Biography

I'm currently a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich, working with Prof. Otmar Hilliges in the Advanced Interactive Technologies lab at the Institute of Intelligent Interactive Systems. Prior to joining ETH I was a PhD student at University College London (2010-2014), where I earned my doctoral degree in the Virtual Environment and Computer Graphics group, under the supervision of Prof. Jan Kautz. I earned my BSc in Computer Science from Università degli Studi di Roma Torvergata, Italy (2008) and my MSc in Vision and Virtual Environment from University College London, UK (Distinction, 2009). Between June and October 2010 I have completed an internship at Disney Research Zurich under the supervision of Prof. Wojciech Matusik.




Research Interests

My research interests are in the human computer interaction (HCI) and computer vision (CV) fields, with a particular focus on different aspects of virtual and augmented reality, machine learning, mobile interaction and computational user interface design.

In my research I explore the novel challenges and research opportunities opened up by the current digital trend, while advancing the state of the art in HCI. To do so, I combine emerging input and output technologies in interesting and novel ways, creating and studying interactive systems. In my work, I bring together several fields, including computer vision, machine learning and computer graphics, to explore novel ways in which people can interact with and within our increasingly digital word. I build complex interactive systems that combine novel hardware and sensing technologies, and that are paired with data-driven and computational methods to create prototypes that can be evaluated with users, both quantitatively and qualitatively.




Academic and Professional Activities

Awards and Grants

Invited Talks

Teaching

  • User Interface Engineering - M.Sc. module - Spring 2017, ETH Zurich
  • ML for Interactive Systems and Advanced Programming Tools - M.Sc. module/Seminar - Fall 2016, ETH Zurich
  • Visual Computing - B.Sc. module - Fall 2016, ETH Zurich
  • User Interface Engineering - M.Sc. module - Spring 2016, ETH Zurich
  • Human Computer Interaction - B.Sc. module - Fall 2015, ETH Zurich
  • User Interface Engineering - M.Sc. module - Spring 2015, ETH Zurich
  • Multimedia Computing - mixed M.Sc./B.Sc. module - Spring 2011 — 2013, UCL
  • Computer Graphics - mixed MSc/BSc module - Fall 2011, UCL
  • Advanced Modelling, Rendering and Animation - MSc module - Spring 2013, UCL
  • Computational Photography - MSc module - Spring 2014, UCL
  • Introduction to C++ - MSc module - Fall 2011 — 2013, UCL
  • Publishing Scientific Papers with LATEX/BibTEX - 2010 — 2012, UCL

Student Supervision

  • Adrian Spurr. Real-time Implementation of Shape Discriminative Exemplar SVM Ensemble for Unconstrained 2.5D Hand Pose Estimation (BSc thesis, completed)
  • Ralph Aeschimann. Segmentation of Silhouettes using Neural Networks (MSc thesis, completed)
  • Damian Karrer. Hybrid Approaches to Hand-Tracking (MSc thesis, completed)
  • Krzysztof Lis. Remote AR Exploration for Micro Quadrotors (Semester Project, completed)
  • Schilling Milan. Design and Evaluation of an App-Based User Interface for a Stair Climbing Wheelchair (Semester Project, completed)
  • Marion Koelle. (Internship, completed)
  • Manuel Kaufmann. A Neural Network Approach to Human Pose Infilling (MSc thesis, completed)

Technical Program Comittee Member

Reviewing

I routinely review papers for ACM CHI, UIST, SIGGRAPH, Eurographics, IEEE ISMAR, IEEE VR as well as for other conferences and many journal publications.




Publications

SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2018
Honorable Mention Best Paper Award
Fabrizio Pece*, Juan Zarate*, Velko Vechev, Nadine Besse, Olexandr Gudozhnik, Herbert Shea, Otmar Hilliges * Equal contribution
ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technologies (UIST), 2017
Honorable Mention Best Paper Award
Moritz Bächer, Benjamin Hepp*, Fabrizio Pece*, Paul Kry, Bernd Bickel, Bernhard Thomaszewski, Otmar Hilliges * Equal contribution
SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2016
Jie Song, Fabrizio Pece, Gábor Sörös, Marion Koelle, Otmar Hilliges
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2015
Jie Song, Gabor Soros, Fabrizio Pece, Sean Ryan Fanello, Shahram Izadi, Cem Keskin, Otmar Hilliges
ACM User Interface Software and Technology Symposium, 2014

Theses

Teaser-Picture

Videos in Context for Telecommunication and Spatial Browsing

Authors Fabrizio Pece
PhD Thesis @University College London, 2014

Teaser-Picture

High Dynamic Range for Dynamic Scenes

Authors Fabrizio Pece
MSc Thesis @University College London, 2009



Student Theses

Research projects are available for ETH students interested in pursuing a Bachelor/Master thesis in HCI, Robotics and Vision related topics. Soon we will be publishing a list of available thesis here. You are welcome to suggest your own topics, and please feel free to contact me.