Berthouzoz Women in Research Lunch

The Berthouzoz Women in Research Lunch is a networking event for researchers, faculty, and students. This event is named after Floraine Berthouzoz, who started this lunch as an informal gathering. After her passing in 2015, Floraine’s mentees and colleagues built upon her efforts to create an event that has been steadily growing in its reach for the past few years, with over 120 participants last year! We will be hosting a panel of women in graphics who will share with us some of their research experience: Florence Bertails-Descoubes (INRIA Grenoble), Ayellet Tal (Technion), and M. Alex O. Vasilescu (UCLA/Tensor Vision Technologies). We’d like to note that the event is open to all researchers, regardless of gender.

Details

Event Date: Wednesday, August 26, 6-7pm GMT

Due to SIGGRAPH's virtual form, participation in the 2020 Berthouzoz Women in Graphics Lunch will not require SIGGRAPH registration.

The link and password to our virtual chat room will be sent to all registered participants at a later date.

Panelists

• 
  Ayellet Tal
  Professor
  Technion

  Ayellet Tal is a professor and the Alfred and Marion Bär Chair in Engineering at the Technion’s Andrew and Erna Viterbi Department of Electrical Engineering at the Technion. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from Princeton University and a bachelor degree (Summa cum Laude) in Mathematics and Computer Science from Tel-Aviv University. Her research interests include computer graphics and computer vision. Among Prof. Tal’s accomplishments are the Henry Taub Prize for Academic Excellence, the Google Research Award, and the Milton and Lillian Edwards Academic Lectureship. Ayellet regularly serves on the program committees of all the leading international conferences in Computer Graphics. She has chaired a couple of conferences on shape modeling and computer graphics and has been an Associate Editor of a number of professional journals. She is also the President's Advisor for Advancing Women in Science and Engineering at the Technion.

• 
  M. Alex O. Vasilescu
  CSO, Tensor Vision Technologies
  Associate Director of UCLA Computer Vision and Graphics Lab

  M. Alex O. Vasilescu is the Chief Science Officer of Tensor Vision Technologies, and the Associate Director of the UCLA Computer Vision and Graphics Lab. She received her education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Toronto. Vasilescu introduced the tensor algebraic framework for computer vision, computer graphics, and machine learning, while generalizing concepts from linear algebra to tensor algebra. She has cast computer graphics and computer vision problems as causal inferencing questions within a tensor algebraic framework. Vasilescu’s work was featured on the cover of Computer World, and in articles in the New York Times, Washington Times, etc. MIT's Technology Review named her as TR100 honoree, and the National Academy of Science co-awarded the Keck Futures Initiative Grant.

• 
  Florence Bertails-Descoubes
  Senior Researcher
  INRIA Grenoble

  Florence Bertails-Descoubes is a senior researcher ('Directrice de Recherche') at INRIA in Grenoble, France. She completed her PhD in hair simulation at INP Grenoble under the supervision of Marie-Paule Cani (Grenoble INP) and Basile Audoly (CNRS). Her PhD thesis was awarded the 2006 French prize in Computer Science (SPECIF-Gilles Kahn award). From 2006-2007, she completed a post-doc at the IMAGER Lab of the University of British Columbia, where she worked with Robert Bridson and Christopher Batty on physically-based models for coupling fluid and solid structures. Florence joined INRIA in 2007 as a member of the BiPop research group, specializing in the modeling and simulation of non-smooth dynamic phenomena. Since October 2017, she has been heading the Elan research group, which is focused on the numerical modeling of complex mechanical phenomena. Florence’s research interests deal with the modeling and the simulation of complex mechanical objects. In 2014, she was awarded a Starting Grant from the European Research Council to work on the inverse design of slender elastic structures subject to contact and friction.

About This Lunch

Floraine Berthouzoz was a research scientist at Adobe Systems specializing in computer graphics and human-computer interaction. She obtained her PhD under the supervision of Maneesh Agrawala at UC Berkeley in 2013.

Floraine was a brilliant researcher, friend and mentor, who was extremely passionate about narrowing the gender gap in computer science. As a PhD student, she co-founded CS KickStart, an outreach program for incoming undergraduate women. Since 2011, this program has significantly increased the number of undergraduate women pursuing computer science degrees at Berkeley.

Floraine originally started this lunch as an informal gathering where women in computer graphics could have an opportunity to meet and discuss with each other. Following her passing in 2015, her mentees resolved to keep this tradition alive, and started planning this lunch in her place. It is named in her honor.

