Dr. Pierre-Yves LAFFONT
CEO and Co-Founder, Lemnis TechnologiesPostal address:
Lemnis Technologies
80 Changi Road
unit #05-01, Centropod
Singapore 419715
Email: 80 Changi Road
unit #05-01, Centropod
Singapore 419715
I am co-founder and CEO of Lemnis Technologies, a deep tech startup based in Singapore. We tackle the fundamental causes of Virtual Reality discomfort, and in particular the vergence-accommodation conflict. We strive to make Virtual/Augmented Reality viable as the next computing platform, by enabling prolonged use of VR with applications beyond gaming and entertainment.
My previous research in Computer Vision and Computer Graphics focused on understanding and manipulating scene appearance. In particular, I have developed methods for separating material colors from the effects of the illumination in a photograph (TVCG 2013, ICCV 2015, TOG 2015), for transferring lighting across images of a photo collection (SIGGRAPH Asia 2012), and for recognizing and editing high-level scene properties in photographs of outdoor scenes (SIGGRAPH 2014).
I was previously a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zürich (Switzerland) from March 2014 to September 2016, with Markus Gross at CGL, and a visiting researcher at the BeingThere Centre at NTU Singapore. I was a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University, working with James Hays from November 2012 to February 2014. I did my Ph.D. in the REVES team at Inria Sophia-Antipolis (France), under the supervision of George Drettakis and Adrien Bousseau. I defended my thesis entitled "Intrinsic Image Decomposition from Multiple Photographs" on October 12, 2012. During my PhD, I visited Boston to work with Frédo Durand (MIT) and Sylvain Paris (Adobe), and Berkeley to work with Maneesh Agrawala. Before joining Inria, I received M.Eng. and M.Sc. degrees from INSA Lyon in France and was an exchange student at KAIST in South Korea. I did some research on content-aware image retargeting with Sung-Eui Yoon, Christian Wolf and Khalid Idrissi, and worked on catadioptric vision with Jean-Charles Bazin and Inso Kweon.
My Curriculum Vitae can be downloaded here: Pierre-Yves Laffont's CV.
2018.04.24-25: Photonics Europe in Strasbourg
We are presenting the world's first varifocal mobile VR headset based on Alvarez lenses at the Photonics Europe conference on Digital Optics for Immersive Displays. The headset was developed in collaboration with our partner Adlens Innovations.
2017.07.30-08-03: SIGGRAPH 2017 in Los Angeles
We are presenting at SIGGRAPH 2017 in L.A.! Come see Lemnis Technologies at our Emerging Technologies booth, and at our Experience Presentation on Adaptive Dynamic Refocusing: Toward Solving Discomfort in Virtual Reality.
2016.12.05-08: SIGGRAPH Asia 2016 in Macau
I am contributing to four programs at SIGGRAPH Asia this year. We will present our work on Rectifeye: a vision-correcting system for Virtual Reality as a Poster and at the Virtual Reality Showcase. We'll have a Technical Brief on Lighting Transfer across Multiple Views through Local Color Transforms. I am also an invited speaker at the Virtual Reality Meets Physical Reality workshop.
2016.07-08: Travel to USA
I will attend SIGGRAPH 2016 in Anaheim, where our TOG paper will be presented. I will stay in the US for some time after the conference.
2016.03.29-04.08: Invited talks at DLSU and KAIST
I was invited to De La Salle University in Manila (Philippines) as a visiting scholar, and also visited Sung-Eui Yoon's and Inso Kweon's labs at KAIST (South Korea). I gave graduate and undergraduate lectures on "Understanding and editing the appearance of outdoor scenes in photographs", and "From Instagram filters to transient attributes: Guided image editing for casual users".
2016.03.14: Paper at CASA 2016
Our paper on telepresence using a life-size transparent display has been accepted for presentation at CASA 2016 in Geneva. This work has been developed in the context of the BeingThere Centre at ETH Zurich and NTU Singapore.
2015.12.11-17: Paper and award at ICCV 2015
I will be in Santiago (Chile) to present our ICCV 2015 paper on "Intrinsic decomposition of image sequences from local temporal variations". I also received the Outstanding Reviewer Award at ICCV 2015.
2015.10: Paper in ACM Transactions on Graphics
Our work on "Multi-View Intrinsic Images of Outdoors Scenes with an Application to Relighting" has been published in ACM Transactions on Graphics, and will be presented next year at SIGGRAPH 2016.
2014.10.23: Interview on IEEE Spectrum
I was recently interviewed by IEEE Spectrum regarding our work on image manipulation and scene understanding using Transient Attributes, which I presented at SIGGRAPH 2014 in Vancouver. You can check out the interview video and article on IEEE Spectrum. You can visit our project page for more information on this research.
2014.06.13: Visiting researcher at NTU Singapore
I am heading to Singapore to join the team of visiting ETH researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). I will contribute to the research done at the BeingThere Centre.
2014.03.22: SIGGRAPH 2014 paper!
