Matthias Niessner
{{Short description|German computer scientist (born 1986)}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name = Matthias Nießner
| birth_place = Gunzenhausen
| citizenship = German
| fields = Computer Graphics, Computer Vision
| alma_mater = University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (2013)
| thesis_title = Rendering Subdivision Surfaces using Hardware Tessellation
| thesis_url = https://niessnerlab.org/papers/2013/1thesis/niessner2013thesis.pdf
| thesis_year = 2013
| doctoral_advisor = Günther Greiner
| website = {{URL|http://www.niessnerlab.org/}}
| work_institution = Technical University of Munich (professor)
}}
Matthias Nießner (born 1986) is a German computer scientist, academic, and entrepreneur{{Citation needed|date=December 2018}} working in the fields of computer graphics and computer vision. He is a professor of Computer Science at the Technical University of Munich and leads the Visual Computing Lab.{{Cite web |title=Nießner_Matthias |url=https://www.professoren.tum.de/niessner-matthias |access-date=2023-11-22 |website=www.professoren.tum.de}} As a member of the Max Planck Center for Visual Computing and Communication Junior Research Group Program, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Stanford University, working in the lab of Pat Hanrahan.{{cite web |title=Matthias Niessner |url=https://www.mpc-vcc.org/niessner-matthias/ |website=Max Planck Center for Visual Computing and Communication |accessdate=December 26, 2018}}
Education
Nießner received a Ph.D. in computer graphics from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in 2013{{Cite book |title= Real-time Rendering Techniques with Hardware Tessellation |author= Matthias Nießner |year= 2013 |publisher= Dr. Hut |isbn= 978-3-8439-1182-5 }} and received his Diploma degree in 2010. His thesis on the topic of Subdivision Surface Rendering using Hardware Tessellation was submitted in 2013 and was awarded the highest honors{{Citation needed|date=December 2018}}. Some ideas from this thesis were used in the most recent version of Pixar's OpenSubdiv, which also incorporates ideas dating back to 1996 from Edwin Catmull, Tony DeRose, Michael Kass, Charles Loop, and Peter Schröder.{{Cite web |title=OpenSubdiv - Introduction |url=http://graphics.pixar.com/opensubdiv/docs/intro.html |access-date=2018-05-09 |website=Pixar}}
Career
Through a junior research group program, Nießner was a Visiting Assistant Professor from 2013 to 2017 at Stanford University in the lab of Pat Hanrahan. Since 2017, he has been a professor at the Technical University of Munich, where he heads the Visual Computing Lab.
Nießner's work focuses on 3D reconstruction and semantic scene understanding. Among his best-known work is that on facial reenactment,{{Cite news |last1=Gorman |first1=James |date=26 October 2015 |title=Manipulating Faces From Afar in Realtime |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/science/manipulating-facial-expressions-in-live-video.html/ |access-date=2018-05-09}} which has been widely criticized for contributing to the ease with which fake news can be generated.{{cite news |last1=Pagnamenta |first1=Robin |date=27 October 2018 |title=Tech that 'threatens democracy' is being funded by UK taxpayers |newspaper=The Daily Telegraph |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/10/27/tech-threatens-democracy-funding-uk-taxpayers/ |accessdate=2018-12-26}}{{cite web |last1=Funke |first1=Daniel |title=These academics are on the frontlines of fake news research |url=https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2018/these-academics-are-on-the-frontlines-of-fake-news-research/ |website=poynter.org |date=8 May 2018 |publisher=Poynter |accessdate=2018-12-26}}{{cite web |last1=Lory |first1=Gregoire |date=16 October 2018 |title=The next frontier in information manipulation |url=https://www.euronews.com/2018/10/16/the-next-frontier-in-information-manipulation |accessdate=2018-12-26 |website= |publisher=Euronews}} The majority of the external stake in his company Synthesia comes from speculative American businessman Mark Cuban.{{cite news |last1=Pagnamenta |first1=Robin |title=Tech that 'threatens democracy' is being funded by UK taxpayers |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/10/27/tech-threatens-democracy-funding-uk-taxpayers/|newspaper=The Telegraph |date=27 October 2018 |accessdate=2018-12-26}} He developed with his colleagues Face2Face, which was the first work{{Citation needed|date=December 2018}} to manipulate facial expressions from consumer cameras in real time.{{Cite web |last=Fingas |first=Jon |date=2016-03-21 |title=Smart 3D modeling lets you mess with faces in videos |url=https://www.engadget.com/2016-03-21-3d-model-face-manipulation-in-videos.html |access-date=2023-12-06 |website=Engadget |language=en-US}}{{Cite news |last=McFarland |first=Matt |date=March 23, 2016 |title=Why you should be skeptical that any video is real |work=The Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/03/23/why-you-should-be-skeptical-that-any-video-is-real/?noredirect=on |access-date=2018-05-09}} More recently, he has been working on 3D semantic scene understanding, developing with his colleagues ScanNet, the first large-scale, densely-annotated 3D dataset.{{Cite news|url=https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604240/a-massive-new-library-of-3-d-images-could-help-your-robot-butler-get-around-your-house/|title=A Massive New Library of 3-D Images Could Help Your Robot Butler Get Around Your House|access-date=2018-05-09}}
Nießner was awarded a Google Faculty Research Award in 2017 for Photo-realistic Avatars from Videos: Free Viewpoint Animation of Human Faces,{{Cite news |title=Google Faculty Research Awards 2017 |url=https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/03/google-faculty-research-awards-2017.html/ |url-status=dead |access-date=2018-05-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180921095504/https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/03/google-faculty-research-awards-2017.html |archive-date=2018-09-21}} as well as a Rudolf Mössbauer Fellowship from the Technical University of Munich.[https://www.ias.tum.de/en/active-fellows/niessner-matthias/] from fellows roster at Technical University of Munich, retrieved 2018-05-09.
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [http://www.niessnerlab.org/ Matthias Nießner's Home Page]
- [https://dblp.uni-trier.de/pers/hd/n/Nie=szlig=ner:Matthias Matthias Nießner] at DBLP Bibliography Server
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Category:German computer scientists
Category:University of Erlangen–Nuremberg alumni
Category:Academic staff of the Technical University of Munich