Tribute Session
Professor Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann
Short Bio: Professor Nadia Magnenat Thalmann began her career in Canada at Université Laval and later at the Université de Montréal, pioneering 3D human simulation. Her multi-awarded-winning film, Rendez-vous in Montreal, was the first to feature virtual recreations of legendary Hollywood icons. In 1989, she founded MIRALab at the University of Geneva, a pioneering research lab exploring 3D fashion, interactive Virtual Humans, and augmented reality. Her innovations include a 3D see-through virtual patient model, which won a Eurographics award, and LifePlus, a EU project recreating daily life in ancient Pompeii that has been highly cited. From 2009 to 2022, she was Director of the BeingThere Centre and the Institute for Media Innovation (IMI) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. There, she led groundbreaking research in social robotics, unveiling Nadine, a humanoid robot capable of displaying emotions, recognizing people, and remembering past interactions—one of the most advanced social robots ever created. Professor Thalmann’s academic background is remarkably diverse. She holds multiple degrees in psychology, biology, chemistry, and computer science, along with a Ph.D. in quantum physics from the University of Geneva. Her achievements have earned her numerous honorary doctorates, including from Leibniz University Hannover and the University of Ottawa. She has also received prestigious awards, such as the Humboldt Research Award and the Eurographics Career Award. She currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of The Visual Computer (Springer) and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds (Wiley) and is a lifetime member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences. Her pioneering contributions continue to shape the future of AI, robotics, and virtual reality.
Professor Daniel Thalmann
Short Bio: Prof. Daniel Thalmann is a Swiss and Canadian Computer Scientist. He is currently Honorary Professor at EPFL and Director of Research development at MIRALab Sarl. Pioneer in research on Virtual Humans, his current research interests include social robots, crowd simulation and Virtual Reality. Daniel Thalmann has been the Founder of The Virtual Reality Lab (VRlab) at EPFL, Switzerland, Professor at The University of Montreal and Visiting Professor/ Researcher at CERN, University of Nebraska, University of Tokyo, and National University of Singapore. From 2009 to 2017, he was Visiting Professor at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is coeditor-in-chief of the Journal of Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds, and member of the editorial board of 12 other journals. Daniel Thalmann was member of numerous Program Committees, Program Chair and CoChair of several conferences including IEEE VR, ACM VRST, and ACM VRCAI. Daniel Thalmann has published more than 600 papers in Graphics, Animation, and Virtual Reality. He is coeditor of 30 books, and coauthor of several books including 'Crowd Simulation' (second edition 2012) and 'Stepping Into Virtual Reality' (second edition 2023), published by Springer. He received his PhD in Computer Science in 1977 from the University of Geneva and an Honorary Doctorate (Honoris Causa) from University Paul- Sabatier in Toulouse, France, in 2003. He also received the Eurographics Distinguished Career Award in 2010, the 2012 Canadian Human Computer Communications Society Achievement Award, and the CGI 2015 Career Achievement.