Dr. Andreas Aristidou

Andreas Aristidou          

Assistant Professor
Graphics & Extended Reality Lab, University of Cyprus
a.aristidou@ieee.org
Motion Capture, Motion Synthesis and Analysis, Animations, Inverse Kinematics, Geometric Algebra

       
Andreas Aristidou

Andreas Aristidou is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus, member of the Graphics & Extended Reality Lab, and a Research Fellow at the CYENS center of excellence with special interest in computer graphics and character animation. He completed his PhD as a Cambridge European Trust fellow at the Signal Processing and Communications Laboratory, University of Cambridge and holds an MSc in Mobile and Personal Communications from King's College London, where he graduated with honors. Dr. Aristidou also obtained a BSc in Informatics and Telecommunications from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He previously worked as a research fellow at Shandong University (China), IDC Herzliya (Israel), and the University of Cyprus, and participated in a number of EU funded projects. He is currently on the editorial board of The Visual Computer (TVC) and Heritage journals, and is a guest editor for the Frontiers in Virtual Reality and Advances in Applied Clifford Algebras (AACA) journals. He is a senior member of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM, SM from 2020), the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE, SM from 2019), and Eurographics. He is also a member of the Cyprus Scientific and Technical Chamber, where he previously served as a member of the Research Committee, while from 2020-2021, he was a member of the Cyprus Parallel Parliament for research, innovation, and digital governance. He has received numerous fellowships, distinctions, and research grants from highly competitive local, EU, and international agencies.

His main research interests lie at the intersection of computer graphics, virtual reality, and vision. He specializes in character animation (analysis, classification, and synthesis) and employs various techniques, including motion capture, inverse kinematics, and machine learning for virtual humans (deep and reinforcement learning). He is also actively involved in research related to digital heritage (intangible cultural creations), VR/AR/XR environments, and applications of conformal geometric algebra in graphics. He has published over 50 papers in top-tier journals and international conferences, including SIGGRAPH, ACM TOG, IEEE TVCG, and Eurographics. He participated in a number of EU funded projects, and he collaborates with EU creative industries to design innovative algorithm for motion synthesis and character retargeting.

International Program Committee: Eurographics 2022 (Award Jury Chair), ACM-SCA 2022, CGI2022, CASA2022, ENGAGE2022, ACM-SCA2021, CGI2021, CASA2021, ENGAGE2021, ENGAGE2020, ENGAGE2019, MIG2018, ENGAGE2018.


Open Positions at the Graphics & Extended Reality lab

  • Research Associate/PostDoc position in Computer Graphics and/or Computer Animation. Deadline: Remain open until the positions are filled

    In collaboration with Prof. Yiorgos Chrysanthou, at the Real-time populated environments MRG group, CYENS centre of Excellence. We are looking for talented scholars with a strong interest in researching novel methods in computer animation, with emphasis on Virtual Humans. This project is in close collaboration with Huawei's Israeli R&D center. You can visit the link below for more information. If you are interested in joining our vibrant research team at the CYENS Centre of Excellence, please send me a message.

    More details here.

  • Research Associate/PostDoc positions on Virtual Humans. Deadline: Remain open until the positions are filled

    In collaboration with Prof. Yiorgos Chrysanthou and Dr. Panayiotis Charalambous, at CYENS centre of Excellence. We are looking for talented scholars with a strong interest in researching novel methods in computer animation, with emphasis on Virtual Humans. You can visit the link below for more information. If you are interested in joining our vibrant research team at the CYENS Centre of Excellence, please send me a message.

    More details here.

  • Research Assistant/PhD positions on Virtual Humans. Deadline: Remain open until the positions are filled

    In collaboration with Prof. Yiorgos Chrysanthou and Dr. Panayiotis Charalambous, at CYENS centre of Excellence. We are looking for talented scholars with a strong interest in researching novel methods in computer animation, with emphasis on Virtual Humans. You can visit the link below for more information. If you are interested in joining our vibrant research team at the CYENS Centre of Excellence, and get a PhD degree from the Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus, please send me a message.

    More details here.

  • PostDoc/PhD positions in Extended Reality. Deadline: Remain open until the positions are filled

    In collaboration with Dr. Fotis Liarokapis, at the Extended Experiences MRG group, CYENS centre of Excellence. Extended Experiences MRG focuses on virtual and augmented environments as well as human-machine interactions generated by computer technology and wearables. Advanced extended reality combines human senses, and it requires new strategies for the design and implementation of novel applications and systems. The goal of this MRG is to focus on three related broad areas including: (a) extended reality, (b) advanced interaction and (c) physiological interfaces.

    More details here.


Awards & Funding

  • Research funding (2023-2024) from the Cypriot Civil Society in Action VIII under the theme “Youth In Action: Promoting Dialogue Through Culture”. Call: EuropeAid/173620/DH/ACT/CY (~€60K total budget).
  • Research funding (2022-2025) from the Horizon Europe (HORIZON) Call: HORIZON-CL2-2021-HERITAGE-01, Project: PREMIERE (~€4M).
  • Research funding (2021-2023) from the Research and Innovation center, University of Cyprus, Project: DEMONSTRATION (€60K).
  • Research funding (2020-2024) from the Horizon 2020 Call: H2020-MSCA-ITN-2019, Project: CLIPE (>€4M).
  • Awarded the seed grant (2020-2021) by the Cyprus Seeds organization, to commercialize his innovative academic research in motion capturing, Project: ALADDIN (€25K).
  • Start-up funding (2020-2022) from the Research and Innovation center, University of Cyprus (€50K).
  • ΔΙΔΑΚΤΩΡ fellowship, by the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation, to establish research in motion analysis and classification (€125K).
  • Awarded the nVIDIA GPU grant, to investigate deep learning methods for motion synthesis and analysis, 2017.
  • Awarded the Erasmus Mundus Grant for visiting scholars (2018) to undertake teaching and research activities in the context of dance as Intangible Cultural Heritage (Choreomundus International Master).
  • Best paper award at the 12th Eurographics Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage (GCH’14), for the paper “Motion Analysis for Folk Dance Evaluation”, co-authors: E. Stavrakis, and Y. Chrysanthou.
  • Office of Naval Research Global (ONRG) Visiting Scientist Program (VSP) scholarship to visit PhaseSpace Inc. offices in San Leandro, CA, USA, in order to be trained and gain experiences on subjects relative to motion capture (€4.5K).
  • PhaseSpace Inc. awarded him with a full 8-camera X2 motion capture system, providing the essentials to establish his own motion capture laboratory at the Graphics and Virtual Reality Lab, University of Cyprus. They also donated a multiLED board (hand glove) in order to practise hand reconstruction methodologies on their software (€60K).
  • Following his novel research in folk dance digitization, Andreas was part of a consortium that has been awarded the DARIAH-EU Theme 2015 in Open Humanities for organizing a workshop on e-documentation of Intangible Cultural Heritage (€6K).
  • Cambridge European Trust Bursary for PhD studies at the University of Cambridge (€13.5K).

© 2017 Andreas Aristidou