News | Distributed & Interactive Systems

Understanding Users to Optimise 3D Experiences

Publication date: 2024-01-31

Silvia Rossi of CWI’s Distributed & Interactive Systems group is working on two areas of understanding user interactions in immersive media. She tells all about it in this story.

DIS Co-Organises Dagstuhl Seminar on Social XR

Publication date: 2023-12-25

Pablo Cesar, from the Distributed and Interactive Systems group (DIS) of CWI, has co-organized the Dagstuhl Seminar #23482, titled “Social XR: The Future of Communication and Collaboration".

DIS Group at Immersive Tech Week 2023: Facilitating the Convergence of NLP and XR

Publication date: 2023-12-13

On November 29th, the Distributed & Interactive Systems (DIS) group was invited to participate at the Immersive Tech Week 2023 (https://www.immersivetechweek.co), where innovation and inspiration converge in the dynamic world of eXtended Reality (XR) technologies.

Best ACM SIGMM 2023 PhD Thesis Award for Silvia Rossi

Publication date: 2023-11-21

During the ACM Multimedia Conference (ACM MM 2023), premier conference and a key world event to display scientific achievements and innovative industrial products in the multimedia field, Silvia Rossi, postdoctoral researcher in DIS group, won the 2023 SIGMM Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis in Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications. This was announced by the organisation during the gala dinner on Wednesday, 1st November.

CWI's Lectures on Digital Cultural Heritage

Publication date: 2023-11-21

The importance of arts and cultural heritage is unquestionable, helping citizens to develop emotional and cognitive processes. The cultural sector faces a number of challenges, from digitalization of their collections to create digital surrogates, to curation and interpretation, to showcasing and exhibition. The traditional model of the cultural experience as passive observation is decisively shifting to active, interpretive engagement. Cultural heritage institutions are rethinking and reworking their spaces to promote deeper understanding of their collections and mission, greater interactivity with their audiences, a fuller range of activities, and a more advanced usage of immersive technologies. They are exploring as well how to make their collection accessible remotely.

One Year of AI, Media and Democracy Lab

Publication date: 2023-11-21

Last year AIM4DEM started the trajectory as a Dutch Research Council-funded Ethical, Legal, and Societal Aspects (ELSA) Lab. The overarching goal: to develop and test value-driven, human-centered AI applications and ethical and legal frameworks for responsible use of AI in the media. We do so in close collaboration with our project partners, which include journalists, media professionals, designers, citizens, researchers, and public and societal partners.

Pablo Cesar Keynotes "Towards Volumetric Video Conferencing Around the World"

Publication date: 2023-11-07

Prof. Pablo Cesar from the Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group from CWI and TU Delft keynoted the talk “Towards Volumetric Video Conferencing” in different venues in Europe and Latin America.

DIS Group at ACM MM Conference 2023

Publication date: 2023-10-31

Research carried out by the Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) has resulted in contributions to this year’s ACM Multimedia Conference (ACM MM 2023).

CWI Researcher Silvia Rossi Invited to the Dutch Media Week

Publication date: 2023-10-17

During the Dutch Media Week, postdoctoral researcher Silvia Rossi was one of the speakers at the program Cross Media Café on Spatial computing. She brought a scientific perspective talking about her work on understanding user behaviour in XR.

Master's Thesis Topics 2023-2024 at CWI DIS

Publication date: 2023-09-11

The Distributed & Interactive Systems group at CWI has new open positions for motivated students who would like to work on their Master’s thesis as an internship in the group. Topics include human computer interaction, artificial intelligence, cognitive (neuro-)science and/or interaction design. Keep reading for more information about research topics, requirements and contact information.

DIS Organises Sping School on Social XR

Publication date: 2023-05-25

As part of the research semester program of CWI, the Distributed and Interactive Systems group (DIS) organized the Spring School on Social XR. The event took place on March 13th – 17th 2023, and attracted 33 students from different disciplines (technology, social sciences and humanities). The program included 18 lectures, 4 of them open, by 20 instructors. The event was organized by Irene Viola, Silvia Rossi, and Pablo Cesar from CWI; and Omar Niamut from TNO. It was co-sponsored by ACM SIGMM, the ACM Special Interest Group on Multimedia, and The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

DIS Group at Point Cloud Visual Quality Assessment Grand Challenge

Publication date: 2023-05-23

The Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group from CWI participated in the competitive Grand Challenge “Point Cloud Visual Quality Assessment” from the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (IEEE ICIP).

