Binefa Valls Xavier

Biography

Xavier Binefa is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information and Communication Technologies at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). He is also the Chair of the Department. He received degrees in Mathematics by Universitat de Barcelona (1976) and in Computer Engineering by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (1988). He received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Vision by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 1996. In this university he held the position of associate professor in the Computer Science Department up to 2008, when he moved to UPF where he heads the research group on Cognitive Media Technologies (CMTech). Xavier is interested in the analysis of the visual content conveyed by the human body motion, including gestures and expressions. This non-verbal content plays a big role to get a more intelligent relationship with media and environment. Automatic body (or face) detection and tracking methods using part-based approaches constitute the basis of the used techniques by CMTech group. The challenge is to develop algorithms that can cope with the local evidences and manage the overall inference to recognize gestures or expressions. Considering that Xavier's research is focused in the field of Artificial Intelligence, his scientific compromise is helping to construct a Society where digital information helps people in their daily life. In this sense he participates in several projects: while some of them are related to civil mediation for resolution of conflicts through the analysis of facial expressions (developed together with lawyers); others are related to interaction between people and virtual dress-rooms in order to improve their consumer experience. He founded two IT companies (Visual Century SL and Aitech SL). He received an award for his works in mosaic images with moving objects in 2001 at the Spanish Symposium on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis. He is the author and co-author of more than 80 publications among conferences and journals.

Research Interest

Computer Vision, DATA NETWORKING, IMAGE PROCESSING , DIGITAL MEDIA