Visual
Computing

People

Faculty

 Bernd Bickel

Bernd Bickel

Bernd Bickel heads the Computational Design and Digital Fabrication group at ISTA. He is a computer scientist interested in computer graphics and its overlap into robotics, computer vision, machine learning, material science, and digital fabrication. His main objective is to push the boundaries of how digital content can be efficiently created, simulated, and reproduced.

 Chris Wojtan

Chris Wojtan

Chris Wojtan heads the Computer Graphics and Physics Simulation group at ISTA. He and his group develop geometric and numerical algorithms for computer animation and geometry processing and try to find new efficient and robust ways to simulate solid and fluid dynamics, control physics simulations, and compute with 3D shapes.

Administrative Assistants

 Dafne Rosina Valdez Lopez

Dafne Rosina Valdez Lopez

Senior Researchers

 Stefan Jeschke

Stefan Jeschke

Stefan got his M.Sc. in 2001 and a Ph.D. in 2005, both in computer science from the University of Rostock, Germany. Afterwards, he spent several years as a post doc researcher in projects at TU Wien and Arizona State University, and as a physics simulation researcher at Nvidia. His research interests include modeling and display of vectorized image representations, applications and solvers for PDEs, as well as modeling and rendering complex natural phenomena, preferably in real time.

 Mickaël Ly

Mickaël Ly

Mickaël obtained his PhD at Inria Grenoble-Rhône Alpes in the Elan team under the supervision of Florence Bertails-Descoubes and Mélina Skouras, researching the direct simulation and inverse design of garments in the presence of frictional contact. Currently, he works on the representation of signals on moving surfaces.

 Michal Piovarči

Michal Piovarči

Michal is a postdoc at IST Austria in the Computer Graphcis and Digital Fabrication group headed by Bernd Bickel. He obtained his PhD at USI Lugano under the supervision of Piotr Didyk in 2020. His thesis, entitled “Perception-Aware Computational Fabrication” received the prestigious Eurographics PhD Award. His research interests are computer graphics, computational fabrication, haptic reproduction, appearance reproduction, and perception.

PhD Students

 Manas Bhargava

Manas Bhargava

Manas joined the PhD programme at ISTA with the cohort of 2019, and he is affiliated with the Bickel Group. Prior to that, he was an undergrad in the Computer Science department at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He is currently working on designing deformable structures.

 Yi-Lu Chen

Yi-Lu Chen

Yi-Lu is a PhD student at ISTA, supervised by Chris Wojtan. He researches algorithms for the simulation of rigid body dynamics in the presence of frictional contacts and shock propoagation, as well as the simulation of granular materials.

 Sadashige Ishida

Sadashige Ishida

Sadashige researches mathematics, physics, and also computer simulation of natural phenomena. He is especially interested in exploring the dynamics and the geometry that fluids can exhibit from viewpoints of geometric mechanics (symplectic, Poisson, and contact geometry) and optimal transport. To know more, visit his website.

 Aleksei Kalinov

Aleksei Kalinov

Aleksei is a PhD student in Chris Wojtan’s group at ISTA. His research interests are physically-based modeling and animation, deep learning and design of efficient algorithms and data structures.

 Mau Rojas Vega

Mau Rojas Vega

Mau is a PhD student at ISTA, co-affiliated with Chris Wojtan and Andela Šarić. In his research, hemodels the morphology of biomembranes using triangulated meshes.

 Malina Strugaru

Malina Strugaru

Malina is a PhD student at ISTA, co-affiliated with Bernd Bickel and Jérémie Palacci. In her research, she studies the simulation, design, and control of liquid crystalline elastomers.

 Peter Synak

Peter Synak

Peter is a PhD student at ISTA, supervised by Chris Wojtan. He researches how to robustly handle topological changes on non-manifold moving meshes.

 Evgeny Zuenko

Evgeny Zuenko

Evgeny is a PhD student at ISTA and is currently working on water-wave simulation with geometrical optics.