Max Award for Community Opera "La Gata Perduda"

Publication date: 2023-05-11

The DIS group provided an interactive platform for facilitating the co-creation of the Opera. Max awards are the most important performing arts awards in Spain.

DIS Group at ACM CHI Conference 2023

Publication date: 2023-04-17

Research carried out by the Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) has resulted in contributions to this year’s ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

DIS Group Releases Open Source Software for Digital Humanities

Publication date: 2023-03-09

Together with European partners the DIS group investigated the potential which Opera could have to foster social transformation in disparate communities through the use of technology.

DIS Group Contributes to the Book "Immersive Video Technologies"

Publication date: 2022-11-24

Video technologies have been evolving significantly and in many different directions over the last few decades, with the ultimate goal of providing a truly immersive experience to users. The idea is to give viewers a lifelike perspective. After setting up a common background for these technologies, based on the plenoptic function theoretical concept, the book Immersive Video Technologies offers a comprehensive overview of the leading technologies enabling visual immersion, including omnidirectional (360 degrees) video, light fields, and volumetric video.

Over One Million Euro for CWI and Sound & Vision for XR Research

Publication date: 2022-11-16

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) and Sound & Vision are partners in the recently launched European research project TransMIXR. TransMIXR develops technologies that enable professionals in the cultural and creative industries to create new productions in eXtended Reality (XR), and provides innovative ways to experience immersive media productions. Together, Sound & Vison and CWI have received over 1 million euros to realize their work within the project. This is part of a total of 9 million euros TransMIXR has received from the Horizon Europe Programme.

DIS Group Supports Community Opera that Premiered in Barcelona

Publication date: 2022-10-19

On 5 October 2022 the world witnessed the premiere of La Gata Perduda (The Lost Cat) at the Liceu opera house in Barcelona. This novel opera was created by the Liceu and migrant residents from the vibrant Raval neighbourhood. CWI’s Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group played a special part in the process: it developed the Co-Creation Space (CCS) to support the creation of the opera in a digital environment.

DIS Wins Best Demo Award at ACM Multimedia 2022

Publication date: 2022-10-17

The Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) has received the best demo award at ACM International Conference on Multimedia, with the paper “Mediascape XR: A cultural heritage experience in Social VR” by Ignacio Reimat, Yanni Mei, Evangelos Alexiou, Jack Jansen, Jie Li, Shishir Subramanyam, Irene Viola, Johan Oomen, and Pablo Cesar. The MediaScape XR Virtual Museum enables visitors to interact with the heritage artefacts of Sound and Vision in a virtual space shared with other remote visitors, while allowing social interactions in real time between them. This video showcases the work.

Fine-grained Temporal Emotion Recognition in Video

Publication date: 2022-10-03

Emotions play an important role in users’ selection and consumption of video content. According to the gratification theory, emotions influence users’ video selection either directly, by providing gratifying experiences, or indirectly, by contributing to their cognitive and social needs. Fine-grained emotion recognition is the process of automatically identifying the emotions of users at a fine-level of granularity. This granularity is typically between 0.5s to 4s according to the duration of emotions. By recognizing users’ emotion at a fine level of granularity, we can add an emotion layer on the videos which shows the dynamic changes of users’ emotions. It can help content providers better understand the users' emotions towards their products and adjust the content based on these inferences.

Shaping the Technologies that Impact our Democracy

Publication date: 2022-09-15

Democracies around the world are currently coming under pressure from both without and within. At the same time, western media landscapes are becoming ever more polarised. The rise of artificial intelligence is impacting both areas in unprecedented ways, further complicating the picture. The new AI, Media & Democracy Lab, which officially opened on Wednesday, 14 September, with an event in Amsterdam’s Eye Film Museum, will be working at the crossroads of the three areas, attempting to stimulate innovative AI applications that will actually strengthen the democratic function of the media. The Lab is a collaboration between the UvA, the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS) and Centrum Wiskunde en Informatica (CWI), the Dutch National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science.

