Visual Computing and Artificial Intelligence
  


I am a Professor of Computer Science at the Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel, Germany, where I lead the Visual Computing and Artificial Intelligence (VCAI) group. Prior to joining the Faculty of Engineering, I was a Senior Research Scientist and manager at Adobe Research, a Software Engineer in the Google AI (Robotics at Google) team and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Geometry Lab of the Computer Science Department at Stanford University, supported by the MPC-VCC and the SAIL-Toyota Center for AI Research. I received my PhD from the University of Konstanz (Visual Computing Lab), Germany. My research interests are in Visual Computing and Artificial Intelligence with a focus on time-variant phenomena and multi-modal data streams. I work on developing efficient representations to enable solving complex tasks like interactively simulating natural phenomena, encoding interactions and behavior, and generating synthetic data. In the past I have worked on topics such as procedural modeling, understanding physical interactions, solving robotic manipulation and social navigation tasks, as well as on generative models for style transfer and video prediction.


News

August 19, 2023 Our paper DeepTree: Modeling Trees with Situated Latents was accepted to IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG).
July 14, 2023 Two papers accepted at ICCV 2023: GAIT: Generating Aesthetic Indoor Tours with Deep Reinforcement Learning, 3DMiner: Discovering Shapes from Large-Scale Unannotated Image Datasets.
July 1, 2023 I was appointed to join the Faculty of Engineering at Christian-Albrechts-University (CAU), Kiel as Full Professor for Computer Science to lead the Visual Computing and Artificial Intelligence group.
March 28, 2023 Our paper on modeling tree roots (Rhizomorph) has been conditionally accepted to SIGGRAPH 2023: link
September 29, 2022 I am co-organizing the embodied AI workshop at CVPR 2023: link.
June 7, 2022 I was invited by the ACM to chat about research on environmental modeling. The interview is available here: link.
January 7, 2022 Together with Prof. Dr. Dominik Michels, I am technical co-chair of SCA 2022: link.


