I am currently an Assistant Professor (Professor Lector) at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona.
I received my PhD in 2006 (as a Fulbright scholar) at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) under the supervision of Dr. Norman I. Badler . Afterwards I was a post-doctorate researcher at the TC Chan Center for Building Simulation and Energy Studies with Dr. Ali Malkawi and the Center for Human Modeling and Simulation with Dr. Norman I. Badler . I competed my undergrad studies at the Universitat de Valencia and received a MSc in Vision, Imaging and Virtual Environments from the University College London.

Full CV (PDF)

PhD Abstract. Dissertation entitled “Modeling Realistic Autonomous Agent Crowd Movement: Social Forces, Communication, Roles and Psychological Influences”.


Research Interests

During the past few years I have been carrying out research in the area of computer graphics modeling and animation techniques for real-time simulation of virtual humans. Currently I am interested in crowds simulation and coordinated multi-agent simulation for real-time interactive virtual environments. I am working with the Center for Human Modelling and Simulation in improving the behavior or virtual agents. You can find more information in the HMS web and I am also studying presence in Virtual Environments as a validation method for crowd simulation, this work is being carried out with Prof. Mel Slater at UPC

Book coming soon: Crowd Modeling. Synthesis Lectures on Computer Graphics and Animation.
N.I. Badler, N. Pelechano and J. Allbeck. Morgan & Claypool Publishers (June 15, 2008)


JOB OFFER: We are currently looking for PhDs, Post-Docs or research assistants passionate about crowd simulation, virtual environments and/or virtual-human interaction, so if you are interested please send me and email (npelechano(AT)lsi(DOT)upc(DOT)edu). More information about our group can be found at www.event-lab.org


Publications

N. Pelechano, C. Stocker, J. Allbeck, N. Badler. Being a Part of the Crowd: Towards Validating VR Crowds Using Presence.
Seventh International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. (AAMAS'08) Estoril (Portugal) May 12-16, 2008
video (4.5MB. divX)

F. Durupinar, J. Allbeck, N. Pelechano and N. Badler. Creating Crowd Variation with the OCEAN Personality Model. (Short paper)
Seventh International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. (AAMAS'08) Estoril (Portugal) May 12-16, 2008

N. Pelechano, A. Malkawi. Evacuation Simulation Models: Challenges in Modeling High Rise Building Evacuation With Cellular Automata Approaches.
Automation in Construction Journal. vol. 17 no.4, pp.377-385. Elsevier. 2008

N. Pelechano, C. Stocker, J. Allbeck, N. Badler. Feeling Crowded? Exploring Presence in Virtual Crowds. (Short paper)
Proceedings of PRESENCE 2007. The 10th annual International Workshop on Presence. October 25-27, Barcelona (Spain). pp 373-376.

N. Pelechano, J. Allbeck and N. Badler. Controlling Individual Agents in High-Density Crowd Simulation.
ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA'07) August 3-4, San Diego (USA). 2007
video (51MB. divX)
SCA presentation (pdf)

B. Sunshine-Hill, J.M. Allbeck, N. Pelechano and N. Badler. Generating Plausible Individual Agent Movement from Spatio-Temporal Occupancy Data.
Workshop of Massive Datasets, Nagoya (Japan) 2007.

N. Pelechano, A. Malkawi. Comparison of Crowd Simulation for Building Evacuation and an Alternative Approach.
The 10th International Building Performance Simulation Association Conference and Exhibition. Beijing (China). Sept 3-6. 2007

N. Pelechano, N. Badler. Modeling Crowd and Trained Leader Behavior during Building Evacuation.
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications. vol. 26, no. 6, pp. 80-86, Nov/Dec, 2006.

McDonald, D., Lazarus, R., Leung, A., Hussain, T., Bharathy, G., Eidelson, R.J. Pelechano, N., Sandhaus, E. Silverman, B.G. Interoperable human behavior models for simulations.
Proceedings of the 2006 Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation (BRIMS) Conference. May 15-18, Baltimore, MD (USA) 2006.