Dutch Post-CHI 2022 at CWI

Publication date: 2022-06-17

As part of the yearly Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) activities of CHI Nederland (CHI NL), this year CWI will host the Dutch Post-CHI 2022 as an in-person event on Wednesday, June 22.

Steven Pemberton on NOS News TV

Publication date: 2022-06-15

On 14 June, CWI’s Steven Pemberton was interviewed on national radio and television in the Netherlands, talking about the end of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. He appeared in the 6 and 8 o’clock NOS News on Dutch national TV, and in ‘News & Co’ on Radio 1. Pemberton, who in his time at CWI was one of the first Internet users in Europe, knows a lot about browser technology: he was a co-designer of HTML, CSS, XHTML, XForms, RDFa, and other Web technologies at W3C.

Symposium on Human-Centered Multimedia to Celebrate Pablo Cesar's Professorship Appointment

Publication date: 2022-04-26

On May 20th 2022, Prof. Dr. Pablo Cesar will give his inaugural lecture at TU Delft, Aula, to celebrate his appointment to professorship. The lecture, titled “Human-Centered Multimedia: Making Remote Togetherness Possible”, will provide an overview of his research with a focus on volumetric video conferencing and the future of eXtended Reality (XR) as a collaboration and communication medium.

DIS at CHI 2022

Publication date: 2022-04-15

Research carried out by the Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) has resulted in contributions to this year’s ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2022). CHI is the flagship conference of ACM SIGCHI, the premier international society for professionals, academics and students who are interested in technology and human-computer interaction. Below we highlight the work we will present (2 full papers, 1 Late-breaking Work, 3 workshop position papers), and make two announcements about the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Practice Award and CHI Nederland.

Steven Pemberton Awarded the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Practice Award 2022

Publication date: 2022-04-04

CWI researcher Steven Pemberton has been awarded the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Practice Award 2022. The award is presented to individuals for outstanding contributions to the practice and understanding of human-computer interaction, and recognizes the very best and most influential applications of human-computer interaction. It is awarded for a lifetime of innovation and leadership.

Master's Thesis Topics 2022 at CWI DIS

Publication date: 2022-04-08

The Distributed & Interactive Systems group at CWI has new open positions for motivated students who would like to work on their Master’s thesis as an internship in the group. Topics include human computer interaction, artificial intelligence, cognitive (neuro-)science and/or interaction design. Keep reading for more information about research topics, requirements and contact information.

DIS Group Pilots the Co-Creation Space for Digital Humanities Together with the Liceu Opera in Barcelona

Publication date: 2022-03-10

The main objective of the TRACTION project is to support social transformation of inequality, using technology to help diverse communities across the European Union participate in the creation of opera. One key challenge of digital co-creation is allowing professionals and community members from diverse cultural, language, and technology backgrounds to easily have conversations about media. As part of the project, the DIS group at CWI is developing The Co-creation Space, a platform that supports professionals and community members from diverse backgrounds to engage in creative discussion about media in a “safe space.” The tool was recently piloted together with the LICEU opera house in Barcelona.

AI, Media & Democracy Lab Receives Over 2 Million Euros for Human-Centered AI Research

Publication date: 2022-01-28

The AI, Media & Democracy Lab, a collaboration of UvA, HvA and Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), has been awarded a grant of 2.1 million euros within the NWO call ‘Human-centered AI for an inclusive society - towards an ecosystem of trust’. CWI participates in this research project with three of its research groups: Distributed & Interactive Systems, Human-Centered Data Analytics and Intelligent & Autonomous Systems. With this grant, researchers in the so-called ELSA Labs will work together with media companies and cultural institutions to increase knowledge about the development and application of trustworthy, human-centered AI. In total, NWO is honoring 5 applications in this call; altogether, more than 10 million.

CWI and the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision Gave a Sneak Peek into the Future of Cultural Heritage

Publication date: 2021-12-10

Imagine you are in London while your friend is in Paris - how can you visit a museum located in Amsterdam together? The MediaScape Extended Reality (XR) application might be a promising solution. From November 15th to 17th, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) and the Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision gave a sneak peek into the future of shared, remote access to cultural heritage with the demonstration of a pioneering application, MediaScape XR.