Publications

D. Xie, P. Hu, X. Sun, J. Zhang, S. Pirk, R. Mech, A. Kaufmann, GAIT: Generating Aesthetic Indoor Tours with Deep Reinforcement Learning, International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2023
[Paper coming soon]
T.-Y. Cheng, M. Gadelha, S. Pirk, T. Groueix, R. Mech, A. Markham, N. Trigoni, 3DMiner: Discovering Shapes from Large-Scale Unannotated Image Datasets, International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2023
[Paper coming soon]
O. Taheri, Y. Zhou, D. Tzionas, Y. Zhou, D. Ceylan, S. Pirk, M. Black, GRIP: Generating Interaction Poses Using Spatial Cues and Latent Consistency, 2023
[Preprint], [ArXiv]
Z. Zhu, Y. Li, W. Lyu, K. Kumar Singh, Z. Shu, S. Pirk, D. Hoiem, Consistent Multimodal Generation via a Unified GAN Framework, IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV) , 2023
[Preprint], [ArXiv]
A. Francis, C. Pérez-D' Arpino, C. Li, F. Xia, A. Alahi, R. Alami, A. Bera, A. Biswas, J. Biswas, R. Chandra, H.-T. L. Chiang, M. Everett, S. Ha, J. Hart, J. P. How, H. Karnan, T.-W. E. Lee, L. J. Manso, R. Mirksy, S. Pirk, P. T. Singamaneni, P. Stone, A. V. Taylor, P. Trautman, N. Tsoi, M. Vázquez, X. Xiao, P. Zu, N. Yokoyama, A. Toshev, R. Martín-Martín, Principles and Guidelines for Evaluating Social Robot Navigation Algorithms, 2023
[Preprint], [ArXiv]
X. Zhou, B. Li, B. Benes, S. Pirk, DeepTree: Modeling Trees with Situated Latents, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), 2023
[Website], [Preprint], [ArXiv], [Video], [Bibtex]
B. Li, J. Klein, D. L. Michels, B. Benes, S. Pirk, W. Pałubicki, Rhizomorph: The Coordinated Function of Shoots and Roots, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH), 2023
[Website], [Preprint], [Video], [Bibtex]
A. Francis, C. Pérez-D' Arpino, C. Li, F. Xia, A. Alahi, A. Bera, A. Biswas, J. Biswas, H.-T. Lewis Chiang, M. Everett, S. Ha, J. Hart, H. Karnan, T.-W. E Lee, L. J. Manso, R. Mirksy, S. Pirk, P. T. Singamaneni, P. Stone, A. V. Taylor, P. Trautman, N. Tsoi, M. Vázquez, X. Xiao, P. Xu, N. Yokoyama, R. Martín-Martín, A. Toshev, Benchmarking Social Robot Navigation Across Academia and Industry, Best Paper Award Nominee, AAAI Spring Symposium, 2023
[Preprint], [Bibtex], [Symposium Website]
J. Klein, R. E. Waller, S. Pirk, W. Pałubicki, M. Tester, and D. L. Michels, Synthetic Data at Scale: A Paradigm to Efficiently Leverage Machine Learning in Agriculture, under submission, 2023
[Website]
C. Cuan, E. Lee, E. Fisher, A. Francis, L. Takayama, T. Zhang, A. Toshev, S. Pirk, Gesture2Path: Imitation Learning for Gesture-aware Navigation, 2023
[Preprint], [ArXiv], [Bibtex]
D. L. Michels and S. Pirk (Eds.), ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Symposium of Computer Animation (SCA), Computer Graphics Forum, 2022
[DOI], [Bibtex]
A. Z. Zhu, V. Casser, R. Mahjourian, H. Kretzschmar, S. Pirk, Instance Segmentation with Cross-Modal Consistency, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2022
[Preprint], [ArXiv], [Bibtex]
W. Pałubicki, M. Makowski, W. Gajda, T. Hädrich, D. L. Michels, S. Pirk, Ecoclimates: Climate-Response Modeling of Vegetation, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH), 2022
[Website], [Preprint], [Video], [Bibtex]
T. Niese, S. Pirk, M. Albrecht, B. Benes, O. Deussen, Procedural Urban Forestry, ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) and SIGGRAPH, 2022
[Website], [Preprint], [Video], [Bibtex]
S. Pirk, E. Lee, X. Xiao, L. Takayama, A. Francis, A. Toshev, A Protocol for Validating Social Navigation Policies, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Workshop: Social Robot Navigation: Advances and Evaluation, 2022
[Preprint], [Poster], [ArXiv], [Bibtex]
H. Karnan, A. Nair, X. Xiao, G. Warnell, S. Pirk, A. Toshev, J. Hart, J. Biswas, P. Stone, Socially Compliant Navigation Dataset (SCAND): A Large-Scale Dataset of Demonstrations for Social Navigation, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) and IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2022
[Website], [Preprint], [Video], [Dataset], [Bibtex]
W. Raateland, T. Hädrich, J. A. Herrera, D. Banuti, W. Pałubicki, S. Pirk, K. Hildebrandt, D. L. Michels DCGrid: An Adaptive Grid Structure for Memory-Constrained Fluid Simulation on the GPU, ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games, 2022
[Website], [Preprint], [DOI], [Supplementary Material], [Code], [Video], [Bibtex]
R. Jean, S. Brodeur, S. Pirk, P.-L. St-Charles, Self-Supervised Learning of Pose-Informed Latents, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) Workshop: Learning with Limited Labeled Data for Image and Video Understanding, 2022
[Preprint], [Poster], [Supplementary Material], [Bibtex]
