site.btaRobotics Researcher Marc Pollefeys Joins INSAIT

Robotics and computer vision researcher Prof. Marc Pollefeys will collaborate with scientists from Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski's Institute for Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Technology (INSAIT) on robotics and artificial intelligence projects, the Education and Science Ministry said on Monday.

His appointment is part of INSAIT's strategic partnership with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich.

Pollefeys is internationally recognized for his work in robotics, Spatial AI and computer vision. He pioneered one of the first software systems for automatically generating detailed 3D models from photographs, laying the foundations of modern 3D computer vision.

His research has contributed to technologies including the first autonomous drone guided by computer vision, Google Project Tango, Google Maps Live View, Microsoft HoloLens 2, and the widely used open-source computer vision tools COLMAP and LightGlue.

A professor of computer science at ETH Zurich since 2007, Pollefeys heads the Computer Vision and Geometry Lab and the Microsoft Spatial AI Lab in Zurich. He has authored more than 500 scientific publications, received over 80,000 citations, and holds more than 30 patents.

According to the ministry, his appointment marks another step in INSAIT's development as a global centre for cutting-edge research.