SIMONE FOTI
Postdoctoral Researcher at Imperial College London, PhD at University College London, and internship experience at Disney Research Studios and Adobe Research. My research interest lies at the intersection of geometric deep learning, computer graphics, and computer vision. My main goal is to improve 3D generative models to democratise the creation of digital humans for applications in AR/VR, the metaverse, the movie and game production, and in plastic surgery. Through my research I strive to understand how to solve problems in non-Euclidean domains such as graphs and meshes and I am currently working on multiple projects ranging from latent disentanglement, shape and texture generation, 3D reconstruction, and registration.
07/2023 - NOW
Postdoctoral Researcher at Imperial College London
Currently researching diffusion models and Gaussian splatting techniques for generating high-resolution textures and materials directly on manifold surfaces with Tolga Birdal and Stefanos Zafeiriou.
2019 - 2023
PhD in Geometric Deep Learning at COMPASS - University College London (UCL)
My main research goal was to investigate novel latent disentanglement methods applicable to geometric-deep-learning-based generative models. My project aimed at simplifying the generation of digital humans for movie production, virtual reality, and metaverse applications. My work found application also in plastic surgery and laparoscopic surgery of the liver
8 - 10/2021
Research Scientist Intern at Adobe Research
The aim of my research project at the Paris computer graphics group was to research continuous functional representations for patch-driven super-resolution of textures and materials.
9 - 12/2020
Research Scientist Intern at Disney Research | Studios
The aim of my research project at the Digital Humans group was to study and implement a geometric deep learning algorithm for high-quality 3D face reconstruction that could be used in the production of Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars movies. A US patent was filed for this project.
2018 - 2019
MRes in Medical Imaging at University College London (UCL)
This fully funded Master of Research was mainly focused on Machine Vision, Inverse Problem and Multi-agent Artificial Intelligence.
2 - 8/2018
Research and Development Internship at Nearlab - Politecnico di Milano
Developed an augmented reality GUI and researched computer vision and deep learning algorithms for the SMARTsurg European project.
4 - 10/2017
Visiting Scholar at the Robotics Institute - Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
I was hosted for six months in the Surgical Mechatronics Laboratory at CMU. I researched on deep learning and 3D reconstruction techniques to perform robot assisted vessel avoidance, an important part of my MSc thesis.
2015 - 2017
MSc in Biomedical Engineering at Politecnico di Milano
The customized study plan had a strong focus on electronics, biomedical image processing, artificial intelligence and deep learning.
2012 - 2015
BSc in Computer Science and Engineering at Università degli Studi di Trieste
The program had a strong focus on computer science, mathematics and electronics.
2007 - 2012