N. Pelechano, K. O'Brien, B. Silverman, N. Badler. Crowd Simulation Incorporating Agent Psychological Models, Roles and Communication.
First International Workshop on Crowd Simulation. (V-CROWDS '05) Lausanne (Switzerland) 24-25 November 2005.

P. Morillo, M. Fernandez, N. Pelechano: A Grid Representation for Distributed Virtual Environments.
2003 Annual Crossgrid Project Workshop & 1st European Across Grids Conference, February, 13th-14th, 2003.
Grid Computing, Lecture Note in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag Berlin, volume 2970/2004, pp. 182-189. 2004.
(Abstract)
(Extended Abstract)


Thesis and Technical Reports:

N. Pelechano, Modeling Realistic Autonomous Agent Crowd Movement: Social Forces, Communication, Roles and Psychological Influences”.
(PhD dissertation, Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania. June 2006)
PhD Abstract.

N. Pelechano, L. Bull, M. Slater. Fast Collision Detection Between Cloth and a Deformable Human Body.
(technical report, University College London, 2003)

N. Pelechano: Real-Time Collision Detection Between Cloth and Skinned Avatars using OBB. 2002 (PDF)
Master Thesis at University College London (UCL) for my MSc VIVE (Vision, Imaging and Virtual Environments)

N. Pelechano:Study and development of a 3D deformation simulation system of flexible figures oriented to be used in characters interactive visualization. 2001 (PDF) (Spanish)
Thesis for my last year of Ingenieria Informatica (Computer Science) at Universitat de Valencia



Conferences

"Exploring Virtual Reality as a Validation Methodology"
II Jornadas sobre Realidad Virtual y Entornos Virtuales (JOREVIR'2008)
Universidad de Castilla - La Mancha, Albacete (Spain) 11 June 2008.

"Evacuation Simulation. Research Models and Commercials Tools"
Simulation + Building Workshop
T.C. Chan Center for Building Simulation & Energy Studies.
School of Design, University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia (USA) 10 November 2006.

"Improving the Realism of Agent Movement for High Density Crowd Simulation"
The ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA'06)
Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna (Austria) 2-4 September 2006.
poster - extended abstract

"Human-Avatar Interacion in Virtual Environments"
Digital Media in Communication
Sponsored by The Annenberg Public Policy Center
University of Pennsylvania, 31 October - 1 November 2003


Teaching

Fall 2007 and Spring 2008: Visualisation and Graphic Interaction (VIG). I am the teacher for groups 22 and 42.

Fall 2004, 2005 and 2006 : Teaching Assistant for Computer Graphics (CSE 460/CIS 560) at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), USA.


Past Projects

The following list contains the main projects in which I have been collaborating:

LOTTE pedestrian movement study with elevators simulation: funded by SOM. Carried out at the University of Pennsylvania with Professor Ali Malkawi. (2006)

Modeling of Crowd and Leader Behavior: funded by the U.S. Army UO FACT. Carried out at the University of Pennsylvania with Professors Norman I. Badler and Barry Silvermann. (2005)

Bystander: Simulation of a virtual scenario where we can study how real people behave when they confront a violent situation. For this project I developed a method to study the relation between human postures and emotions. This project is being developed by the Computer Science Department at the University College London (UCL) (2002-2003)

Prometheus – Cloth Simulator: This project is part of the Prometheus project, a real-time 3D studio broadcast plataform. The Cloth Simulator is being developed by the UCL VR group.

Finestrat: For this project an avatar that can be handle by a real actor has been developed. This avatar includes semiautonomous behavior and flexible deformation modelling based on FFD. Finestrat is part of the ARTIST project, an animation package for real-time interactive simulation. This project has been carried out by the ARTEC group at Institut de Robotica, Universitat de Valencia.



Contact 

   


Postal Address: 

     Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
     Llenguatges i Sistemes Informàtics
     Edifici Omega, Despatx 322
     c/ Jordi Girona 1-3
     E - 08034 Barcelona, Spain 

Phone: +34 93 413 7858 
 Email:      npelechano(AT)lsi(DOT)upc(DOT)edu




Updated April 2008 by Nuria Pelechano