Our work on "Transient Attributes for High-Level Understanding and Editing of Outdoor Scenes" has been accepted as a SIGGRAPH 2014 technical paper! I will present it in Vancouver in August.
2014.03.01: Now at ETH Zürich
I am heading back to Europe after 16 wonderful months at Brown. I will work with Markus Gross as a postdoctoral researcher at CGL.
2013.11.19-22: Poster at SIGGRAPH Asia 2013
Our work on outdoor appearance changes and transient scene attributes will be presented in Hong Kong as a SIGGRAPH Asia poster. The poster presentations take place on Wed. 20 and Thur. 21 November, in the Hong Kong convention hall foyer.
2013.10.03-16: Invited talks in Europe
I will be presenting my research results on intrinsic images and recent work on outdoor scene appearance during my two-week trip in Europe: I will visit Inria Sophia-Antipolis, MPI Saarbrücken, MPI Tübingen, and ETH Zürich.
2013.07.21-25: SIGGRAPH 2013 in Anaheim
I will attend SIGGRAPH in Anaheim this summer.
2013.03.13: Invited talk at MIT
I will be back at MIT to give on talk on Intrinsic images.
2012.12.26-27: Talks in South Korea
I will return to Korea and present my work on "Intrinsic Images from Multiple Photographs". I will give a talk at Seoul National University in Jehee Lee's group on December 26, and at Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in Kuk-Jin Yoon's group on December 27.
2012.12.03: Thesis online
My thesis entitled "Intrinsic Images from Multiple Photographs" is now available online! Check out the final version, along with accompanying materials.
2012.11.01: Postdoc at Brown
I just joined Brown University as a postdoc in the Computer Science department, where I will work with James Hays.
2012.10.12: PhD defense
I have successfully defended my PhD thesis on "Intrinsic Images from Multiple Photographs" at Inria Sophia-Antipolis. The thesis committee was composed of: George Drettakis and Adrien Bousseau (advisors), Brian Curless and Hendrik Lensch (reviewers), Diego Gutierrez (examiner), and Frédéric Precioso (president).
2012.08.06: Technical paper at SIGGRAPH Asia 2012
Our work on "Coherent Intrinsic Images from Photo Collections" will be presented as a technical paper at SIGGRAPH Asia 2012 in Singapore.The session "Color and Photos" will take place in Room Peridot 206 on Saturday, 1 December at 4:15 PM.
2012.06.22: Talk and Poster at SIGGRAPH 2012
Our work "Rich Intrinsic Image Decomposition of Outdoor Scenes from Multiple Views" will be presented as a Poster and Talk at SIGGRAPH 2012 in Los Angeles.The Talk session "Image Playground" will take place in Room 408A on Thursday, 9 August 3:45 PM - 5:15 PM.
2012.03.28: Paper in TVCG journal
Our paper "Rich Intrinsic Image Decomposition of Outdoor Scenes from Multiple Views" will appear in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.
2012.02.23: Invited talk at KAIST
I visited Korea once again, and presented my work on rich intrinsic images to Sung-Eui Yoon's group at KAIST.
2011.10.12-14: Best paper award at AFIG days
Our work on "Images intrinsèques de scènes en extérieur à partir de multiples vues" (in French) has received the best paper award at the AFIG days, held this year in Bidart. It will be published in the French Electronics Computer Graphics Revue (REFIG).
2011.07.07: Summer at MIT
I am visiting the Computer Graphics Group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I work with Frédo Durand and Sylvain Paris (Adobe). I will stay in Boston until early September.
2011.06.27-29: EGSR 2011
Our paper "Perception of Visual Artifacts in Image-Based Rendering of Façades" has been accepted to the Eurographics Symposium on Rendering. I will attend EGSR 2011 in Prague, and the paper will be presented on June 28.
2011.04: "Image-Guided Weathering" at SIGGRAPH 2011
Our paper "Image-Guided Weathering: A New Approach Applied to Flow Phenomena" has been accepted to ACM Transactions on Graphics and will be presented at SIGGRAPH 2011 on August 9.
2010.12.15-18: SIGGRAPH Asia 2010
I will be a Student Volunteer at SIGGRAPH Asia this year. It is the first time the conference is held in the amazing city of Seoul!
2010.07.09: Summer at UC Berkeley
Over the next few weeks, I will visit Maneesh Agrawala's Visualization Lab. at UC Berkeley.I will stay in California until early September.
2010.03.12: "Interactive Content-Aware Zooming" at GI 2010
Our paper has been accepted at Graphics Interface 2010! I will present it in Ottawa, Canada, on May 31st according to the preliminary schedule.
2009.10.01: Now PhD student at INRIA Sophia-Antipolis
I have completed my studies at INSA de Lyon, and moved to Côte d'Azur near Antibes and Nice. I am now a PhD student at INRIA Sophia-Antipolis and a member of the REVES team.
2009.08.03-07: Attending SIGGRAPH 2009
I attended SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans with the members of SGLab. Some talks there were impressive, and it was a great experience overall!
