Pablo Santiago César Garcia

Biography

Research

Dr. Pablo Cesar leads Distributed and Interactive Systems group (http://www.dis.cwi.nl) at CWI and is Associate Professor at TU Delft. Pablo‘s research focuses on modeling and controlling complex collections of media objects (including real-time media and sensor data) that are distributed in time and space. His fundamental interest is in understanding how different customizations of such collections affect the user experience. In particular, he is interested about the following research questions:

• Dynamic media creation and production: facilitating temporal compilations and aggregations based on the dynamic constraints (preferences, context);
• User response and attention: development of mechanisms for monitoring and modeling user affinity and engagement to events and media content; and
• Social and immersive consumption of media: policies and interfaces for content adaptation.

Pablo Cesar is the PI of two EU-funded projects on connected media experiences: VRTogether (focusing on 3D) and 2-IMMERSE (focusing on multi-platform consumption of media). He was recently the PI of two Public Private Partnership projects with Xinhuanet (2014-2016) and ByBorre (2016). These projects explored the use of sensor technology and smart textiles for better monitoring the experience of users participating in cultural or educational events. Pablo participated as PI as well in very successful EU-funded projects like REVERIE (2011-2015) and Vconect (2011-2014). He has keynoted at venues such as the International Conference on Physiological Computing Systems (2017), the Sense of Contact Conference (2016), and the International Workshop on Immersive Media Experiences (2015). Pablo has (co)-authored over 100 articles with several of his publications winning the best paper award: PhyCS (2016, ACM MMsys (2016 and 2013)… He is member of the editorial board of, among others, IEEE Transactions on Multimedia (IEEE TMM) and ACM Transactions on Multimedia (TOMM). Pablo has given tutorials about multimedia systems in prestigious conferences such as ACM Multimedia, CHI, and the WWW conference. He acted as an invited expert at the European Commission‘s Future Media Internet Architecture Think Tank and participates in standardization activities at MPEG (point-cloud compression) and ITU (QoE for multi-party tele-meetings).

Publications

• Viola, I, Mulder, J, De Simone, F, & César Garcia, P.S. (2019). Temporal Interpolation of Dynamic Digital Humans using Convolutional Neural Networks. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality.
• Viola, I, Mulder, J.N, De Simone, F, & César Garcia, P.S. (2019). Temporal interpolation of dynamic digital humans using convolutional neural networks. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality (pp. 90–97). doi:10.1109/AIVR46125.2019.00022
• Webb, A.M, & César Garcia, P.S. (2019). Uncovering Seams in Distributed Play of Tabletop Role-Playing Games. In Extended Abstracts of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play.
• Zhang, T, El Ali, A, Wang, C, Zhu, X, & César Garcia, P.S. (2019). CorrFeat: Correlation-based feature extraction algorithm using skin conductance and pupil diameter for emotion recognition. In ICMI 2019 - Proceedings of the 2019 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (pp. 404–408). doi:10.1145/3340555.3353716
• El Ali, A, Ashby, L.M, Webb, A.M, Zwitser, R, & César Garcia, P.S. (2019). Uncovering perceived identification accuracy of in-vehicle biometric sensing. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications: Adjunct Proceedings (pp. 327–334). doi:10.1145/3349263.3351506
• Rao, S, El Ali, A, & César Garcia, P.S. (2019). DeepSleep: A ballistocardiographic deep learning approach for classifying sleep stages. In UbiComp/ISWC 2019- - Adjunct Proceedings of the 2019 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2019 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers (pp. 187–190). doi:10.1145/3341162.3343758
• Li, J, Kong, Y, Röggla, T, De Simone, F, Ananthanarayan, S, de Ridder, H, … César Garcia, P.S. (2019). Measuring and understanding photo sharing experiences in social virtual reality. In Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings. doi:10.1145/3290605.3300897
• Röggla, T, Li, J, Fjellsten, S, Jansen, A.J, Kegel, I, Pilgrim, L, … César Garcia, P.S. (2019). From the lab to the OB truck: Object-based broadcasting at the FA Cup in Wembley Stadium. In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. doi:10.1145/3290607.3299038
• De Simone, F, Li, J, Galvan Debarba, H, El Ali, A, Gunkel, S.N.B, & César Garcia, P.S. (2019). Watching videos together in social Virtual Reality: An experimental study on user’s QoE. In Proceedings of 2019 IEEE Virtual Reality (VR) Proceedings.
• Rao, S, El Ali, A, & César Garcia, P.S. (2019). Deep Sleep. A ballistocardiographic-based Deep Learning approach for classifying sleep stages. In Proceedings of ICT.Open.

Current projects with external funding

• MediaScape
• PPS Automotive
• Overeenkomst met Xinhua Network(deel 2): Cooperation of Industry Doctor (PPS Xinhua Network (deel 2))
• Opera co-creation for a social transformation (TRACTION)
• An end-to-end system for the production and delivery of photorealistic social immersive virtual reality experiences (VRTogether)

Professional activities

• Professor: Technische Universiteit Delft - [TUD]
• Committee member: International Federation for Information Processing - [IFIP] - WG 14.6
• Committee member: W3C Web and TV Interest Group - [WebTV]
• Committee member: Moving Picture Experts Group 3D Graphics - [MPEG 3DG]
• Committee member: International Telecommunication Union - [ITU] 2013-01
• Committee member: ACM International Multimedia Conference - [ACM Multimedia]
• Committee member: ACM Symposium on Document Engineering - [DocEng]
• Committee member: ACM Multimedia Systems Conference - [MMSys]
• Committee member: IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo - [ICME]
• Committee member: International Workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience - [QoMEX]
• Committee member: International Workshop on Network and OS Support for Digital Audio/Video -[NOSSDAV]
• Committee member: ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for Television and Online Video - [ACM TVX]
• Committee member: International Workshop on Human-Centered Event Understanding for Multimedia -[HuEvent]
• Committee member: ACM Creativity and Cognition - [ACM C&C]
• Chair: ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for Television and Online Video - [ACM TVX]
• Editor: Journal: International Journal on Multimedia Tools and Applications - [MTA]
• Editor: ACM Computers and Entertainment
• Editor: ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications-¬‐[TOMCCAP]
• Editor: Journal: ACM Computers and Entertainment
• Editor: Journal: Multimedia Tools and Applications - [MTA]
• Editor: Journal: ACM SIGMultimedia Records
• Editor: Journal: ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications- [TOMCCAP

Awards

• Second prize award for publication https://ir.cwi.nl/pub/29060 at ICT Open 2019 (2019)
• Second Best Paper Award (with J.W. Kleinrouweler and B. Meixner) (2017)
• Best Paper - on 3D Technology in Multimedia (with Rufael Mekuria and D.C.A.Bulterman) ACM Multimedia Systems Conference, 2013 (2013)
• Best Paper - (with C. Wang International Workshop on Interactive Content Consumption, 2013 (2013)
• Best Paper on Multimedia (with R.L. Guimaraes and D.C.A. Bulterman) WebMedia, 2013 (2013)
• Beste paper New Comer Candidate - With V. Zsombori, M. Frantzis, R.L. Guimaraes, M.F. Ursu, P. Cesar, I. Kegel, R. Craigie, and D.C.A. Bulterman, (ACM HT 2011 (2011)
• EuroITV 2008 - Best paper (with D. C. A. Bulterman and A. J. Jansen) (2008)
• ACM international conference on multimedia, October - Best paper in track award (with D. C. A. Bulterman and A. J. Jansen) (2008)