Matthias Nießner

Prof. Matthias Nießner is a Professor at the Technical University of Munich, leading the Visual Computing Lab. His research intersects computer graphics, vision, and AI, focusing on 3D reconstruction, semantic understanding, and AI-driven video synthesis. He holds a PhD from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (2013) and was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Stanford University (2013–2017). Notable awards include the ERC Starting Grant (2018), Nvidia Professorship Award, and Eurographics Young Researcher Award (2019). His work has been featured in mainstream media and led to startups like Synthesia Inc. Research spans Gaussian splatting, neural radiance fields, and generative AI for 3D avatars. Over 150 publications include SIGGRAPH, CVPR, and ECCV, with best paper awards. Projects like Face2Face and ScanNet have driven innovation in facial reenactment and 3D scene datasets.

• Education:
  • PhD in Computer Science, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (2013)
  • Diploma in Computer Science, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (2010)
• Research Interests: 3D digitization, neural rendering, generative AI, non-rigid reconstruction, and applications in AR/VR.
• Awards:
  • ERC Starting Grant (2018)
  • Nvidia Professorship Award (2018)
  • Google Faculty Award (2018)
  • SIGGRAPH Best Emerging Tech Award (2016)
• Grants: Over €1.5M from ERC and industry partnerships.
• Labs/Teams: Visual Computing Lab at TUM and Synthesia Inc. (co-founder).

Key projects include ScanNet (large 3D indoor dataset), Face2Face (real-time facial reenactment), and Gaussian-based 3D avatars. Current work focuses on diffusion models, neural radiance fields, and AI-generated media detection.