Kenneth Funes Mora

Biography

In 2007 I finished my studies in Electronics Engineering at the Costa Rica Institute of Technology (5 years). I joined Canam Technology Inc. as a R&D engineer developing systems for digital audio broadcasting. I obtained my Masters degree in 2010 (2 years) from the Erasmus Mundus Masters in Computer Vision and Robotics (Vibot), where I spent one semester at Heriot Watt University (Edinburgh, Scotland), one semester at the Universitat de Girona (Girona, Spain), and one semester at the Universit� de Bourgogne (Le Creusot, France). My Master thesis, entitled Robust face descriptors in uncontrolled settings (here), was done at the LEAR team (INRIA Rh�ne-Alpes) under the supervision of Matthieu Guillaumin, Jakob Verbeek and Cordelia Schmid. I finished my PhD in computer vision based 3D gaze estimation in October 2015 (thesis here). My research was done at Idiap and at the �cole Politechnique F�d�rale de Lausanne (EPFL), supervised Dr. Jean-Marc Odobez. Currently I'm a postdoctoral researcher at Idiap and working to create a spin-off company based on 3D head pose and gaze estimation.

Research Interest

My research interest are within the context of Machine Learning and Computer Vision. We have developed diverse techniques for 3D gaze tracking using consumer RGB-D sensors. We address the challenges of low-resolution and appearance variations due to head pose, user and sensing conditions. We also address higher-level problems in human-robot interaction, human computer interaction, sociology and psychology studies. Developed mainly within the SNFS projects: TRACOME and G3E, but also involved in the SONVB and UBImpressed projects.