Manolis Savva

Roles & Affiliations: Manolis Savva is an Associate Professor at Simon Fraser University's School of Computing Science and holds a Canada Research Chair in Computer Graphics. He leads research in 3D scene understanding, with applications in graphics, vision, and robotics. Previously, he was a researcher at Facebook AI and Princeton University.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Computer Science (2016), Stanford University, advised by Pat Hanrahan
• B.A. in Physics and Computer Science (2009), Cornell University

Research Interests: His work focuses on analyzing, organizing, and generating 3D content, particularly for holistic scene understanding. Key areas include articulated objects, embodied AI, and datasets like ScanNet, Matterport3D, and Habitat. His methods drive applications in robotics, autonomous agents, and virtual environments.

Publications Trends: Recent work emphasizes generative models (e.g., SINGAPO for articulated object parts), embodied AI benchmarks (Habitat), and multimodal scene analysis. His papers often address challenges in scalability, realism, and cross-modal fusion for 3D environments.

Awards:

• CHCCS Early Career Researcher Award (2022)
• ICLR 2023 Outstanding Paper Award
• ICCV 2019 Best Paper Nomination (Habitat)

Advising & Grants: Supervised over 15 graduate students, many advancing to top PhD programs and tech companies. Active in grants for embodied AI, scene understanding, and robotics.

Labs/Teams: Leads the 3DLG (3D Learning Group) and GrUVi (Graphics and Vision) groups at SFU. Collaborates extensively with industry (e.g., Meta, NVIDIA) on AI-driven 3D research.