Engineers

 Christian Hafner

Christian Hafner

Christian did his PhD in computational design and digital fabrication under the supervision of Bernd Bickel’s group at ISTA. In his research, he tries to find out how the physical limits of mechanical systems can be described geometrically. He is now the research software engineer in Chris Wojtan’s group.

Alumni

 Hassan Bahrami

Hassan Bahrami

  • Intern   2024
  • PhD Student at UTS as of 2024

Hassan is a PhD student at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), and is currently visiting ISTA. His research interests are physically-based simulation, geometry processing, and digital fabrication.

 Ihor Zvieriev

Ihor Zvieriev

  • Intern   2023
  • Software Engineer at Arm as of 2023

Ihor is an intern in the Wojtan group, and works on the simulation of crack formation and propagation in complex materials.

 Christine François-Rennhofer

Christine François-Rennhofer

  • Assistant   2023
  • Administrative Assistant at ISTA as of 2023
 Raphaël Charrondière

Raphaël Charrondière

 Martin Hafskjold Thoresen

Martin Hafskjold Thoresen

  • PhD Student   2022
  • Algorithm Engineer at Vind Technologies as of 2023
  • mht.wtf/
 Huidong Yang

Huidong Yang

  • Postdoc   2022
  • Postdoc at University of Vienna as of 2023
 Hao Peng

Hao Peng

Hao was a research intern at IST Austria, advised by Prof. Bernd Bickel.

 Haisen Zhao

Haisen Zhao

Haisen was a postdoc at IST Austria, advised by Prof. Bernd Bickel.

 Georg Sperl

Georg Sperl

  • PhD Student   2022
  • Research Scientist at CLO Virtual Fashion as of 2023
  • sperl.me/

Physics-Based Simulation

 Eder Miguel

Eder Miguel

I obtained my PhD. in November 2014 at Rey Juan Carlos University under the supervision of Miguel A. Otaduy. I worked on modeling and estimation of hyperelasticity and deformation models. Currently, I focus on physically-based simulation (including data-driven approaches) and its application to computational design and digital fabrication.

 Desmond/Zhenyuan Liu

Desmond/Zhenyuan Liu

Desmond was a research intern at IST Austria, advised by Prof. Bernd Bickel. He graduated from CUHK with a BSc. in Computer Science (first class honors) in July 2021. He will join GCM at EPFL in the fall of 2022, advised by Prof. Dr. Mark Pauly.

 Tomas Skrivan

Tomas Skrivan

 Thomas Auzinger

Thomas Auzinger

  • Postdoc   2020
  • Senior Research Scientist at Google as of 2023
  • auzinger.name/

I obtained my M.Sc. in Physics from the University of Vienna and my PhD. in Computer Graphics from the TU Wien under the supervision of Michael Wimmer. During my doctoral studies, I worked on anti-aliasing and medical visualization. My current research interest is computational fabriction in general and appearance modeling in special.

 Ruslan Guseinov

Ruslan Guseinov

Computational Fabrication

 Ran Zhang

Ran Zhang

  • PhD Student   2020
  • Research Scientist at Tencent Pixel Lab New York as of 2023
  • ran-zhang.com/

Computational Design

 Irene Filoscia

Irene Filoscia

  • Intern   2020
  • Game Programmer at Milestone s.r.l. as of 2023
 Camille Schreck

Camille Schreck

  • Postdoc   2020
  • Starting Faculty at Inria Nancy in the MFX Team as of 2023
  • schreckc.github.io/

I am now a researcher in the MFX Team at Inria Nancy in France (https://mfx.loria.fr/). I was a postdoc researcher at IST Austria in Chris Wojtan Group between 2016 and 2020. I am interested in physics-based simulation and modeling natural phenoma as well as geometric modeling. I obtained my PhD in 2016 at the University of Grenoble-Alpes, supervised by Stefanie Hahmann and Damien Rohmer of the Imagine Team. I got an Engenieering Degree in 2013 from the school ENSIMAG (Grenoble INP) of Grenoble, France.

