Tiberiu Popa is the 2009 recipient of the Alain Fournier Ph.D. Thesis Award. His thesis, entitled Capturing and Modeling of Deformable Objects, made several outstanding research contributions to computer graphics.
He completed with distinction his Honours Co-op Bachelor of Mathematics in Computer Science, his Master of Mathematics under the supervision of Professor Michael McCool, both degrees at University of Waterloo, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science at University of British Columbia under the supervision of Professor Alla Sheffer. As a graduate student, Tiberiu won the first place of the ACM Student Research Competition in 2005, and received several scholarships. He was also involved in peer review of papers for several conferences and journals. After his Ph.D., Tiberiu joined the Computer Graphics Laboratory at ETH Zurich as a postdoctoral researcher under the supervision of Professor Markus Gross. Tiberiu’s thesis demonstrates considerable work in the area of acquisition, modeling, and visualization of deformable objects. The accomplished research covers each stage, with numerous and original contributions. The Ph.D. dissertation is well organized, easy to read, while presenting precisely and clearly all the work, showing the candidate’s discernment.
In addition, several high quality publications have been produced ; the candidate also received great recognition from the research community with an invitation to publish his work in a special issue of a journal and a best poster award.