Rising Stars Seminar Series • Uncertain Surface Reconstruction

Friday, April 21, 2023 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Please note: This seminar will take place in DC 1304 and virtually over Zoom.

Silvia Sellán, PhD candidate
Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto

We propose a method to introduce uncertainty to the surface reconstruction problem. Specifically, we introduce a statistical extension of the classic Poisson Surface Reconstruction algorithm for recovering shapes from 3D point clouds. Instead of outputting an implicit function, we represent the reconstructed shape as a modified Gaussian Process, which allows us to conduct statistical queries (e.g., the likelihood of a point in space being on the surface or inside a solid). We show that this perspective improves PSR’s integration into the online scanning process, broadens its application realm, and opens the door to other lines of research such as applying task-specific priors.


Bio: Silvia is a fourth-year Computer Science PhD student at the University of Toronto. She is advised by Alec Jacobson and working in Computer Graphics and Geometry Processing. She is a Vanier Doctoral Scholar, an Adobe Research Fellow and the winner of the 2021 University of Toronto Arts & Science Dean’s Doctoral Excellence Scholarship. She has interned twice at Adobe Research and twice at the Fields Institute of Mathematics. She is also a founder and organizer of the Toronto Geometry Colloquium and a member of WiGRAPH. She is currently looking to survey potential future postdoc and faculty positions, starting Fall 2024.