Organizers

• 
  Adriana Schulz
  Assistant Professor
  University of Washington

  Adriana is an assistant professor at the Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, where she is a member of the Computer Graphics Group (GRAIL). Her research focuses on computational design for manufacturing. As 3D printers and industrial robots begin to reshape manufacturing, her goal is to define design tools that will drive and democratize this new industrial revolution. She received her PhD degree in June 2018 from the Computer Science Department at MIT, where she was advised by Professor Wojciech Matusik.

• 
  Anh Truong
  PhD Student
  Stanford University

  Anh is a second year PhD student in Computer Science at Stanford University where she is advised by Maneesh Agrawala. Previously, she worked as a research apprentice in the Creative Intelligence Lab at Adobe Research, where she was primarily advised by Wilmot Li and David Salesin. Her research interests are at the intersection of computer graphics and human-computer interaction (HCI). Her work specifically focuses on leveraging technology in conjunction with HCI principles to improve video capture and editing workflows.

• 
  Liane Makatura
  PhD Student
  MIT

  Liane is a third-year PhD student at MIT, where she is advised by Prof. Wojciech Matusik in the Computer Science Department. She is interested in Computational Fabrication, where she builds tools that make it easier to design and fabricate functional objects. Before joining MIT, she served as a Fulbright Scholar at EPFL. She completed her undergraduate education at Dartmouth College, majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics, and minoring in Digital Arts.

• 
  Yuxuan Mei
  PhD Student
  University of Washington

  Yuxuan is a second-year PhD student with the Graphics and Imaging Laboratory (GRAIL) at the University of Washington where she is advised by Professor Adriana Schulz. Previously, she completed her B.S. degree in Computer Science at Columbia University. Her research interests are physics based simulation and computational fabrication.

• 
  Deepali Aneja
  Research Engineer
  Adobe Research

  Deepali is a Research Engineer at Adobe Research. She joined Adobe in December 2019 after completing her PhD in Computer Science in the Graphics and Imaging Lab at the University of Washington. Deepali’s research is at the intersection of computer vision, machine learning, and human-computer interaction. Her work focuses on developing learning-based techniques for performance-based animation and image-to-image translation.

Advisory Board

• 
  Kavita Bala
  Professor, CS Dept. Chair
  Cornell University

  Kavita Bala is the Chair of the Computer Science Department at Cornell University. She received her S.M. and PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and her B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT, Bombay). She co-founded GrokStyle (acquired by Facebook), and is a faculty Fellow with the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future. Bala currently serves on SIGGRAPH's Papers Advisory Group (PAG) and has served as the Editor-in-Chief of Transactions on Graphics (TOG), on the Papers Advisory Board for SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia, and as Associate Editor for TOG (Transactions on Graphics), TVCG (Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics) and CGF (Computer Graphics Forum). She specializes in computer graphics and computer vision, leading research in recognition and visual search; material modeling and perception; and realistic, physically-based rendering.

• 
  Hijung Valentina Shin
  Research Scientist
  Adobe Research

  Valentina is a research scientist at the Creative Intelligence Lab at Adobe Research. Her research investigates novel interaction techniques to facilitate effective interaction with audiovisual media (e.g., video, audio, visual presentations) for authoring, collaboration and consumption. She is passionate about supporting creative experiences through both interactive and automatic design tools. Previous to joining Adobe, she completed her PhD in computer science at MIT with Fredo Durand. She was an undergraduate at the Princeton University and completed her B.S.E. in Computer Science.

• 
  Jessica Hodgins
  Professor
  Carnegie Mellon University

  Jessica Hodgins is a Professor in the Robotics Institute and Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. She received her PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1989. From 2008-2016, she founded and ran research labs for Disney, rising to VP of Research and leading the labs in Pittsburgh and Los Angeles. From 2005-2015, she was Associate Director for Faculty in the Robotics Institute, running the promotion and tenure process and creating a mentoring program for pre-tenure faculty. Prior to moving to Carnegie Mellon in 2000, she was an Associate Professor and Assistant Dean in the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. She was editor-in-chief of ACM Transactions on Graphics from 2000-2002 and ACM SIGGRAPH Papers Chair in 2003. She was an elected director at large on the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee from 2012-2017 and in 2017 she was elected ACM SIGGRAPH President. Her research focuses on computer graphics, animation, and robotics with an emphasis on generating and analyzing human motion.