 Radhika Prasad

Radhika Prasad

  • Intern   2019
 Kumar Shivam

Kumar Shivam

  • Intern   2019
  • Lead Engineer at Samsung Electronics as of 2023
 Kazutaka Nakashima

Kazutaka Nakashima

I am a 2nd year master course student in Graduate School of information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Department of Computer Science. My supervisor is Takeo Igarashi, and in IST, I belong to Bernd Bickel group. My research interest is about digital fabrication.

 Jesus Perez Rodriguez

Jesus Perez Rodriguez

 Ewa Gajda-Zagórska

Ewa Gajda-Zagórska

  • Postdoc   2019
  • Research & Analytics Manager at HSBC as of 2023

I got my MSc in Computer Science in 2009 from the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland. Then I obtained a PhD in 2015 at the AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow. Currently I am a postdoc researcher in Chris Wojtan’s group. My research interests include physics-based simulations, multiobjective optimization and evolutionary algorithms.

 Patrick Blies

Patrick Blies

  • Postdoc   2018
  • Research Engineer at EnliteAI as of 2023
 Donald Degraen

Donald Degraen

I’m a PhD student under Prof. Dr. Antonio Krüger in the Ubiquitous Media Technology Lab at the Saarland University (UMTL) and I’m part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie network (DISTRO). My PhD research investigates the design of haptic feedback for virtual reality.

 Oskar Elek

Oskar Elek

  • Visiting Researcher   2017
  • Researcher and Lecturer at UC Santa Cruz as of 2023
  • elek.pub/
 Krystof Kolar

Krystof Kolar

  • Intern   2017
 Klint Qinami

Klint Qinami

  • Intern   2017
  • Staff Engineer at Qualcomm as of 2023
 Hikaru Ibayashi

Hikaru Ibayashi

I got my B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Tokyo, and I’m now a master student in computer graphics under the supervision of Takeo Igarashi (expecting M.Sc. in Computer Science in March, 2017). I was mainly working on virtual reality and fluid simulation so far. My current research interests are physics-based simulation, computer vision and applied math.

 Gabor Krisztian Birkas

Gabor Krisztian Birkas

  • Intern   2017
  • Senior Software Developer at Unity Technologies as of 2023
 Emmanuel Iarussi

Emmanuel Iarussi

I’ve recently got my Ph.D. at GRAPHDECO team, Inria Sophia Antipolis, France. In 2012 I’ve graduated as a Systems Engineer from UNICEN University, Tandil, Argentina. I’m a former member of ANR DRAO Project, focused on facilitating and accelerating drawing for amateurs, expert designers and illustrators. As a researcher, I’m mostly interested in imaging, fabrication and graphics as well as human-computer interaction techniques for image creation and manipulation.

 Denis Sumin

Denis Sumin

 David Hahn

David Hahn

  • PhD Student   2017
  • Postdoc at TU Wien as of 2023

I’m a PhD student in Chris Wojtan’s group mostly working on simulations of brittle fracture. I’ve previously studied simulation engineering at St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences.

 Charles Rajan

Charles Rajan

  • Intern   2017
  • Software Engineer at Meta as of 2023
 Ryoichi Ando

Ryoichi Ando

  • Postdoc   2016
  • Cloth Simulation Research Engineer at ZOZO as of 2023

Fluid Simulation

 Morten Bojsen-Hansen

Morten Bojsen-Hansen

  • PhD Student   2016
  • Principal Engineer at Autodesk as of 2023
  • alas.dk

Morten Bojsen-Hansen is a fifth year PhD student advised by Chris Wojtan. He studied Computer Science at Aarhus University. His primary research interest is physics-based animation.

 Selver Pepić

Selver Pepić

  • Intern   2015

ISTernship, Physics-based Simulation

 Nikola Bozhinov

Nikola Bozhinov

  • Intern   2015
  • Software Engineer at Google as of 2023

ISTernship, Physics-based Simulations

 Mathias Lepoutre

Mathias Lepoutre

  • Intern   2015
  • Software Engineer at Pearltrees as of 2023

Geometry Processing, Physics-based Simulations

 Luigi Malomo

Luigi Malomo

Computational Design