CWI and Sound and Vision Open Virtual Museum During VR Days Amsterdam

Publication date: 2021-10-29

Will 3D video change the way we experience cultural heritage? From November 15th to 17th, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) and the Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision will give a sneak peek into the future of shared, remote access to cultural heritage with a demonstration of the pioneering work MediaScape Extended Reality (XR). MediaScape XR is the first demonstration where visitors can interact with the collection of Sound and Vision in a virtual space shared with other remote visitors. The event will take place during the VRDays - Immersive Tech Week - in OBA Oosterdok Amsterdam. The virtual demo is open to all visitors of OBA Oosterdok for free.

Master's Thesis Topics available at DIS

Publication date: 2021-10-28

The Distributed & Interactive Systems group at CWI has new open positions for motivated students who would like to work on their Master’s thesis as an internship in the group. Topics include ubiquitous computing, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction and machine learning. Keep reading for more information about research topics, requirements and contact information.

Future Computer Systems and Networking Research in the Netherlands: A Manifesto

Publication date: 2021-10-05

Computer systems and networks (CompSys) are the backbone of the digital infrastructure and, thus, are essential for all critical economic sectors and societal aspects of the Netherlands. Every bit of stored data and every computational task rely on a computer system to run on and, increasingly, on a network to reach it.

DIS Group Releases the CWIPC-SXR Dataset and Software Suite: Advancing Research on Social VR and Dynamic Point Clouds

Publication date: 2021-09-27

Real-time, immersive telecommunication systems are quickly becoming a reality, thanks to the advances in acquisition, transmission, and rendering technologies. Point clouds in particular serve as a promising representation in these types of systems, offering photorealistic rendering capabilities with low complexity. Further development of transmission, coding, and quality evaluation algorithms, though, is currently hindered by the lack of publicly available datasets that represent realistic scenarios of remote communication between people in real-time.

AI, Media & Democracy Lab Receives ELSA Lab Status

Publication date: 2021-07-15

The Dutch AI Coalition (NL AIC) has awarded ELSA Lab status to the AI, Media & Democracy Lab, a collaboration between the UvA, HvA, CWI, media partners, social partners and the municipality of Amsterdam. ELSA Lab status is a formal recognition of the quality of a given undertaking which is in line with the ambitions and strategic goals of the Dutch AI Coalition.

DIS Group Develops Co-Creation Space for Digital Humanities

Publication date: 2021-07-02

The main objective of the TRACTION project is to use new ideas and embrace new technologies to involve citizens in the creative process of opera. One key challenge of digital co-creation is allowing professionals and community members from diverse cultural, language, and technology backgrounds to easily have conversations about media. As part of the project, the DIS group at CWI is developing The Co-creation Space, a “private social media” tool that unites the media storage, sharing, and media editing capabilities of traditional social media. The tool allows participants to easily have conversations and interact about production content, such as music or costumes, in the co-creation process.

DIS Group Contributes to International Standard on Subjective Assessment for 360º Videos

Publication date: 2021-07-02

Research carried out by the Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), in collaboration with international research groups, has resulted in a new standardization item from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU): ITU-T Recommendation P.919, “Subjective test methodologies for 360º video on head-mounted displays.”

Human-Computer Interaction in the Netherlands: DIS at CHI2021 and Revitalising CHI Nederland

Publication date: 2021-04-23

Research carried out by the Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) has resulted in several contributions to this year’s ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2021). CHI is the flagship conference of ACM SIGCHI, the premier international society for professionals, academics and students who are interested in technology and human-computer interaction. This year the conference has transitioned into a fully virtual event. Below we highlight the work we will present (4 papers, 4 workshops, 1 LBW), and provide DOI links for document access.

UvA, HvA and CWI launch AI, Media & Democracy Lab

Publication date: 2021-02-22

How will AI change media? What new opportunities can AI create for democracy? And what conditions need to be fulfilled for these things to happen? Starting Monday, 22 February, researchers from the University of Amsterdam (UvA), Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS) and Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) will collaborate with media partners, societal partners and the municipality of Amsterdam in the new AI, Media & Democracy Lab, which will look to answer some of these questions.

