Funda Durupinar

Funda Durupinar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research bridges computer graphics, animation, and psychology to develop believable virtual humans with nuanced emotional and personality-driven behaviors.

• Education: B.S. from Middle East Technical University, M.S. and Ph.D. from Bilkent University's Department of Computer Engineering
• Postdoctoral: Center for Human Modeling and Simulation, University of Pennsylvania

Her work focuses on:

• Multimodal personality expression in virtual agents
• Nonverbal behavior synthesis for immersive environments
• Emotion contagion in crowd simulations
• Integration of psychological models into XR systems
• Data-driven approaches for realistic avatar animation
• Ethical considerations in affective computing

Recent publications highlight trends in:

• Personality-embodiment interplay for LLM-based agents
• Dataset creation for facial expression analysis
• Motion-driven personality expression frameworks
• Crowd behavior modeling with affective parameters

Leadership Roles:

• Program Chair for ACM Symposium on Applied Perception (SAP 2025)
• Organizer of MASSXR workshops at IEEE VR (2023-2025)
• Editorial Board Member, ACM Transactions on Applied Perception
• Co-organizer of BostonGFX computer graphics education initiative