Radek Daněček

Hi, my name is Radek and I’m an expert in making emotional faces.

I’m currently working as a research scientist in Google XR. Previously, I was a PhD student in the Perceiving Systems department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen, Germany, supervised by Michael Black and Timo Bolkart. My work lies at the intersection of computer graphics, computer vision, and machine learning, with a particular obsession for 3D faces. My PhD research focused on reconstructing 3D faces from arbitrary videos or images, and then bringing them to life through animation.

In particular in my research I focused on the perceptual quality of these reconstructions and animation — that is, how real or emotionally convincing they feel to us humans. After all, we want the future generations of AI to have a face that we can relate to, right? (I mean, we’re not there yet, but I’m working on it.)

Along the way, I’ve had the pleasure of spending time at Amazon, Trinity College Dublin, and BarcelonaTech.
Before that, I worked with Disney Research Zurich on 3D face capture, and with Vizrt Switzerland on human tracking for sports broadcasting.

I hold a Master’s degree in Visual Computing from ETH Zurich and a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from the Czech Technical University.

In my free time I usually look for creative ways to get injured such as skiing, snowkiting, kiteboarding, mountaineering, multi-day trekking or Brazilian jiu-jitsu.