INVITED SPEAKER

Perceptually-Motivated Graphics and Simulations

Prof. Katerina Mania
Technical University of Crete, Greece

Abstract

The talk gives an overview of the uses of knowledge about the human senses as applied to several aspects of computer graphics. In particular, we show how human visual perception as well as spatial cognition principles applies to the optimization of rendering algorithms as well as virtual environments. Examples are shown for applications such as real-time and high-quality rendering and training and knowledge transfer in virtual environments. The aim is to show that the human visual perception and spatial cognition literature harbours a rich source of knowledge that can be directly applied to improve a wide range of computer graphics technologies. Recent research on synergies of computer graphics and neuroscience is presented.

Biography of the Invited Speaker

Katerina Mania serves as an Assist. Prof. in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering of the Technical University of Crete, Greece. She has previously served as faculty in the Department of Informatics of the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. She completed a B.Sc. in Mathematics at the University of Crete, Greece, an M.Sc. in Advanced Computing (Global Computing and Multimedia) and a Ph.D in Computer Science at the Univeristy of Bristol, UK funded by the Hewlett Packard Laboratories. Prior to her Ph.D, she served as a member of technical staff at Hewlett Packard Laboratories in Bristol, UK working on architectural visualisation, user interfaces and 3D graphics for the web. In December 2003, during her sabbatical, she worked at NASA Ames Research Centre, USA (Advanced Displays and Spatial Perception Laboratory) on user latency detection and adaptation in Virtual Environments. She serves as one of the Associate Editors for ACM Transactions On Applied Perception and Presence, Tele-operators and Virtual Environments, MIT Press.