H. Shao, T. Kugelstadt, T. Hädrich, W. Pałubicki, J. Bender, S. Pirk, D. L. Michels, Accurately Solving Rod Dynamics with Graph Learning, Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2021
[Website], [Preprint], [ArXiv], [Supplementary Material], [Video], [Bibtex]
J. A. Amador Herrera, T. Hädrich, W. Pałubicki, D. T. Banuti, S. Pirk, D. L. Michels, Weatherscapes: Nowcasting Heat Transfer and Water Continuity, ACM Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH Asia), 2021
[Website], [Preprint], [Video], [Technical Papers Trailer], [Bibtex]
B. Li, J. Kałużny, J. Klein, D.L. Michels, W. Pałubicki, B. Benes, S. Pirk, Learning to Reconstruct Botanical Trees from Single Images, ACM Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH Asia), 2021
[Website], [Preprint], [Video], [Technical Papers Trailer], [Bibtex]
T. Hädrich, D. T. Banuti, W. Pałubicki, S. Pirk, D. L. Michels, Fire in Paradise: Mesoscale Simulation of Wildfires, ACM Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH), 2021
[Website], [Preprint], [Video], [Talk], [Two Minute Papers], [Gallery of Fluid Motion], [Bibtex]
Y. Lu, S. Pirk, J. Dlabal, A. Brohan, A. Pasad, Z. Chen, V. Casser, A. Angelova, A. Gordon, Taskology: Utilizing Task Relations at Scale, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
(CVPR), Oral, 2021
[Preprint], [ArXiv], [Supplementary Material], [Poster], [Talk], [Bibtex]
J. Klein, S. Pirk, D. L. Michels, Domain Adaptation with Morphologic Segmentation, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) Workshop: Autonomous Driving: Perception, Prediction and Planning, 2021
[Website], [Preprint], [ArXiv], [Video], [Bibtex]
T. Hädrich, M. Makowski, W. Pałubicki, D. T. Banuti, S. Pirk, D. L. Michels, Stormscapes: Simulating Cloud Dynamics in the Now, ACM Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH Asia), 2020
[Website], [Preprint], [Video], [Talk], [Technical Papers Trailer], [Bibtex]
S. Pirk, K. Hausman, A. Toshev, M. Khansari, Modeling Long-horizon Tasks as Sequential Interaction Landscapes, Conference on Robotic Learning (CoRL), 2020
[Website], [Preprint], [ArXiv], [Video], [Talk], [Bibtex]
T. Hädrich, J. Scheffczyk, W. Pałubicki, S. Pirk, D. L. Michels, Interactive Wood Fracture,
Eurographics / ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Computer Animation - Posters, 2020
[Website], [Preprint], [Video], [Bibtex]
V. Krs, T. Hädrich, D. L. Michels, O.Deussen, S.Pirk, B. Benes, Wind Erosion: Shape Modifications by Interactive Particle-based Erosion and Deposition, Eurographics / ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Computer Animation - Posters, 2020
[Website], [Preprint], [Video], [Bibtex]
S. Pirk, M. Khansari, Y. Bai, C. Lynch, P. Sermanet, Online Learning of Object Representations by Appearance Space Feature Alignment, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2020
[Preprint], [Video], [Talk], [Bibtex]
S. Pirk, M. Khansari, Y. Bai, C. Lynch, P. Sermanet, Online Object Representations with Contrastive Learning, CVPR Workshop: Learning from Unlabeled Videos, 2019
[Website], [Poster], [ArXiv], [Bibtex]
X. Yan, M. Khansari, J. Hsu, Y. Gong, Y. Bai, S. Pirk, H. Lee, Data-Efficient Learning for Sim-to-Real Robotic Grasping using Deep Point Cloud Prediction Networks, 2019
[ArXiv], [Website], [Bibtex]
M. Makowski, T. Hädrich, J. Scheffczyk, D. L. Michels, S. Pirk, W. Pałubicki, Synthetic Silviculture: Multi-scale Modeling of Plant Ecosystems, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH), 2019
[Website], [Preprint], [Video], [Technical Papers Trailer], [Two Minute Papers], [Bibtex]
H. Wang, S. Pirk, E. Yumer, V. G. Kim, O. Senner, S. Sridhar, L. J. Guibas, Learning a Generative Model for Multi-Step Human-Object Interactions from Videos, Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of Eurographics), 2019, Best Paper Honorable Mention
[Website], [Preprint], [Video], [Code + Data], [Stanford AI Blog], [Bibtex]
V. Casser, S. Pirk, R. Mahjourian, A. Angelova, Unsupervised Monocular Depth and Ego-motion Learning with Structure and Semantics, CVPR Workshop on Visual Odometry & Computer Vision Applications Based on Location Clues (VOCVALC), 2019
[Website], [ArXiv], [Code], [Bibtex]
V. Casser, S. Pirk, R. Mahjourian, A. Angelova, Depth Prediction without the Sensors: Leveraging Structure for Unsupervised Learning from Monocular Videos, Thirty-Third AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'19), 2019
[Website], [ArXiv], [Code], [Bibtex]
R. Ma, A. Gadi Patil, M. Fisher, M. Li, S. Pirk, B.-S. Hua, S.-K. Yeung, X. Tong, L. Guibas, H. Zhang, Language-Driven Synthesis of 3D Scenes from Scene Databases, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia), 2018
