Fons Kuijk

Biography

I (Dr. Fons Kuijk) am senior researcher at CWI specialized in the area of autonomous conversational agents, 3D graphics, animation and tele-immersion technology. I am interested in HCI and advocate a human-centered approach aimed to make technology supportive rather than leading. My work on a nonconventional architecture of the graphics pipeline and novel algorithms for 3D graphics rendering formed the basis of my PhD. I am former CTO of Epictoid and Chartoon software (2001 - 2009, both in Amsterdam), where I managed research and development of innovative software for advanced production of animations and for creating conversational agents. I have participated in European projects since 1983. In the last decade these include Passepartout (2005 – 2007) in which I was responsible for development and integration of conversational agent technology, TA2 (2008 – 2012) in which I developed an authoring tool for story telling based on images, and REVERIE (2011-2015) in which I was leading the crucial work package on Interaction and Autonomy needed to create an immersive experience in a virtual environment. I was involved in 2-IMMERSE (2015 - 2018) in which I worked on an authoring tool for temporal and spatial aspects of multimedia content, and VRTogether (2017 - 2020) were I worked on capturing 3D point clouds. I have been member of the Central Working Council of NWO since 2017, where I was co-chair in 2018 - 2019 and chair in 2019 - 2021 and member of CWI's Working Council from 2017 - 2021 (co-chair from 2018 - 2019 and chair from 2019 - 2021).