Paid internship / Visiting scholar position on "Interplanetary communication through Virtual Reality"

A three month paid internship / visiting scholar position is available here in the Department of Computer Science of the KU Leuven (Belgium). The successful candidate will work on a funded project focused on the simulation of interplanetary communications through Virtual Reality. The proposed starting date is September but depends on the specific situation of the candidate (see below).

=== Details of the Project ===

An essential characteristic of future human colonization efforts will be the desire to communicate with friends and family back home on Earth or in other inhabited outposts. However, an unescapable limit is imposed by the time delay related to communicate across these large distances. Whereas the time delay to communicate from Earth with people on the Moon is a little more than one second, this will rise to 4 to 24 minutes to communicate with Mars, depending on the relative positions in their orbits. A hypothetical settlement on a habitable planet in Alpha Centauri, the closest solar system to our own, will require people to wait for four years for their message to be delivered, and another four years to receive a reply.

We aim to use Virtual Reality to immerse users in a hypothetical settlement on another world. We will use the created environments to study how they approach the challenge of communicating with another party when these time delays are involved (in a manageable way). This will provide some insights into the requirements that such system will have when they are eventually really implemented, and potential implications for VR communications between isolated communities here on Earth.

=== Profile ===

The ideal candidate will have demonstrable prior experience in the design of Virtual Environments with 3D engines such as the Unreal Engine (preferably) or Unity. Some modelling experience will be beneficial. Given the role, a passion for space exploration and knowledge of hard science fiction will undoubtedly help.

The candidate is expected to create a set of Virtual Environments, contribute to the execution of a subsequent VR study (depending on their level of experience), and write a final report.

=== Eligibility ===

This internship / visiting scholar position is ideally aimed at candidates who are already enrolled in a university in Belgium or abroad. Eligibility to work in Belgium for non-European citizens (and the compensation) will depend on the specific situation.

For more information, please send an email to Adalberto Simeone (adalberto.simeone@kuleuven.be). The position will remain available until filled. ​

Starting Researcher, Postdoc, Ph.D. and Engineer Openings at Inria/GRAPHDECO, (Sophia-Antipolis, France)

Starting Researcher, Postdoc, Ph.D. and Engineer Openings at Inria/GRAPHDECO, (Sophia-Antipolis, France)

FUNGRAPH is an ERC Advanced Grant in the GRAPHDECO research group (http://team.inria.fr/graphdeco)
at Inria Sophia-Antipolis (South of France), starting fall 2018.
The high level goal of the project is to build new foundations for rendering in
Computer Graphics, by taking into account uncertainty in rendering algorithms and
in the data (geometry, materials, lights) we use to render Computer Graphics.

A high-level description of the FUNGRAPH projet can be found here: http://fungraph.inria.fr
and a description of possible research topics can be found here: http://fungraph.inria.fr/fungraph-jobs.html

These topics should be considered as the "perimeter" of the research, and will be adapted to the candidate's interests and qualifications. We are looking to hire 1-2 Starting Researchers, 2-3 postdoctoral fellows,
1-2 PhD students (but probably a little later) and 1-2 engineers.

It is possible that a Ph.D. student works on one of the topics listed as "PostDoc" below, and vice versa. Starting Researchers and -- depending on their experience -- postdoctoral fellows are expected to define their own research agenda within this "perimeter" (to be interpreted very widely).

This list of topics will evolve constantly throughout the project, so please visit the topics page regularly.

Context

Several of these topics will involve work with our network of regular collaborators: at
institutions such as MIT, Berkeley and UCL, and can include visits to the respective laboratories.
We plan to expand this set of collaborators during FUNGRAPH.

Successful candidates will be members of a dynamic and highly motivated group of excellent young researchers, the GRAPHDECO Inria group (https://team.inria.fr/graphdeco/team-members/), and will have the opportunity to collaborate and interact with my colleague Adrien Bousseau (who has a Starting ERC Grant called D^{^3}) and
the other Ph.D. students, postdocs and engineers of the group.

Required Qualifications

For Starting Researcher and Postdoctoral positions, candidates are expected to have a Ph.D. in Computer Graphics or in Computer Vision with an emphasis on Graphics applications, and an excellent publication record. Ph.D. candidates are expected to have a Masters in Computer Graphics, with a solid mathematical and programming (C++/OpenGL/GLSL/Vulkan) background and have completed a thesis with a research component (ideally submitted or published). Fluency in spoken and written English is a requirement.

How to apply

If you are interested in any of these positions/topics, please email directly (George dot Drettakis at inria.fr) with your CV and short motivation, and the email addresses of 2-3 references. If you are applying for a Ph.D. please also attach your academic transcript for the last 3 years (an unofficial list of courses and grades is sufficient).

G. Drettakis will be at SIGGRAPH in Vancouver, and will be interviewing candidates there.