[Website], [Preprint], [Video], [Bibtex]
S. Vora, R. Mahjourian, S. Pirk, A. Angelova, Future Semantic Segmentation Using 3D Structure, ECCV 3D Reconstruction meets Semantics Workshop, 2018
[ArXiv], [Bibtex]
V. Ganapathi-Subramanian, O. Diamanti, S. Pirk, C. Tang, M. Niessner, L. J. Guibas, Parsing Geometry Using Structure-Aware Shape Templates, International Conference on 3D Vision, 2018
[Preprint], [ArXiv], [Video], [Bibtex]
J. Kratt, T. Niese, R. Hu, H. Huang, S. Pirk, A. Sharf, D. Cohen-Or, O. Deussen, Sketching In Gestalt Space: Interactive Shape Abstraction Through Perceptual Reasoning, Computer Graphics Forum, 2018
[Website], [Preprint], [Video], [Bibtex]
S. Pirk, M. Jarząbek, T. Hädrich, D. L. Michels, W. Palubicki, Interactive Wood Combustion for Botanical Tree Models, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia), 2017
[Website], [Preprint], [Video], [Technical Papers Trailer], [Two Minute Papers], [Bibtex]
S. Pirk, O. Diamanti, B. Thibert, D. Xu, L. J. Guibas, Shape-aware Spatio-temporal Descriptors for Interaction Classification, IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), 2017
[Preprint], [Video], [Bibtex]
Y. Yoshiyasu, E. Yoshida, S. Pirk, L. J. Guibas, 3D Convolutional Neural Networks by Modal Fusion, IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), 2017
[Preprint], [Bibtex]
S. Pirk, V. Krs, K. Hu, S. D. Rajasekaran, H. Kang, B. Benes, Y. Yoshiyasu, L. J. Guibas, Understanding and Exploiting Object Interaction Landscapes, ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), 2017
[Website], [Preprint], [DOI], [ArXiv], [Video], [Bibtex]
T. Hädrich, B. Benes, O. Deussen, S. Pirk, Interactive Modeling and Authoring of Climbing Plants, Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of Eurographics), 2017, Best Paper Honorable Mention
[Website], [Preprint], [Video], [Two Minute Papers], [Bibtex]
Y. Li, S. Pirk, H. Su, C. R. Qi, L. J. Guibas, FPNN: Field Probing Neural Networks for 3D Data, Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2016
[Website], [Preprint], [ArXiv], [Code], [Bibtex]
S. Pirk, B. Benes, T. Ijiri, Y. Li, O. Deussen, B. Chen, R. Mech, Modeling Plant Life in Computer Graphics, SIGGRAPH 2016 Courses
[Website], [DOI], [Bibtex]
J. Kratt, M. Spicker, A. Guayaquil, M. Fiser, S. Pirk, O. Deussen, J. C. Hart, B. Benes, Woodification: User-Controlled Cambial Growth Modeling, Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of Eurographics), 2015
[Website], [Preprint], [DOI], [Video], [Bibtex]
S. Pirk, T. Niese, T. Härich, B. Benes, O. Deussen, Windy Trees: Computing Stress Response for Developmental Tree Models, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia), 2014
[Website], [Preprint], [DOI], [Video], [Bibtex]
J. Kratt, F. Eisenkeil, S. Pirk, A. Sharf, O. Deussen, Non-Realistic 3D Object Stylization, International Symposium on Computational Aesthetics in Graphics, Visualization, and Imaging, 2014
[Website], [Preprint], [DOI], [Video], [Bibtex]
O. Stava, S. Pirk, J. Kratt, B. Chen, R. Mech, O. Deussen, B. Benes, Inverse Procedural Modeling of Trees, Computer Graphics Forum, 2014 and Eurographics, 2015
[Website], [Preprint], [DOI], [Video], [Bibtex]
T. Lindemeier, S. Pirk, O. Deussen, Image Stylization with a Painting Machine Using Semantic Hints, Computers and Graphics, 2013
[Preprint], [DOI], [Bibtex]
S. Pirk, M. F. Cohen, O. Deussen, M. Uyttendaele, J. Kopf, Video Enhanced Gigapixel Panoramas Siggraph Asia 2012, Technical Brief
[Website], [Preprint], [DOI], [Video], [Bibtex]
S. Pirk, T. Niese, O. Deussen, B. Neubert, Capturing and Animating the Morphogenesis of Polygonal Tree Models, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of Siggraph Asia), 2012
[Website], [Preprint], [DOI], [Video], [Bibtex]
O. Deussen, T. Lindemeier, S. Pirk, M. Tautzenberger, Feedback-guided Stroke Placement for a Painting Machine, Computational Aesthetics in Graphics, 2012
[Website], [Preprint], [DOI], [Video], [Bibtex]
S. Pirk, O. Stava, J. Kratt, M. Abdul-Massih, B. Neubert, R. Mech, B. Benes, O. Deussen, Plastic Trees: Interactive Self-Adapting Botanical Tree Models, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH), 2012
[Website], [Preprint], [DOI], [Video], [Bibtex]
Y. Livny, S. Pirk, F. Yan, Z. Cheng, O. Deussen, D. Cohen-Or, B. Chen, Texture-Lobes for Tree Modeling, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH), 2011
[Website], [Preprint], [DOI], [Video], [Bibtex]
B. Neubert, S. Pirk, O. Deussen, C. Dachsbacher, Improved Model- and View-Dependent Pruning of Large Botanical Scenes, Computer Graphics Forum, 2011 and EGSR 2011
[Website], [Preprint], [DOI], [Bibtex]


