A. Steed, E. Tanguy, X. Pan, C. Loscos, and M. Slater in Eurographics Conference State of the Art Reports 2006
Non-verbal Communication for Correlational Characters. Marco Gillies and Mel Slater in the Proceedings of The 8th Annual International Workshop on Presence, London, September 2005
Integrating autonomous behavior and user control for believable agents. Marco Gillies and Daniel Ballin, in the Proceedings of the Third International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems Columbia University, New York, July 2004
Affective Interactions Between Expressive Characters. Marco Gillies and Daniel Ballin in the Proceedings of the IEEE conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, The Hague, The Netherlands October 2004
An Investigation of Presence Response across Variations in Visual Realism, Vinoba Vinayagamoorthy, Andrea Brogni, Marco Gillies, Mel Slater and Anthony Steed in 7th International Conference on Presence Valencia, Spain October 2004
Expressive Characters and a Text-Chat Interface Marco Gillies, I. Barry Crabtree and Daniel Ballin in Olivier, Aylett and Cavazza eds. Proceedings of the AISB Workshop on Language, Speech and Gesture for Expressive Characters, Leeds March 2004
A Framework For Interpersonal Attitude and Non-Verbal Communication in Improvisational Visual Media Production. Daniel Ballin, Marco Gillies and Barry Crabtree in the First European Conference on Visual Media Production IEE, London, UK 15-16 March 2004
Marco Gillies, Neil Dodgson and Daniel Ballin in Ruth Aylett and Lola Cañamero (eds.) Proceedings of the AISB Workshop on Animating Expressive Characters for Social Interactions, Imperial College London April 2002 pp 37-42
Integrating Internal Behavioural Models with External Expression, Marco Gillies, Daniel Ballin and Neil Dodgson in Helmut Prendiger (ed.) Proceedings of the PRICAI ’02 International Workshop on Lifelike Animated Agents: Tools, Affective Functions and Applications, Tokyo August 2002 pp 34-39
Invariants and Affordances for Walking in a Cluttered Environment, Marco Gillies and Neil Dodgson, in Daniel Ballin (ed) Second Workshop on Intelligent Virtual Agents, University of Salford, September 1999
Psychologically based walking in a cluttered environment, Marco Gillies and Neil Dodgson, Eurographics Short papers and Presentations 1999
Ball catching: an example of psychologically-based behavioural animation, Marco Gillies and Neil Dodgson in the Proceedings of the Eurographics UK 17th annual conference, 1999
Technical Reports (PhD Thesis)
Practical Behavioural Animation Based on Vision and Attention, Marco Gillies, Cambridge University Computer Laboratory Technical Report UCAM-CL-TR-522 September 2001
Patent Applications Filed
GB0407148.6 "Questionnaire Methods Given a Context and Output", Marco Gillies and Daniel Ballin (2004)
PCT/GB2004/001276 "Behavioural Translator", Marco Gillies and Daniel Ballin (2004)
GB0402385.9 "Quaternion Weighted Sum Techniques for Motion Synthesis", Marco Gillies and Daniel Ballin (2004)
GB0402386.7 "Quaternion Weighted Sum Techniques II", Marco Gillies and Daniel Ballin (2004)
GB0407336.7 "Dynamic Toggle Between Automated/Manual Real-time Navigation" Martin Trimby, Marco Gillies and Daniel Ballin (2004)
[number not assigned] “Automated Subdivision of Nodal Navigation Matrices”, Martin Trimby, Marco Gillies and Daniel Ballin (2004)
[number not assigned] “Dynamic Feature Weighting for Path Generation”, Martin Trimby, Marco Gillies and Daniel Ballin (2004)
[number not assigned] “Angle Differential as Additional Cost Value for Path Generation”, Martin Trimby, Marco Gillies and Daniel Ballin (2004)
[number not assigned] “Apparatus and method for generating behaviour in an object”, Marco Gillies and Daniel Ballin (2003)
GB0219623.6 "Fast Fitting of Virtual Clothing to Virtual Humans", Marco Gillies and Daniel Ballin (2002)