Denis Lalanne

Denis Lalanne is a full Professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of Fribourg, leading the 'human-building interaction' group at the Smart Living Lab and directing the Human-IST institute. He specializes in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), focusing on multimodal interaction, visual analytics, and Human-Building Interaction (HBI). His work bridges computer science with architecture and urban design to improve building occupants' comfort and accessibility.

His research spans topics such as assistive technologies for visually impaired individuals, energy-efficient lighting systems, and predictive models for indoor environmental quality. He has led projects like the Human-IST Lab and SWICE (Sustainable Well-being in Energy Transition), emphasizing interdisciplinary collaboration between academia, industry, and public institutions.

Key contributions include the development of frameworks for human-centric lighting, wearable sensors for urban comfort analysis, and empathic systems to enhance HCI. His work is published in top venues like ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing, IEEE, and CHI.

Education and career highlights include a PhD from EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), postdoctoral research at IBM’s USER Group, and prior teaching roles at the University of Avignon. He is a Swiss representative at IFIP TC13 and has organized major conferences like IHM 2016.