Invited Speakers

Kai Hormann is a full professor in the Faculty of Informatics at USI Lugano and currently a visiting professor at NTU Singapore. He received a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in 2002 and spent two years as a postdoctoral research fellow at Caltech in Pasadena and the CNR in Pisa, before joining Clausthal University of Technology as an assistant professor in 2004. During the winter term 2007/2008 he visited Freie Universität Berlin as a BMS substitute professor and came to Lugano as an associate professor in 2009.

His research interests are focussed on the mathematical foundations of geometry processing algorithms as well as their applications in computer graphics and related fields. In particular, he is working on generalized barycentric coordinates, subdivision of curves and surfaces, barycentric rational interpolation, and dynamic geometry processing.

Professor Hormann has published over 70 papers in the professional literature and is an associate editor of Computer Aided Geometric Design, Computers & Graphics, and the Dolomites Research Notes on Approximation.


Leif Kobbelt is a full professor for Computer Science with a specialization in Computer Graphics. Since 2001 he is the head of the Institute for Computer Graphics and Multimedia at RWTH Aachen university.

After receiving his diploma in 1992 and his PhD in 1994 in Computer Science from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology he worked at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Max Planck Institute of Computer Science before he moved to RWTH Aachen University in 2001. Here he built up an internationally renowned research group which eventually led to the foundation of the Visual Computing Institute at RWTH in 2015.

His research interests include 3D reconstruction, efficient geometry processing, realtime rendering, digital fabrication and multi-media applications. Leif Kobbelt published a substantial number of influential papers in international top-conferences and journals. For his research he was awarded with the Eurographics Outstanding Technical Contribution Award 2004, two Günther Enderle Awards (in 1999 and 2012), ERC Advanced Grant 2013, and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2014. He was nominated as a Fellow of the Eurographics Association (2008) and as a Distinguished Professor of RWTH Aachen University (2013). In 2015 he became a member of the Academia Europaea and in 2016 a member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts.





Charlie C.L. Wang is currently a Professor and Chair of Advanced Manufacturing in the Department of Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.

Prior to this position, he was a Full Professor / Associate Professor / Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Automation Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), where he started his academic career in 2003. He received a B.Eng. degree (1998) in mechatronics engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology and his M.Phil (2000) and Ph.D. (2002) degrees in mechanical engineering from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Prof. Wang received a few awards from professional societies including the ASME CIE Excellence in Research Award (2016), the ASME CIE Young Engineer Award (2009), the Best Paper Awards of ASME CIE Conferences (twice in 2008 and 2001 respectively), the Prakash Krishnaswami CAPPD Best Paper Award of ASME CIE Conference (2011), and the NAMRI/SME Outstanding Paper Award (2013). He serves on the editorial board of a few journals, including Computer-Aided Design, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, and ASME Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering. He is a Fellow of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). His current research interests span geometric computing, computational design, advanced manufacturing, and robotics.