Computer Vision News - December 2020

347 we started getting a lot of requests: we would go to conferences and find people asking, “How can I use it for my new application that I’m planning?” That’s when we came up with the idea to make a newer version, which is even easier to use than SCAPE. That’s how we started working on this model called SMPL. This is also a play on words, I guess. We wanted this model to be easy to use and simple. That’s why we made the acronym SMPL [ laughs ]. Michael is very fond of these cute acronyms. How is it to work with Michael? Our readers want to know! Michael has a brilliant mind, but at the same time, he is also very humble. He listens to everyone’s ideas. He lets everyone have a chance to speak. We had group meetings at the department, and everybody would have an equal say. Even if they don’t have a background in computer vision, and they don’t understand how the algorithms are working, he would want feedback, from artists even and the other folks in the group. “ What doyou think?” “Does it look realistic? ” “Does it look like something you could use?” “Does this make sense to you?” It’s a very important trait, I think: being open to everybody’s feedback. At the same time, he is a great advisor. I have been lucky to have worked with a lot of great people in the past. Michael has no doubt been a great example of those. He takes responsibility for anyone that works with him and also their future. He would do regular meetings and sessions with his students and help them all the way through to their graduation, and even further on for getting jobs and for their job interviews. At the same time, for the technical staff and everybody, he has always been very invested in all the people that he has worked with. I’m sure it must be a very tiring position to be in, but he’s also very excited about every single thing that he does. That’s also a great thing about him that inspires others to get excited about it as well. Going back to your earlier question, he was the one who actually had the idea of starting a company. [ laughs ] I have two questions: an easy and a toughone. Michael told me about you, that you are a rockstar! Can you see why he thinks so? Then the easier question: If you are a rockstar, what is Michael for you? So for the first one, yes, that is a difficult Naureen Mahmood VIZchester United was obviously the VIZ-lab's football team at Texas A&M. We will not report how good they were...