Paul Koppen

About me

My main mode of transportation is a bike, though I much prefer to swim, snowboard, sail, or go ice skating. I like to be outside. I have a lovely wife and a cheeky monkey of a daughter. This winter she set her first steps on ice. After having lived on the 13th floor in London we now live in Guildford in a house with a garden, and very close to the Downs.

Oh, and I like espresso.

Employment

I am a PhD student at CVSSP under prof. Josef Kittler and Bill Christmas. In 2009 I graduated with an MSc degree in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Amsterdam, in the ISLA group. The research focused on modelling real-life video data such that it can be instantaneously searched. The interest in models for computer vision led me to the CVSSP group, where I am now researching differences between people's faces in 3D (with a genetic view to it). If a machine could learn the criteria this is based upon, then it might be able to see...

... you have the eyes of your mother. :-)

Awards / Experiences

• Member of the PASCAL 2 Network of Excellence, 2011—2012
• EPSRC PhD studentship, 2010—2012
• First prize in Logica's Working Tomorrow Graduate Awards, 2008
• IBM Best Student Recognition Event in Zürich, 2008
• IBM Extreme Blue summer internship, 2007

Personal projects

Out of a general interest I have over the years played with computers and the web for quite a bit. I never bothered to put anything of that online. For a few of those projects, however, I have now managed to change that. You can find a few scripts that may be of interest to you here, like a zero-configuration WordPress back-up script, or a jQuery plugin that renders thumbnails of your Picasa albums or photos.