Pablo Cesar Named ACM Distinguished Member

Publication date: 2020-12-17

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has named Pablo Cesar as one of the 64 Distinguished Members 2020. ACM distinguished members are recognized for their individual contributions to the field of computing. Successful candidates must have achieved a significant level of accomplishment or made a significant impact in the field of computing, computer science, and/or information technology. “The active participation of ACM members, in our organization, and in the field more broadly, is the foundation of a global scientific society,” explains ACM President Gabriele Kotsis. “With the Distinguished Member designation, ACM celebrates specific contributions of these members and their career growth as reflected in a long-term commitment to the field, as well as their collaboration with peers in supporting a global professional association for the benefit of all.”

PhD Position on User-Centered Optimisation for Immersive Media

Publication date: 2020-12-10

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) has a vacancy in the Distributed and Interactive Systems research group for a talented PhD student, on the subject of User-centered optimization for immersive multimedia systems

Irene Viola Awarded NWO WISE Grant

Publication date: 2020-12-15

Distributed and Interactive System (DIS) tenure-track researcher Irene Viola has been awarded a NWO Women In Science Excel (WISE) grant, which will be used to fund a PhD position on the topic of User-centered optimization for immersive multimedia systems.

DIS Group Realises World's First Volumetric Video Conference Over Public 5G Network

Publication date: 2020-11-10

VRTogether was present at VRDays Europe 2020, showcasing the world’s first live 3D video conference, using point clouds, over a commercial 5G network. VRTogether partners CWI and Sound presented a live demo to demonstrate the potential of the platform for emergency healthcare services. The demo showcased volumetric video conferencing (based on point clouds) between a doctor, in a medical examination room, and an (acting) injured patient outside in the street.

Modeling and Optimization of Network Assisted Video Streaming

Publication date: 2020-10-21

Computer networks are shared by multiple users and devices. Traffic from multiple applications is combined on a single network link, dividing the bandwidth between these applications. Video streaming, one of the most popular applications on the Internet, requires a relatively large and stable share of the bandwidth to be able to deliver high quality video. The architecture and protocols used by the dominant streaming technology, HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS), have enabled the massive scale of video content delivery as we know it today. Yet they are not suitable for meeting the demanding bandwidth requirements in shared networks.

DIS Group's "Lit Lace" Project Featured at Dutch Design Week

Publication date: 2020-10-15

Lit Lace, a collaborative project between the CWI’s Distributed & Interactive Systems Group (DIS) and the British Smart Fabric Designers Company Sara+Sarah is being featured in this year’s Dutch Design Week (17-25 October 2020).

DIS Group Awarded Best Paper Award by IEEE CAS Society

Publication date: 2020-10-13

Groundbreaking work that explores how new 3D media formats can be used for real-time remote collaboration, has been selected as the winner of the 2020 IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology Best Paper Award. The work was described in an article authored by Rufael Mekuria, Kees Blom, and Pablo Cesar from the Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group at CWI. The award ceremony will take place during the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) 2021, the flagship conference of the IEEE Circuits and Systems (CAS) Society.

Pablo Cesar Appointed Professor of Human-Centered Multimedia Systems

Publication date: 2020-10-12

Pablo Cesar has been appointed Professor of Human-Centered Multimedia Systems in the Department of Intelligent Systems (INSY) at TU Delft. Cesar leads the Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group at CWI and works at TU Delft. Pablo Cesar is the recipient of the Netherlands Prize for ICT Research 2020.

Pablo Cesar awarded Dutch Prize for ICT Research

Publication date: 2020-09-17

Last week Pablo Cesar was awarded the Dutch Prize for ICT research during a festive ceremony at the Hodshon House in Haarlem. NWO released a video in honor of Cesar’s work, in which he explains the focus of his research.

Master's Thesis Topics 2021

Publication date: 2020-09-23

The Distributed & Interactive Systems group at CWI has new open positions for motivated students who would like to work on their Master’s thesis as an internship in the group. Topics include smart textiles, activity recognition, physiological sensing, virtual reality, point clouds, Internet of things and web technologies. Keep reading for more information about research topics, requirements and contact information.

Tong Xue, Jie Li and Pablo Cesar Awarded Best Demo Award at ACM IMX 2020

Publication date: 2020-06-23

On June 19th 2020, the demo paper “A Social VR Clinic for Knee Arthritis Patients with Haptics” authored by Tong Xue (CWI, BIT), Jie Li (CWI), Guo Chen (IBM Research, Beijing) and Pablo Cesar (CWI) was awarded the Best Demo Award at the ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experience (ACM IMX) 2020. The demo was presented remotely, through a social virtual reality (VR) platform called Mozilla Hubs.

