Dimitris Samaras

Rank/Position Title:

Assistant Professor

Home Page:

http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~samaras

Date of original appointment to this faculty, followed by dates and ranks of advancement:

September 2000, Assistant Professor

Degrees:

Conferences, workshops, and professional development:

• Eurographics August 2004
• IEEE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conf June 2004
• Computer Graphics Int’l June 2004
• European Conf in Computer Vision May 2004
• Conference on Instructional Technologies (CIT) 20046/1-4/04
• International Conference in Computer Vision Oct 2003

Other related computing experience:

• 9/95 - 9/00 Research Assistant for Prof. D. Metaxas, UPenn
• 9/92 - 6/94 Research Assistant for Profs. Gauch and York. Northeastern University
• 6/91 - 9/91 System software development for a high energy particle accelerator, CERN, Switzerland
• 9/90 - 3/92 Computer Center Operator Univ. of Patras , Greece .
• 6/90 - 8/90 Programmer, National Electricity Company, Drama, Greece.

Department, college, and/or university committee membership:

• Graduate Admissions Committee
• Undergraduate Recruitment Committee
• UI/Graphics Faculty Search

Principal publications of the last five years.

• Wang Y., Huang X., Lee C., Zhang S., Li Z., Samaras D., Metaxas D., Elgammal A., Huang P. High Resolution Acquisition, Learning and Transfer of Dynamic 3D Facial Expressions, in EUROGRAPHICS, Grenoble, France (to appear)
• Duan Y., Yang L., Qin H., Samaras D., Shape Reconstruction from 3D and 2D Data Using PDE-Based Deformable Surfaces. In Proceedings of the European Conference of Computer Vision 2004 Prague , Czech Republic (to appear).
• Wang Y., Samaras D., Estimation of Multiple Directional Light Sources for Synthesis of Augmented Reality Images. In Graphical Models 65, July 2003, pp. 185-205.
• Face Recognition Under Variable Lighting using Harmonic Image Exemplars. Lei Zhang, Dimitris Samaras. In Proceedings of the IEEE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference 2003, Madison , WI (I:19-25).
• Using Multiple Cues for Hand Tracking and Model Refinement Shan Lu, Dimitris Metaxas, Dimitris Samaras, John Oliensis. In Proceedings of the IEEE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference 2003 Madison , WI (II:443-450)
• Samaras, D., Metaxas, D. Illumination Constraints in Deformable models for Shape and Light Direction Estimation. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence, February 2003, pp. 247-264
• Wang Y., Samaras D., Estimation of Multiple Illuminants from a Single Image of Arbitrary Known Geometry. In Proceedings of the European Conference of Computer Vision 2002 Copenhagen , Denmark . (3:272-288).
• Samaras D., Metaxas D., Fua P. and Leclerc Y.G. Variable Albedo Surface Reconstruction from Stereo and Shape from Shading. In Proceedings of the IEEE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference 2000 Hilton Head, SC. (I:480-487).
• Samaras D., Metaxas D., Fua P. and Leclerc Y.G. Variable Albedo Surface Reconstruction from Stereo and Shape from Shading. In Proceedings of the IEEE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference 2000 Hilton Head, SC. (I:480-487).
• Samaras, D., Metaxas, D., Coupled Lighting Direction and Shape Estimation from Single Images, In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision 1999 Corfu, Greece. (868-874).

Other scholarly activity: grants, sabbaticals, software development, etc.:

• NSF-ITR co-PI:Stochastic Multicue Tracking of Objects with Many Degrees of Freedom (PI: D. Metaxas, Rutgers ), 9/03-8/06, $170,000 of total budget $400,000
• DoE co-PI: Imaging the Awake Animal Brain (PI: T. Ernst, Brookhaven National Lab), 6/01-9/04, $190,000 of total budget $4,500,000
• BNL subcontract: Functional Neuroimaging in drug addiction and other problem behaviors. (PI: Rita Goldstein, BNL). 9/03-8/04, $23,000.
• DoJ. Subcontract from Notre Dame for research in Biometrics. 2004 75, 000 of total budget 300,00

Scientific, professional, and honor societies of which you are a member:

IEEE, ACM

Honors and awards:

• 1995 - 1997 Bodosakis Foundation, Athens Greece
• 1994 - 1995 Dean's Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania .
• 1994 Gerondelis Foundation, Boston , MA .
• 1992, 1988 Technical Chamber of Greece.

Courses taught this and last academic year term-by-term

Academic advising:

Assigned advisor for 18 undergraduate students during 2004/2005 academic year.

Brief description of major research and scholarly activities:

In current work in my group I am researching problems related with the effects of illumination in images in Computer Vision (shape estimation, tracking, recognition) Computer Graphics (image relighting, augmented reality). Focus application areas have been face and hand modeling. Currently we are investigating the use of high resolution, high accuracy, high frame rate dynamic 3D data for the study of facial appearance and expression. We have proposed a face recognition method from a single image under arbitrary illumination, where a spherical harmonics basis is computed for each image from a statistical representation of spherical harmonics images. Also robust methods for the detection and estimation of multiple light sources from a single image of an object of arbitrary known geometry, combining information from critical points in shading, shadows and specularities. Other current work on generalized optical flow constraints for deformable models for hand tracking is an extension of my Ph.D. thesis, in which I proposed a method for the incorporation of any type of illumination constraints in deformable model frameworks. If the light source direction is unknown, both light source and object shape can be recovered, in a coupled iterative process. The applicability of the above methods was extended with the integration of shape from shading (SFS) and stereo, for non-constant albedo and non-uniformly Lambertian surfaces.