About me:

I am a Full Professor and Researcher at PPGCC , at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul - PUCRS (a private University in the South of Brazil).

I finished my BSc Course in Computer Science at PUCRS in December 1989, and the MSc in Computer Science at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (all in portuguese), in July 1994. Both courses were undertaken in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

I got my PhD degree at Swiss Federal institute of Technology (Switzerland) - VRLab, under supervision of Prof. Daniel Thalmann, where I worked mainly with Crowd Simulation and virtual humans. More recently, I spent a year (from July2015 to July2016) for my sabbatical at UPENN working with Prof. Norman Badler, where I worked mainly with crowd simulation.

In 2022, I received the prestigious "Google Research in Computer Science" award, as acknowledged by Google's Outreach Program. And, in 2024, I was honored as the "Outstanding Researcher" at SBGames 2024, recognizing my contributions to the field of computer science and digital games research. SBGames 2024.

People at VHLab

I supervise Undergraduate, Master, PhD, and Postdoc researchers. Interested? Send an email to: [email protected]

  • Posdocs

    Dr. Paulo Knob

    Dr. Victor Araujo

    PhD Students

    Greice Pinho

    Gabriel Fonseca Silva

    Vitor Peres

    Julia Melgare

    Estêvão Testa

  • Master Students

    Guido Mainardi

  • Undergraduate Students

    Rubens Montanha

    Gabriel Schneider

    Arthur Paschoal

    Felipe Gauer

    5 volunteers at VHLab

    4 students in TCC (final project)

    Click here to know Past Students (out of date)

Research Activities:

My current research is in the area of Crowd Simulation, Virtual Human Agents, Behavioral Modeling, Visual Perception, and Computer Vision.

Currently, I am coordinating research in the following areas:

  • Crowds and Population Simulation (Private companies)
  • Virtual Humans Animation
  • Perception Analysis with Virtual Humans
  • Facial Analysis
  • Health and Artificial Intelligence
  • ADA Project (Women in Computer Science). Click HERE to read the paper about this project. Additionally, please see my contribution in Nature about Women in Computer Science HERE.

JBCS Image Currently, I am editor-in-chief of the Journal of Brazilian Computer Science JBCS.

Teaching Activities (all in Portuguese):

Undergraduate Courses:

2025/1 - Metodologia Cientifica

2025/1 - Computação Gráfica

2025/1 - Prática em Pesquisa

Graduate Courses:

2025/1 - Computer Animation

Recent Events Organization:

- In 2025 I am guest editors of two Special issues for Elsevier Computer & Graphics and one of JBCS .

- In 2024 I am Chair of Program Commitee of ACM MIG 2024 WDC, USA

- Chair of SIBGRAPI 2024 Tutorials

- General Organization of SBGames 2021 Virtual

- Chair of Program comittee of SIBGRAPI 2020 Virtual

- Chair of Program comittee of CASA 2019 Paris, France

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