Dariu M. Gavrila received the MSc degree in computer science from the Vrije University in Amsterdam in 1990. He received the PhD degree in computer science from the University of Maryland at College Park in 1996. He was a Visiting Researcher at the MIT Media Laboratory in 1996. Since 1997, he has been a Senior Research Scientist at Daimler Research in Ulm, Germany. In 2003, he was named professor in the Faculty of Science at the University of Amsterdam, chairing the area of Intelligent Perception Systems (part time).
 
Over the last decade, Prof. Gavrila focused on visual systems for detecting humans and their activity, with application to intelligent vehicles and surveillance. He published more than 50 papers in leading conferences and journals, and is among the 5000 most-cited computer scientists world-wide (CiteSeerX, Jan. 2009). Prof. Gavrila regularly reviews for the major computer vision and pattern recognition conferences and journals. He received the I/O 2007 Award from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for quality of research and public outreach. His personal Web site is www.gavrila.net.

Sensing systems for the automatic recognition of humans and their activities, enabling a machine to interact intelligently and effortlessly with a human-inhabited environment. Applications to intelligent vehicles and surveillance.

Senior Research Scientist (1997 to present)
Machine Perception Dept, Daimler Research and Technology, Ulm, Germany

Project management: acquisition, implementation and review. Responsible for several EU and national projects on active pedestrian safety on behalf of Daimler: EU WATCH-OVER (2006-2008), EU SAVE-U (2002-2005), PROTECTOR (2000-2002) and the german AKTIV-SFR (2006-2010).

Designed Daimler’s pedestrian system which features (video/radar-based) object detection, driver warning and braking in real-time on-board a vehicle demonstrator in urban traffic. The system was featured several times in the European broadcast and print media over the years, see Media Coverage.

Developed the Chamfer System, a system for shape-based object detection (applications in intelligent vehicles, industrial vision and military). Early system version demonstrated to DaimlerChrysler’s Board of Directors, mid 1999.

Professor (2003 to present, 1/5 part-time)
Intelligent Autonomous Systems Group, Informatics Institute, Univ. of Amsterdam, NL

Chair in “Intelligent Perception Systems”. Focus on methodologies and systems for the recognition of human activities in dynamic environments, mainly by vision. Research involves aspects in image processing, computer graphics, machine learning, sensor fusion and cognitive modeling. Current pilot application (projects CASSANDRA, MultimediaN Safety Pilot) deals with automatic aggression detection fusing auditory and visual cues.

Guest lectures and lab sessions in the MSc courses “Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition” and “Design and Organisation of Autonomous Systems”

Research Affiliate (Spring 1996)
Media Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, U.S.A.
Collaboration with Prof. A. Pentland´s group on 3-D head model acquisition from single-view image sequences, as part of my Dissertation.

Research Assistant (1992-1996)
Center for Automation Research, University of Maryland, College Park,  U.S.A.
Early work dealt with indexing and matching techniques for large image and spatial databases. For my Dissertation, I developed a vision system for the 3-D tracking and recognition of humans in action.

Teaching Assistant (1990-1992)
Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park,  U.S.A.

Assisted in undergraduate and graduate courses: directed projects, held classroom discussions, etc.

Ph.D. Degree in Computer Science (1996),
University of Maryland, College Park, U.S.A.,
Dissertation Title: 3-D Model-based Tracking of Humans in Action,
Advisor: Professor Dr. Larry Davis.

Doctoraal Degree - B.S. and M.S. - in Computer Science (1990),
Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands,
Thesis Title: 3-D Object Recognition from 2-D Images using Geometric Hashing, Advisor: Professor Dr. Frans Groen.

Propaedeuse Degree - preliminary comprehensive exam - in Physics (1987), Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

V.W.O. Degree - secondary school - (1986),
Barlaeus Gymnasium, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
 

• 6th IEEE Conference on Advanced Video- and Signal-based Surveillance (AVSS), London, UK, 2007
• 2nd IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Computer Communication and Processing (ICCP), Cluj, Romania, 2006.
• 10th International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns (CAIP), Groningen, The Netherlands, 2003.
• 6th Conference of the Advanced School for Computing and Imaging (ASCI), Lommel, Belgium, 2000.
• Invited Talks (selection): NWO ToKeN Symposium (Tilburg, 2010), Int. Computer Vision Summer School (Sicily, 2009), Heidelberger Bildverarbeitungsforum (Heidelberg, 2008), WIC Public Safety Meeting (Eindhoven, 2008) and workshop ``Intelligente Observatie Systemen'' (Almere, 2007)

• I/O 2007 Award by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO),
  for quality of ICT research and outreach towards the general public
• Best Paper Award at the IEEE AVSS 2007 conference
• Graduate School Fellowship of the University of Maryland (top 1%)
• Cum Laude at the Doctoraal Degree in Computer Science (top 1%)
• Cum Laude at the Propaedeuse Degree in Physics (top 5%)
• Cum Laude at the V.W.O. Degree (top 2%)

• (Co) Supervised 2 Ph.D. Theses at DaimlerChrysler (2005, 2007)
• (Co) Supervised 12 M.Sc. Theses at Daimler(Chrysler) and Univ. of Amsterdam (2002 to present).
• Served on 10 Ph.D. Committees at the Univ. of Amsterdam, TU Twente, Univ. of Mannheim, TU Darmstadt and ETH Zürich (2002 to present)
• (Co) Supervision of 5 Ph.D. Theses at Daimler and the Univ. of Amsterdam, in progress.

See listing here.

Number of times top ten papers cited (excluding self-references), by venue type of citing work¹.

Among the 5000 most cited authors in Computer Science².

¹ Web of Science, http://portal.isiknowledge.com (December 2009). Number of citations varies depending on source used (e.g. Google Scholar lists totals that are mostly a factor of 1.5-2 higher for the above papers).
² CiteSeerX, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu (December 2009).

• Reviewer for journals: IJCV, Trans. on PAMI, and Trans. on ITS
• Member of Program Committee: ECCV (2004 and 2008), DAGM (2001, 2004, 2007-2009), Face and Gesture 2008.
• Evaluator of proposals at EU FP6 and FP7 calls: Cognitive Systems (2005 and 2009) and Advanced Robotics (2006)
• Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and of  the Dutch Pattern Recognition Society (NVBVPH)

German patent granted in the area of vision-based driver assistance, 2002.
 

See listing here.

Fluent in English, German, Dutch and Romanian. Proficiency in French and Spanish.