Pierre-Etienne Martin

Roles & Affiliations: Pierre-Etienne Martin is a Postdoctoral Researcher & Tech Development Coordinator at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA), Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology. He applies computer vision tools to study human and non-human animal cognition through projects like Zoo Cam Set-Up and BioTIP. Prior to this, he held roles as an ATER (Temporary Teaching and Research Associate) and PhD student at the University of Bordeaux, specializing in spatio-temporal neural networks for action classification in sports like table tennis.

Education:

• PhD in Computer Science (2020): University of Bordeaux, Thesis on fine-grained action detection using spatio-temporal CNNs
• M.Sc. in Image Processing & Computer Vision (2017): Erasmus Mundus program across Budapest, Madrid, and Bordeaux
• B.Sc. in Mathematical Engineering (2015): University of Bordeaux

Research Interests: Focuses on computer vision applications in psychology and animal behavior, including thermal imaging analysis, fine-grained action classification, and non-invasive data acquisition. Projects include automated primate tracking (Zoo Cam Set-Up), thermal facial/nose segmentation (ApeTI dataset), and child behavior analysis (Quantex project).

Publications: Over 20 peer-reviewed papers in journals like Signals and conferences like MediaEval, focusing on CNN-based action recognition in sports and animal studies. Notable contributions include the ApeTI thermal dataset and techniques for stroke classification in table tennis.

Grants & Outreach: Scientific advisor at DeepMove (2021-2022). Active in public outreach via YouTube, science festivals, and competitions like Ma thèse en 180 secondes. Engages schools through discussion programs like Declics.

Labs & Teams: Leads tech development for MPI-EVA's Comparative Cultural Psychology lab, collaborating on projects like CASE (animal self-testing environments) and BioTIP (thermal imaging tools for behavioral research).