Visual Computing

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 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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Physics-Based Simulation

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 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.

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.

Computational Fabrication

Computational Design

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I got my M.Sc. in 2001 and a Ph.D. in 2005, both in computer science from the University of Rostock, Germany. Afterwards, I spent several years as a post doc researcher in projects at Vienna University of Technology, Arizona State University and IST Austria. My research interest includes 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.

Fluid Simulation

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.

ISTernship, Physics-based Simulation

ISTernship, Physics-based Simulations

Geometry Processing, Physics-based Simulations

Computational Design