I lead the “3Dim Intelligence” (3DI) team – we are geographically distributed but know no borders; see our members.

We need AI that understands people in the physical world — not just recognizing them in pixels, but capturing how they move, act, and interact with objects, scenes, and each other. Long term, we aim for systems that perceive humans in their habitat, reason about their behavior, and interact with them to help them achieve their goals, bridging the worlds of bits and atoms for social good.

Concretely, we work at the intersection of Computer Vision, Graphics, and Learning, from a human-centric point of view. We model how people look, move, and interact with objects and scenes, learning their whole-body shape, pose, and their contact and proximal relationships from everyday images and videos, and use these models both to reconstruct real-life actions in 3D/4D and to generate realistic interacting avatars; each of these capabilities feeds back to improve the others.

Potential applications span World Models for Robotics/Physical AI/Virtual Avatars, through Mixed Reality and Human-Computer Interaction, to Healthcare, Behavior-informed Architecture, and Ambient Intelligence.

We are looking for motivated PhD students to build this with us — see how to apply (AUTh positions).

Paper Awards

• Best-paper finalist for SHAPY at CVPR 2022 (33 papers shortlisted out of 2064 ones; i.e. top 1.6%).

• Honorable Mention award for InterCap at DAGM’s GCPR 2022.

• Outstanding Reviewer (5x times): CVPR 2023 (top 3.5%), CVPR 2021 (top 20%), CVPR 2020 (top 3.9%), ECCV 2020 (top 7.6%), ICCV 2019 (top 3.6%).

• Outstanding Area Chair: CVPR 2026.

• Pre-PhD (diploma student) - ‘Epione’ project for Microsoft Imagine Cup software competition: Participation @ World Finals (2011) and Presentation to Microsoft’s CEO (08/07/2011, NYC; ~20 select teams). National Finals (Greece) place: 1st (2011), 2nd (2010). Honorary rector award (AUTH). Press e.g.: national, regional, TEDx.

Funding (public)

• ERC Starting Grant 2024 (€1.5M, 5 years) for reconstructing Human-Object Interaction from color images (project STRIPES, 101165317).
• 1 PhD (350k€, 4 years, 2024–), ELLIS-Amsterdam call. Co-supervised with Otmar Hilliges (ETH) through ELLIS.
• 1 PhD (350k€, 4 years, 2023–), UvA, Part of tenure-track position. Co-supervised with Theo Gevers.
• 1 PhD, 1 PostDoc (140k€, 1y, 2022), BMBF, ‘Machine Learning for Interacting Human Avatars’ (PS MEWE 103Z).
• 1 PhD (195k€ , 3 years, 2019–), BMBF, ‘Robust 3D Hand-Object Interaction’. Co-supervised with Michael J. Black (MPI-IS) & Cordelia Schmid (INRIA).

Funding (industry)

• NVidia Academic Grant Program. Hardware, aproximate value $50k.

• Google Research Gift ($80k unrestricted). Investement for a GPU cluster node.

HPC (cluster/compute)

• Access on JUPITER Booster (EHPC-REG-2025R02-393)

• Access on LEONARDO Booster (EHPC-AI-2024A06-077)

Teaching

• The team of my Computer Vision course (50821COV6Y, link1, link2, link3) ranks top-6 in UvA’s Science Faculty and is candidate for an Education Award for the academic year 2025-2026.

Memberships

• ELLIS Scholar in the ELLIS Unit Amsterdam since January 2025.
• ELLIS society member since April 2022. Endorsed by Otmar Hilliges (ETH) & Marc Pollefeys (ETH).

Press / Media

• The New York Times (NYT) uses our ICON software (CVPR'21) to reconstruct key goals of the:
  • NFL Super Bowl 2023 (American football league): Game article.
  • FIFA World Cup 2022: Technical article (R&D), Game articles: game-1, game-2, game-3, game-4, game-5.

General Chair (GC):   

• 3DV 2027

Program Committee

• Area Chair (AC):    ECCV 2026,    CVPR 2026 (Outstanding AC award),    ICCV 2025,    CVPR 2025,    ECCV 2024

• Area Chair (AC):    3DV 2025,    3DV 2024,    BMVC 2022,    3DV 2021

Workshops / Tutorials

• ECCV 2026  –  Advisor team  –  Half-day Workshop  –  ‘3D Humans Workshop’
• CVPR 2025  –  Advisor team  –  Half-day Workshop  –  ‘3D Humans Workshop’
• CVPR 2025  –  Co-organizer  –  Half-day Workshop  –  ‘Reconstruction of Human-Object Interactions (RHOBIN)’
• CVPR 2024  –  Co-organizer  –  Half-day Workshop  –  ‘Reconstruction of Human-Object Interactions (RHOBIN)’
• CVPR 2021  –  Co-organizer  –  Full-day Tutorial  –  ‘SMPL made Simple’

Teaching

• Coordinator & Lecturer: “Computer Vision” (UvA, BSc, semester 2, period 5) (50821COV6Y)

  • 2025-2026:    170 students from 3 programs (mainly AI) – Nominated for Education Award (top-6 FNWI).

• Coordinator & Lecturer: “Introduction to Computer Vision” (UvA, BSc, semester 2, period 5) (5082ITCV6)

  • 2024-2025:    163 students from 3 programs (mainly AI)
  • 2023-2024:    146 students from 6+ programs (mainly AI)
  • 2022-2023:    263 students from 6+ programs (mainly AI & CS). Co-taught with Rein vd Boomgaard

• Lecturer: “Computer Vision 1” (UvA, MSc, semester 1, period 1)

  • 2025-2026:    200 students from 6+ programs (mainly AI)