2009.05.25: Heading to South Korea!
Over the next few months, I will work with Sung-Eui Yoon at SGLab in Daejeon, South Korea.I performed the first part of my Master internship on "Real-Time Low-Distortion Retargeting of Large Images" under the supervision of Christian Wolf and Khalid Idrissi at LIRIS in Lyon, France.
Varifocal technologies for prescription and VAC mitigation in HMDs using Alvarez lenses
Robert E. Stevens, Daniel Rhodes, Ali Hasnain, and Pierre-Yves LaffontPresented at SPIE Photonics Europe 2018, Strasbourg
Adaptive Dynamic Refocusing: Toward Solving Discomfort in Virtual Reality
Pierre-Yves Laffont and Ali HasnainPresented at SIGGRAPH 2017, Los Angeles (Emerging Technologies and Experience Presentations)
Expanding Color Query Results via Image Recoloring
Sixing Hu, Pierre-Yves Laffont, Brian Price, Scott Cohen, Michael S. BrownPresented at Eurographics 2017, Lyon (Short Paper)
A Virtual Try-on System for Prescription Eyeglasses
Qian Zhang, Yu Guo, Pierre-Yves Laffont, Tobias Martin, Markus GrossComputer Graphics and Applications, 2017
Lighting Transfer across Multiple Views through Local Color Transforms
Qian Zhang, Pierre-Yves Laffont, Terence SimComputational Visual Media, 2017
Also presented at SIGGRAPH Asia 2016, Macau (Technical Brief)
Rectifeye: A Vision-Correcting System for Virtual Reality
Pierre-Yves Laffont, Tobias Martin, Markus Gross, Wei De Tan, CT Lim, Affa Au, Rick WongPresented at SIGGRAPH Asia 2016, Macau (VR Showcase and Poster)
Multi-View Intrinsic Images of Outdoors Scenes with an Application to Relighting
Sylvain Duchene, Clement Riant, Gaurav Chaurasia, Stefan Popov, Pierre-Yves Laffont, Jorge Lopez-Moreno, Adrien Bousseau, George DrettakisACM Transactions on Graphics, 2015
Presented at SIGGRAPH 2016, Anaheim
An Immersive Bidirectional System for Life-size 3D Communication
Claudia Kuster, Nicola Ranieri, Jean-Charles Bazin, Tobias Martin, Pierre-Yves Laffont, Tiberiu Popa and Markus GrossPresented at CASA 2016, Geneva
Intrinsic Decomposition of Image Sequences from Local Temporal Variations
Pierre-Yves Laffont and Jean-Charles BazinPresented at ICCV 2015, Santiago
Transient Attributes for High-Level Understanding and Editing of Outdoor Scenes
Pierre-Yves Laffont, Zhile Ren, Xiaofeng Tao, Chao Qian, James HaysACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2014)
Presented at SIGGRAPH 2014, Vancouver - also as a SIGGRAPH Asia 2013 poster
Intrinsic Image Decomposition from Multiple Photographs
Pierre-Yves LaffontPh.D. thesis, Inria / University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis, October 2012
Coherent Intrinsic Images from Photo Collections
Pierre-Yves Laffont, Adrien Bousseau, Sylvain Paris, Frédo Durand, George DrettakisACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia), 2012
Presented at SIGGRAPH Asia 2012, Singapore
Rich Intrinsic Image Decomposition of Outdoor Scenes From Multiple Views
Pierre-Yves Laffont, Adrien Bousseau, George DrettakisIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, February 2013
Presented at SIGGRAPH 2012, Los Angeles (Poster and Talk sessions)
Images intrinsèques de scènes en extérieur à partir de multiples vues (in French)
Pierre-Yves Laffont, Adrien Bousseau, George DrettakisFrench Electronics Computer Graphics Revue (REFIG), 2011
Presented at AFIG days 2011, Bidart (best paper award)
Perception of Visual Artifacts in Image-Based Rendering of Façades
Peter Vangorp, Gaurav Chaurasia, Pierre-Yves Laffont, Roland Fleming, George DrettakisComputer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of the Eurographics Symposium on Rendering), 2011
Presented at EGSR 2011, Prague
Image-Guided Weathering: A New Approach Applied to Flow Phenomena
Carles Bosch, Pierre-Yves Laffont, Holly Rushmeier, Julie Dorsey, George DrettakisACM Transactions on Graphics, 2011
Presented at SIGGRAPH 2011, Vancouver
Interactive Content-Aware Zooming
Pierre-Yves Laffont, Jong Yun Jun, Christian Wolf, Yu-Wing Tai, Khalid Idrissi, George Drettakis, Sung-eui YoonPresented at Graphics Interface 2010, Ottawa
An Original Approach For Automatic Plane Extraction By Omnidirectional Vision
Jean-Charles Bazin, Pierre-Yves Laffont, In So Kweon, Cédric Demonceaux, Pascal VasseurPresented at IROS 2010, Taipei
