About me

I am a Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of York where I lead the Vision, Graphics and Learning (VGL) research group. I was a Royal Academy of Engineering/The Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow from 2019-2020. I am an Associate Editor of the journal Pattern Recognition.

My research interests span vision, graphics and ML. Specifically, physics-based and 3D computer vision, shape and appearance modelling and the application of statistics and machine learning to these areas. The application areas in which I most commonly work are face/body analysis and synthesis, surveying and mapping, object capture and inverse rendering. A wide variety of tools and areas of maths are often useful in my research such as: convex optimisation, nonlinear optimisation, manifold learning, learning/optimisation on manifolds, computational geometry and low level computer vision (e.g. features and correspondence). I supervise a team of nine PhD students. I have published over 100 papers, many in the top conferences and journals in the field.

Interests

  • Computer Vision
  • Computer Graphics
  • Machine Learning

Education

  • PhD in Computer Vision, 2007

    University of York

  • BSc in Computer Science, 2002

    University of York

Meet the Team

PhD Students

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Finlay Hudson

PhD Student

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Mingrui Li

PhD Student (cosupervised with Patrik Huber)

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Rapee Wanaset

PhD Student (cosupervised with Claudio Guarnera)

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Tejas Pandey

PhD Student (cosupervised with Nick Pears and John McDermid)

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Tom Wells

PhD Student (cosupervised with Claudio Guarnera)

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Zeyu Xing

PhD Student (cosupervised with Owais Mehmood)

Alumni

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Chao Zhang

Computer Vision Researcher

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Bruce Muller

Research Trainee

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Ye Yu

Research Engineer

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Supannee Tanathong

Computer Vision Research Engineer

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Dizhong Zhu

Computer Vision Engineer

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Hao Guan

Senior Computer Vision Researcher

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Hang Dai

Research Associate

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Anil Bas

Research Associate

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Arnaud Dessein

Product Manager & Data Scientist

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Ankur Patel

Senior Director Data Science

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Oswald Aldrian

3D Software Developer

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Abhishek Dutta

Research Software Engineer

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Benjamin Tsui

PhD Student (cosupervised with Gavin Kearney)

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Meghna Asthana

Research Associate

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Rui Huang

Lecturer

Projects

Branching Out

Computer vision for historic tree mapping

Senior Research Fellowship

Model-based computer vision meets deep learning

Google Daydream

Modelling the human head and eyes for VR/AR eye wearables

LEAPP

Leverhulme-funded Archival Polar Photography

Recent & Upcoming Talks

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INdAM Workshop

Self-supervised inverse rendering

BMVA One Day Meeting

Self-supervised shape-from-shading and inverse rendering in the wild

CAMERA Expert Speaker Series

What can vision and graphics learn from physics?

CVMP 2017 Keynote

Modelling is dead…long live modelling!

Keynote speaker, ICCV 2017 workshop

What Does 2D Geometric Information Really Tell Us About 3D Face Shape?

Service to the Community

 
 
 
 
 

Area Chair

ICCV 2023

2023 – 2023
 
 
 
 
 

Programme Chair

BMVC 2020

2020 – 2020
 
 
 
 
 

Area Chair

3DV 2020

2020 – 2020
 
 
 
 
 

General Chair

CVMP 2019

2019 – 2019
 
 
 
 
 

Associate Editor

Pattern Recognition

2019 – Present
 
 
 
 
 

Area Chair

BMVC

2017 – 2019
 
 
 
 
 

Reviewer

CVPR/ICCV/ECCV

2008 – Present

Contact

  • william.smith@york.ac.uk
  • 01904 325575
  • Department of Computer Science, Deramore Lane, York, YO10 5GH, United Kingdom
  • Enter CS reception, take the stairs to Office CSE/141 on first floor
  • Monday 09:30 to 17:30
    Wednesday 09:30 to 17:30
    Thursday 09:30 to 17:30
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