Yagiz Aksoy

Yağız Aksoy is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University (SFU), leading the Computational Photography Lab. His research focuses on inverse rendering and computational photography, aiming to enable 3D physical control over light and geometry in image editing and movie post-production. His work is funded by NSERC, CFI, BC government, Adobe Research, and Meta Reality Labs.

Education:

• PhD in Computer Science, ETH Zurich (2019), supervised by Marc Pollefeys.
• Postdoctoral research at MIT CSAIL with Wojciech Matusik and Disney Research Zurich.
• MSc in Computer Engineering, Middle East Technical University (2013).

Research Interests:

His lab develops physically-based methods for relighting, intrinsic image decomposition, HDR reconstruction, and monocular depth estimation. Recent breakthroughs include Physically Controllable Relighting (SIGGRAPH 2025) and Colorful Diffuse Intrinsic Decomposition (SIGGRAPH Asia 2024, Best Paper Honorable Mention).

Grants & Awards:

• Best Paper Award Honorable Mention at SIGGRAPH Asia 2024.
• NSERC Discovery Grant, CFI John R. Evans Leaders Fund, and BC Early Career Research Award.
• Industry partnerships with Adobe and Meta.

Students & Lab:

Supervises PhD/MSc students including Chris Careaga, Sebastian Dille, and Mahdi Miangoleh. The lab's Computational Photography Studio operates in a production environment, emphasizing real-world applicability. Active projects include RGB+NIR editing, dynamic scene rendering, and physically-aware compositing tools.