Christian Theobalt

Christian Theobalt is a Professor of Computer Science at Saarland University and Scientific Director of the Visual Computing and Artificial Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics. He leads the Saarbruecken Center for Visual Computing as a strategic partnership between Google and MPI.

• PhD in Computer Science (2005) from MPI-INF/Saarland University
• Postdoctoral Researcher at MPI (2005-2007)
• Visiting Assistant Professor at Stanford (2007-2009)

His research focuses on the intersection of Computer Graphics, Computer Vision, and Artificial Intelligence, with specializations in:

• 3D/4D Human Reconstruction
• Neural Rendering
• Performance Capture
• Geometric Deep Learning
• Volumetric Video
• Quantum Visual Computing

Recent article trends show emphasis on:

• Quantum computing applications in visual reconstruction
• Neural rendering with radiance fields
• Human motion capture from egocentric views
• Gesture-language interaction modeling
• Multi-modal scene understanding
• Real-time free-viewpoint rendering

Scientific Awards:

• Fellow of EUROGRAPHICS (2022)
• CVPR Best Student Paper Honorable Mention (2020)
• ERC Consolidator Grant (2017)
• Karl Heinz Beckurts Award (2017)
• Busy Beaver Teaching Award (2016)
• ERC Starting Grant (2013)

Advising over 50 students and researchers including:

• Current researchers: Viktor Rudnev, Linjie Lyu, Mohit Mendiratta
• Postdocs: Kwang In Kim, Kiran Varanasi
• Alumni: Franziska Mueller (Google), Dushyant Mehta (Qualcomm), Ayush Tewari (MIT)

Grants include ERC grants, Google Glass Research Award, and multiple industry partnerships.

His lab maintains cutting-edge facilities with:

• Multi-camera capture systems
• Quantum annealing infrastructure
• HDR radiance field technology
• GPU clusters for AI research
• Time-of-flight imaging systems
• Event camera arrays