Author: Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann
Affiliation: University of Geneva
Country: Switzerland
Personal Website: Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann
Research Group Website: MIRALab

Bibliography: Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann, "Virtual humans: Their Past, Their Present and Their Future", Journal of the Robotics Society of Japan, Vol. 24, No. 5, pp.597-599, 2006.

Prof. Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann has pioneered research into virtual humans over the last 25 years. She obtained several Bachelor's and Master's degrees in various disciplines (Psychology, Biology and Chemistry) and a PhD in Quantum Physics from the University of Geneva. From 1977 to 1989, she was a Professor at the University of Montreal where she founded the research lab MIRALab. She was elected Woman of the Year in the Grand Montreal for her pionnering work on virtual humans and her work was presented at the Modern Art Museum of New York in 1988.
She moved to the University of Geneva in 1989, where she founded the Swiss MIRALab, an internationally interdisciplinary lab composed of about 30 researchers. She is author and coauthor of a very high number of research papers and books in the field of modeling virtual humans, interacting with them and living in augmented life. She has received several scientific and artistic awards for her work, mainly on the Virtual Marylin and the film RENDEZ-VOUS A MONTREAL, but more recently, in 1997, she has been elected to the Swiss Academy of Technical Sciences, and has been nominated as a Swiss personality who has contributed to the advance of science in the 150 years history CD-ROM produced by the Swiss Confederation Parliament. She has directed and produced several films and real-time mixed reality shows, among the latest are the UTOPIANS (2001), DREAMS OF A MANNEQUIN (2003) and THE AUGMENTED LIFE IN POMPEII (2004). She is editor-in-chief of the Visual Computer Journal published by Springer-Verlag. She also participated to political events as to the WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM in DAVOS where she was invited to give several talks and seminars.