Longer Biography

Prof. Gross is a full professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich and the director of Disney Research Zurich. He received a Master in Electrical and Computer Engineering with highest distinction in 1986 and subsequently started his scientific career as a Ph.D. student at Saarland University. After graduation, in 1989, he joined the Computer Graphics Center in Darmstadt, Germany. In 1991 he founded the Visual Computing Group and remained head of this group until 1994. In 1994, he moved to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and founded the Computer Graphics Laboratory (CGL) within the department of Computer Science. Since then, Gross has continuously widened the scope and activities of the group and established an internationally visible and well-connected research laboratory.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Prof. Gross' research was focused on graphics and visualization algorithms. His interests included wavelets and multiresolution analysis for the representation and rendering of surface and volume data. Subsequently, Prof. Gross started pioneering work on physically-based modeling for facial surgery simulation (FACE Project). These applications eventually lead to the spin-off company Cyfex AG.

From 1997 on, his research has been devoted to the design of methods and algorithms for point-based computer graphics. Together with his collaborators and students, he has pioneered the scientific understanding of point samples as primitives for computer graphics and developed techniques for rendering, processing, modeling, editing, and animating of point-sampled geometry (graphics.ethz.ch/points). He also initiated the Pointshop3D (www.pointshop3d.com) project, an open source software framework for research and development of point-based graphics, released by CGL. In addition, he suggested novel hardware architectures for point based rendering and processing and published a book on point-based graphics.

A second major research theme of Prof. Gross relates to the fields of virtual reality and 3D video. He was the chief architect and designer of blue-c (blue-c.ethz.ch), a worldwide unique system combining immersive projection and realtime 3D video for collaborative work over long distances. This project achieved the world's first full combination of immersive projection and 3D video transmission. 20 Ph.D. students, postdocs and collaborators helped him to realize his vision. In addition, Prof. Gross has conducted research on 3D video recording, compression, editing, and visual effects (graphics.ethz.ch/video). Continuous improvements of the developed technologies lead to the creation of the startup-company LiberoVision AG (www.liberovision.com).

A third major research interest of Prof. Gross is concerned with the design of algorithms for real-time physically-based modeling and animation (graphics.ethz.ch/physics). Based on earlier work on soft tissue modeling he investigated FEM methods for the representation of soft tissue, for deformation, collision, fracture, fluids, and for other effects with applications in medical and entertainment technology. He is investigating methods for surgical planning and simulation and is participating in the National Center of Excellence in Computer Aided and Image Guided Medical Interventions (CO-ME). Other research has been geared towards fracture, cutting, and meshless animation techniques. Furthermore, he investigated numerous algorithms for the acquisition, modeling, and animation of human faces. Prof. Gross also co-founded Novodex, a company focussing on middleware for physics-modeling in computer games.

The most recent research interest of Prof. Gross comprises the information theoretical modeling of dyslexia (graphics.ethz.ch/dybuster). He developed a statistical model and a multimodal recoding system to facilitate language acquisition for people with dyslexia. In addition, he designed the multimedia learning software "Dybuster" whose effectiveness has been experimentally proven in a large field study together with neuropsychologists from the University of Zurich.

The complete list of peer-reviewed publications can be found at graphics.ethz.ch/publications or in the full CV. In addition, Dr. Gross holds several patents on core graphics algorithms and systems.

Prof. Gross also maintains a strong commitment to academic teaching. Since 1994, he has continuously developed a high-profile graphics curriculum at the ETH and he initiated the specialization track on visual computing. Furthermore, Prof. Gross continues to teach various undergraduate courses in CS and related areas. During the past 14 years, Dr. Gross has graduated more than 100 Master students and 25 Ph.D. projects.

Prof. Gross has served on the papers committees of all major graphics conferences multiple times including ACM SIGGRAPH, IEEE Visualization, Eurographics, Pacific Graphics, and many others. He served as a papers co-chair of IEEE Visualization 99 and 2002 and of Eurographics 2000. In 2005 he became the first European papers chair of ACM SIGGRAPH. In addition, he has been the co-organizer of various international symposia. He has served on the editorial advisory boards of various journals and was associate editor of IEEE CG&A. He serves as a member of the scientific advisory boards of the German Institute of Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in Saarbrücken, the curatorium of the Fraunhofer-Institute of Computer Graphics in Germany, and VR-VIS research center in Vienna. He is also a member of the executive committee of Eurographics and a fellow of the organization, a member of ACM, of ACM SIGGRAPH, of GI and a senior member of IEEE.

Prof. Gross received various awards for his scientific work including a fellowship of Eurographics, the Günter Enderle Award of Eurographics (1995, 2007), as well as best paper awards from the Symposium on Geometry Processing (SGP 2006, SGP 2008) and the ACM Symposium on Graphics Hardware 2008.

In 2008 he was appointed the director of Disney Research Zurich (DRZ), a new research laboratory of The Walt Disney Company. DRZ is one of two external research labs worldwide that will conduct applied research in computer animation, geometric modeling, computational photography, image generation, and video processing.