Bianca Falcidieno, CNR IMATI-GE

Bianca Falcidieno is a Research Director of the National Research Council (CNR) of Italy and the chair of the Department of Genova of the CNR National Institute of Applied Mathematics and Information Technology (CNR IMATI-GE). She has been leading and coordinating research at international level in advanced and interdisciplinary fields (such as computational mathematics, computer graphics, multidimensional media and knowledge technologies), strongly interacting with outstanding industrial and social application fields: from industrial design to geographic information systems, from manufacturing to semantic web. She is presently taking part in over ten European and Italian research projects and is the coordinator of the FP6 Network of Excellence AIM@SHAPE, aiming at representing and processing knowledge related to multi-dimensional media. From March 2008, she is the coordinator of the FP7 Coordination Action FOCUS K3D, whose main aim is to promote the adoption of best practices for 3D content knowledge modelling and processing. Bianca Falcidieno is the author of over 200 scientific refereed papers and books, chair or co-chair of international conferences and workshops, and currently editor in chief of the International Journal Shape Modelling.

Dr. Michela Spagnuolo is currently Senior Researcher at IMATI-CNR. She authored more than 100 reviewed papers in scientific journals and international conferences, edited a book on 3D shape analysis, and was guest-editor of several special issues. She is currently programme chair of the EG workshop on 3D Object Retrieval and of IEEE Shape Modeling International 2008 (SMI). She is a member of the steering committee of SMI, and was programme chair for the Semantic and digital Media Technology, SAMT. Her current interests include shape analysis techniques, shape similarity and matching, and computational topology. She is in charge of the research unit on Advanced techniques for the analysis and synthesis of multidimensional media.

Title: Shape Modeling: What's Next ?

Abstract:
3D content is now widely recognized as the upcoming wave of digital media. Inexperience and professional users are becoming more and more actively involved in the content creation pipeline and ask for more and more intuitive and effective tools for creating, sharing, retrieving and re-using 3D content. The critical role of users as drivers of innovation is increasingly apparent and suggests that true innovation and impact can emerge by a balanced combination of technology-pushed and user-pulled solutions. The ease of producing and/or collecting data in digital form has caused a gradual shift of paradigm in various applied and scientific fields: from physical prototypes and experience to virtual prototypes and simulation. This shift has an enormous impact on a number of industrial and scientific sectors, such as Design and Manufacturing, Serious Gaming and Simulation, Cultural Heritage and Archaelogy, Medical Applications, Bioinformatics and Pharmaceutical Science, where digital shapes are essential knowledge carriers and represent a huge economic factor in many content sectors. In the talk, we will discuss issues and challenges that should be addressed, together with some new approaches and solutions developed at our lab.