Imperial College ICARL Seminars - Mark Sagar (Double-Academy Award winner)

We are excited to continue our series with Mark Sagar (Double-Academy Award winner) who will be talking about Face to Face interaction with Artificial Agents.

The talk will be hybrid and you will be able to listen and ask questions both in person or in remote. After the talk there will be a catered networking session. Please note that the link to the session will be available at the end of the confirmation email, where it says "Additional information".

Abstract
Of all the experiences we have in life, face-to-face interaction fills many of our most meaningful moments. How do we simulate a face from core principles, and what drives the vast expressivity it can so effectively communicate? Will we be able to interact with intelligent machines in a face-to-face way that feels natural?

The talk will conclude with a Q&A session.

About the speaker

Double-Academy Award winner Dr. Mark Sagar, was co-founder and Former Chief Science Officer of Soul Machines and Director of the Laboratory for Animate Technologies at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, pioneering the use of Biologically inspired models of cognition and learning in interactive virtual humans, including BabyX, a virtual infant capable of lifelike face to face interaction.

He also previously worked as the Special Projects Supervisor at Weta Digital and Sony Pictures Imageworks and developed technology for the digital characters in blockbusters such “Avatar,” “King Kong,” and “Spiderman 2.”

His pioneering work in computer-generated faces was recognized with two consecutive Scientific and Engineering Oscars in 2010 and 2011.

Mark has a Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Auckland and was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT. Mark was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2019 and was named New Zealand Innovator of the Year in 2022.

He was a Keynote Speaker at SIGGRAPH 2024 and currently consults on the intersecting worlds of AI, Interactive Human Simulation, Embodied cognition and Facial Animation.

Sponsors

This event is sponsored by InstaDeep, Google DeepMind and Iconic.