Projects

Below is a list of my research projects with brief explanations. Newer projects are announced here but filling in the details may take a while. If you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch.

Recent projects (from 2020 to today, more details to follow)

-- 67439.1 INNO-ICT Exergaming portable solution to enable indoor and outdoor safe physical exercise for people living with dementia (feasibility study, on-going)
-- 66677.1 INNO-ICT Creating trivia games for older adults with AI-powered large language models such as ChatGPT (feasibility study, on-going)
-- 65905.1 INNO-ICT Engage your audience: Improving public speaking and overcoming performance anxiety with the help of a virtual reality training environment (feasibility study, on-going)
-- 63551.1 INNO-ICT Ômeniverse: Virtual real estate experience (feasibility study, on-going)
-- 57704.1 IP-ICT Immersive digital environments for UAV missions (IDEM) (on-going)
-- POCD/ViPA 39337.1 IP-ICT Predicting and preventing Postoperative Cognitive Dysfunction (POCD) using serious games and machine learning: A focus on older patients: Funded by Innosuisse and executed in collaboration with Altoida and Hirslanden Clinic , we examine if and how well we can predict, prevent and rehabiliate age-related cognitive decline associated with surgical operations (POCD: Post Operative Cognitive Disorder) using technological tools including HCI, visualization and augmented/mixed reality.
-- So Real! 40467.1 IP-ICT SO REAL Digital Twins (succeeds the feasibility study 36135.1 INNO-ICT SoREAL). Funded by Innosuisse and executed in collaboration with SO REAL Digital Twins, we examine if and how well we can automate content creation for extended reality (Virtual, Augmented, Mixed) as 'digital twins'. We tackle both technical and perceptual questions in this project. (completed)
-- 56699.1 INNO-LS Smartphones as personal trainers for older adults physical rehabilitation and exercise (feasibility study, completed)
-- 53026.1 INNO-ICT Machine-learning driven dynamic conversational user interface to prevent cognitive decline and improve outcomes in Alzheimer's Disease (feasibility study, completed)
-- VRLabs Funded by an internal university grant for education (FHNW's Lehrfonds), we examine if and how well we can simulate a "physics lab" in virtual reality for the students to carry out experiments, and whether this indeed improves learning. (completed)
-- Scalable VRLabs Funded a second time by the same internal university grant for education (FHNW's Lehrfonds), we examine if and how well we can extend the VRLabs project described above to simulate a "physics lab" in virtual reality by allowing students to participate remotely using their phone and viewing the virtual scenes with smartphone augmented reality. (completed)
-- 61697.1 INNO-EE SolarVR (feasibility study, completed, followed by a larger project)
-- 59266.1 INNO-ICT Multimodal emotion recognition and sentiment analysis (feasibility study, completed)
-- 47970.1 INNO-ICT Automated computer vision and machine learning based checkout-free shopping (feasibility study, completed)
-- 43681.1 INNO-ICT RadioLED Smart City Platform # A Feasibility Study (feasibility study, completed)
-- 38803.1 INNO-ICT Visual FHIR composer (feasibility study, completed)

Storytelling with Animated Interactive Objects in Real-time 3D Maps (NARRAT3D)– 2018–2020

Funded by ETH Research Grant, this project is in collaboration with the ETH's Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation on immersive story telling with 3D maps.
PhD student: Raimund Schnürer
Role: Collaborator
PI: Lorenz Hurni

Perceptual and Foveated Adaptive Level-of-Detail in Interactive Geographic Feature Visualization (PAGEVis) – 2017–2021

SNSF-funded (Swiss National Science Foundation) project in collaboration with the UZH Computer Science Department's Visualization and Multimedia Lab on interactive gaze-adaptive paradigms for virtual reality (VR) (and, potentially, augmented reality) displays
PhD student: Alireza Amiraghdam, post-doc: Alexandra Diehl
Role: Collaborator
PI: Renato Pajarola

Vision to Visualization – Improving Computational and Human Performance with Highly Realistic 3-Dimensional Geographic Visualizations by Means of Biomimicry (VISDOM I, VISDOM II) – 2014–2019

SNSF-funded four year project (funded initially for three years, then extended) focusing on user experience with highly realistic 3-dimensional representations and virtual reality (VR)/augmented reality (AR) within the Digital Earth framework. The goal of the project is exploring the interactions between aging, memory, and realism in 3D visualizations
PhD student: Ismini-Eleni Lokka
Roles: Project Lead, PI

Visualization across All Sciences (10QViz) – 2016–2020

Partially SNSF-funded project in collaboration with Professor Alyssa Goodman of the Seamless Astronomy group of the Harvard University on visualization across disciplines. We investigate the synergies between Astronomy and Geography from a scientific visualization perspective, and also link to, draw from, other discipines. We are working on distilling the fundamental considerations that would apply to the creation of all scientific and information visualizations. It is not yet complete but an early product from this project can be seen on 10qviz.org.
Roles: Project Lead at the UZH, Co-PI (with Alyssa Goodman)

Visual Complexity in Geospatial Displays (VisX) – 2016–2017

Google Faculty Research Award-funded project with the overarching goal of systematically studying what makes a geovisualization (too) complex and finding reliable ways to determine context-specific complexity of various display types (e.g. satellite images, 3D geovisualizations, different map designs).
Roles: Project Lead, PI

Hand-Eye Coordination and Display Complexity (HandEyeX) – 2012–2017

Partially funded by the British Royal Society, we study hand-eye coordination through comparing patterns of mouse use and visual behavior obtained through eye-tracking under varying display complexities.
Roles: Project Lead at the UZH, Co-PI (with Urška Demšar)

Limits of Color Perception in Map Legibility (ColorX) – 2011–2017

Another "vision to visualization" project, in which we investigate how to best utilize color in cartographic displays using eye-tracking to understand participants' perceptual limits and visual strategies in systematic empirical studies. In this project, we examine contributions of the (mis)use of color to the complexity of visuospatial displays through, e.g., color disciminability, color deficiency, and illusions. We then try to establish thresholds and guidelines to improve visualization products.
Role: Project Lead at the UZH

Visual Illusions: Terrain Reversal Effect, Its Prevalence, Applied and Theoretical Implications (IllusionX)– 2011–2017

This project broadly investigates visual illusions, and especially the so called terrain reversal effect, also known as relief inversion effect. It causes convex shapes to appear concave and vice versa, based on where the shadows are (thus, where the light source is). It affects shaded relief maps as well as satellite imagery. One of our papers from this project got a mention in the National Geographic blog and made us proud.
Role: Project Lead

Efficiency and Effectiveness of Gaze Contingent Displays (GeoF III) – 2014–2016

Project investigating the efficiency and effectiveness of gaze-contingent displays, i.e. displays that respond to a viewer's gaze in real-time thus reducing perceptually irrelevant details, required bandwidth, and visual entropy. One of our papers from this project got best short paper award at the prestigious EuroVis conference 2015 by Eurographics.
Role: Project Lead

Development and Implementation of Geofoveation (GeoF I, GeoF II) – 2008–2013

SNSF-funded project on foveation research for human visual system-inspired level-of-detail (LoD) management of (usually large) graphic datasets.
Role: Project Lead

Geographic Relevance in Mobile Applications (GeoRel I, GeoRel II) – 2008–2012

SNSF-funded project on geographic relevance, location-based services, time geography, adaptive geovisualisation, and mobile cartography.
Role: Co-PI
PI: Tumasch Reichenbacher