Professional Service

Technical Program Chair ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation: 2022, link
Associate Editor Computer Graphics Forum (2019-2022), link
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications (2020-2022), link
Workshop Organizer Embodied AI Workshop, CVPR 2022, 2023 link
Committee Member International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS): 2019
Computational Visual Media Conference (CVM): 2020, 2019, 2018
Eurographics: 2020 (Short Papers), 2019 (Short Papers), 2017
Web3D Conference: 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010
Reviewer International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML): 2021, 2020
IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR): 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020
International Conference on Representation Learning (ICLR): 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020
International Conference on 3D Vision (3DV): 2024, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS): 2023, 2020, 2019
Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS): 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019
ACM SIGGRAPH: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2018, 2017, 2015, 2013, 2012, 2011
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2012
Transactions on Graphics (TOG): 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2017, 2016, 2013
Eurographics (EG): 2023, 2021, 2020, 2018, 2017, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2011
Computer Graphics Forum (CGF): 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014
Pacific Graphics (PG): 2023, 2020, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013
IEEE Transactions on Visualization & Computer Graphics (TVCG): 2018, 2017, 2014, 2013
Computers & Graphics: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012


Personal

2023 Professor of Computer Science (W3), University of Kiel, Germany
Head of Visual Computing and Artificial Intelligence Group.
2022 Senior Research Scientist, Adobe Research, USA
Research on Visual Computing and Machine Learning.
2017 AI Researcher and Software Engineer, Google AI (Robotics at Google), USA
Research on Machine Learning, Robotics, and Computer Vision.
2015 Visiting Assistant Professor at Stanford University, School of Engineering, USA
Head of the Geometric Modeling Group at the Max Planck Center for Visual Computing and Communication.
2014 Researcher and Software Engineer, Esri R&D Center Zurich, Switzerland
Research and development for large-scale geo information systems.
2013 Postdoctoral Fellowship, Visual Computing, University of Konstanz, Germany
Postdoctoral Fellow in the Lab for Visual Computing.
2013 Ph.D. of the Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Konstanz, Germany
Dr.rer.nat. of the Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Konstanz.
2012 Research visits at Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT), China
Academic projects and studies toward procedural modeling and geometric representations.
2007 Research visit at the University of Canterbury, New Zeland
Academic studies toward real-time rendering and augmented reality in the Human Interface Technology Laboratory (HitLab).
2007 Dipl.-Ing. (FH), Computer Science, Germany
University of Applied Sciences Emden.