Human movement understanding for visual computing

Due to the advancement in human motion/surface capturing technology and the availability of public databases, human movement understanding has become a core component of many research problems in multiple research domains. In computer graphics, a good representation of human movement facilitates characters with realistic character animations and high-level crowd controls. In computer vision, modelling human movement is a key process for effective action classification and re-identification. In motion analysis, key features extracted from human movement enable effective motion-based human-computer interactions and gait analysis. The core problem here is to model human movement in a meaningful way, such that we can generalise knowledge to perform synthesis, recognition and analysis.

In this talk, I will discuss the importance of human movement understanding in computer science. With the results of my research projects, I will demonstrate how it connects different research fields. I will show how my projects achieve impact in research and the society, and conclude my presentation with future opportunities and potential directions.

Short biography

I am an Associate Professor (Reader) in Computer Science at Northumbria University, as well as the Director of Research and Innovation of the Computer and Information Sciences Department. I lead the Computational Intelligence and Visual Computing research team, which consists of 11 faculty members, two post-doctoral researchers and 22 PhDs. Before this, I worked as a senior lecturer at Northumbria University, a lecturer at the University of Worcester, a postdoctoral researcher at RIKEN Japan, and a research assistant at the City University of Hong Kong. I received my PhD degree from the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, as well as my master and bachelor degrees from the City University of Hong Kong. I have published more than 90 referred journals and conferences in the fields of computer graphics, computer vision, motion analysis and machine learning.

As the Principal Investigator of an EPSRC grant, a Ministry of Defence grant and multiple Royal Society grants, I worked with partner institutes such as the University of Edinburgh, the University of Leeds, Waseda University, IRISA France and Hokkaido University, and industrial partners such as Royal Victoria Infirmary, City Hospitals Sunderland, NHS Innovation North, Sunderland City Council and Your Homes Newcastle. I have also been the funding management officer of a €3.03 million Erasmus Mundus project involving 18 partner universities.

I am an Associate Editor of Computer Graphics Forum and have been a guest editor of International Journal of Computer Vision. I have organised conferences such as the British Machine Vision Conference, ACM SIGGRAPH Conference on Motion in Games and the ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology.

For more information, please visit my website. Please also consider attending the ACM SIGGRAPH Conference on Motion, Interaction and Games 2019 at Northumbria.