Introduction

I joined prof. Black and the Perceiving Systems department in November 2020 as a PhD candidate. My research interests lie on the intersection of graphics, vision and machine learning. In particular, I am fascinated by the recent success of deep learning in the domain image-based problems. My intention is to carry some of this success over to the 3D world and solve some of the most challenging there such as face/body shape and motion capture and generation.

My goal is to combine the recently emerging field of geometric deep learning for geometry processing with the most effective deep learning concepts (such as GANs) in order to capture and/or generate the most realistic characters. The title of my PhD project is Integrated statistical models for animation of face, hands and body.

My research is funded by Marie Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network in the framework of European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme. My PhD is part of the CLIPE initiative, grant agreement No 860768.

Former experience

I obtained my Bachelors degree in Computer Science at Czech Technical University in Prague in 2014 and my Masters in Visual Computing at ETH Zurich in 2016. After that I worked in Vizrt on real time computer vision algorithms for sports broadcasting technologies (2017), face capturing via deep learning in Disney Research Zurich (2018-2019). I was briefly enrolled as a PhD student at Computer Graphics Lab, ETH Zurich (2019-2020) before I decided to relocate to Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tuebingen (2020-present).

Personal

Aside from computer science research, I have many other passions. They all have a common theme: "Creative ways to get injured". For the past few years I've been training martial arts, most recently Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I love the outdoors, mountains in particular. I've climbed some high ones, too, such as Mount Logan in Canada or Mount Kenya in Kenya. In winter I love to ski or snowkite, in summer I love to kiteboard and I'm a certified scuba diver. I also love to travel to exotic locations, usually to do one of the above activities.