Introduction

I'm an ex mathematical physicist turned computer vision and pattern recognition researcher employed by France's main national research organisation, the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). I work in (and am deputy director of) the Laboratoire Jean Kuntzmann (LJK) in Grenoble in the heart of the French Alps. LJK is a newly created applied mathematics and computer science research laboratory associated with the CNRS and three Grenoble universities (UJF, INPG, UPMF) and with links to INRIA's Rhône-Alpes research unit.

Nowadays I work mainly on applying statistical pattern recognition and machine learning to visual object recognition and scene understanding, but I'm also known for my work on vision geometry (matching constraints, scene reconstruction, autocalibration, etc) and on human body tracking. I've been associated with several robotics and computer vision research teams in Grenoble : SHARP (now e-Motion) from 1993 to 1995; MOVI (now PERCEPTION) from 1995 to 2003; and LEAR from 2003 to 2007. Before that I worked on robotic planning and mobile robotics in Oxford University's Robotics Research Group.

Originally, I'm from New Zealand (which, like Grenoble, is a great place to visit), and I studied physics and maths at Auckland, Australian National, and Oxford Universities.