CASA 2020 – VIRTUAL CONFERENCE WITH PARTICIPANTS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD

After receiving an award in 2018 for the best article published at the Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents in Beijing, Bournemouth University was chosen to host the 33rd edition of CASA virtually this autumn.
Despite the apprehensions about the preparation and running of this first online edition, the event was in the end very positive: 50 participants connected from all over the world and 85 papers were submitted (57 of which were accepted). At this occasion, the VISTA project presented an overview of work as well as videos or some of the key project animations, created by the team at Bournemouth University.
Live from Singapore, Professor Nadia Thalmann, president of the conference (and director of MIRALab / C.U.I., University of Geneva, Switzerland), kicked off the conference on 13 October at 13:00 (UK) at the opening ceremony, which was followed by a welcoming address by the co-chair, Jian Zhang of Bournemouth University and presentations by the 2 keynote speakers, Prof. Taku Komura, University of Edinburgh, UK and Dr Changxi Zheng, Columbia University, US. (Zoom recordings will be posted online shortly).
The 2nd and 3rd days were organised as follows: each presentation (pre-recorded on YouTube) started with a 5-minute introduction to their work by the speakers, followed by a Q&A time. Most of the authors joined their session.

Finally, the president closed the ceremony on Thursday 15 by announcing the names of the 2 best papers submitted this year. Nan Xiang, Ruibin Wang, Tao Jiang, Li Wang, Yanran Li, Xiaosong Yang and Jianjun Zhang from Bournemouth University received the award for the best student paper entitled ‘Sketch-based Modeling with a Differentiable Renderer’, in which the authors thank the European Regional Development Funds – VISTA AR project (funded by the Interreg France [Channel] England) for supporting their research.
The video presentation is also available on YouTube via this link: https://youtu.be/dFWVVHK6Xr4
In these uncertain times, it is reassuring to see that thanks to existing technologies and their progress, people (researchers, students, scientists…) from all over the world have been able to come together and share their ideas and knowledge for 3 consecutive days. After this trial, no matter where the next edition of CASA (physical or virtual) will be held, it is highly likely that it will be a success.

All information relating to the conference (conference programme and links to YouTube videos, presentation of keynote speakers, VISTA AR page, etc.) is available on the CASA webpage.