Jack Jansen Awarded Best Demo Award at ACM MMSys 2020

Publication date: 2020-06-15

On June 11th 2020, the paper “A Pipeline for Multiparty Volumetric Video Conferencing: transmission of point clouds over low latency DASH” authored by Jack Jansen (CWI), Shishir Subramanyam (CWI), Romain Bouqueau (Motion Spell), Gianluca Cernigliaro (i2Cat Foundation), Marc Martos Cabré (i2Cat Foundation), Fernando Pérez (The Modern Cultural) and Pablo Cesar (CWI, TU Delft) has been awarded with the Best Demo paper Award at the ACM MMSys 2020 conference.

DIS Group organised ACM CHI 2020 Social VR Workshop on VR Platform during COVID-19

Publication date: 2020-05-15

Jie Li and Pablo Cesar have successfully organized the ACM CHI2020 Social VR Workshop on a social VR platform called Mozilla Hubs. This workshop was co-organized together with David A. Shamma (FXPAL Laboratory), Vinoba Vinayagamoorthy (BBC R&D), Raz Schwartz (Facebook AR/VR), and Wijnand Ijsselsteijn (Eindhoven University of Technology). Due to the COVID-19, the event, scheduled on April 25 at the Hawaii Convention Center, was cancelled. However, the co-organizers decided to make use of the quarantine as a unique opportunity to explore how a social VR platform could be used to run the workshop. The workshop, “Social VR: A New Medium for Remote Communication & Collaboration”, was sponsored by the EU H2020 VRTogether project, and received technical support from Mozilla and FXPAL Laboratory.

Surjya Ghosh Selected to Participate in the 8th Heidelberg Laureate Forum

Publication date: 2020-05-07

Surjya Ghosh of CWI’s DIS group has been selected to participate in the 8th Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF), to be held from 19 to 24 September 2021, in Heidelberg, Germany. The annual HLF event selects a small group of 200 most qualified Young Researchers worldwide to meet pre-eminent scientists from the fields of mathematics and computer science.

Tenure Track Position in Multimedia Systems and Human-Computer Interaction

Publication date: 2020-04-17

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) invites excellent postdoctoral researchers to apply for a Tenure track position in Multimedia Systems and Human-Computer Interaction. The Distributed and Interactive Systems research group focuses on modeling and controlling complex collections of media objects (including real-time media and sensor data) that are interactive and distributed in time and space. The research group focuses on facilitating and improving the way people use interactive systems and how people communicate with each other, by combining data science with a strong human-centric, approach to understand user experience. This enables the group to design and develop next generation intelligent, empathic systems.

DIS at CHI 2020

Publication date: 2020-04-16

Research carried out by the Distributed and Interactive Systems from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) has resulted in several contributions to this year’s ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI is the flagship conference of ACM SIGCHI, the premier international society for professionals, academics and students who are interested in technology and human-computer interaction. While this year’s conference has been unfortunately cancelled due to COVID-19, below we highlight the work we would have presented. We unfortunately also had to cancel the 2nd Pre-CHI 2020 event that was to be held at CWI. Below we describe our contributions consisting of two full papers, two workshops, four late-breaking works, and one discussion panel.

DIS Starts Two Projects on Digital Humanities: TRACTION and MediaScape

Publication date: 2020-02-10

The Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) has obtained two projects in the area of digital humanities, at the crossroads between human-computer interaction and humanities: MediaScape and TRACTION. MediaScape is a Public-Private project, together with Sound and Vision (Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid), researching innovative interaction technologies for providing enriched access to cultural collections. TRACTION is a project partially funded by the European Commission under the call “DT-TRANSFORMATIONS-11-2019: Collaborative approaches to cultural heritage for social cohesion”, exploring how Opera can use digital tools for enabling social transformation.

Pablo Cesar awarded Dutch Prize for ICT Research 2020

Publication date: 2020-01-23

The 2020 Dutch Prize for ICT Research is to be awarded to Pablo Cesar. The group leader of the Distributive and Interactive Systems (DIS) group at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) and associate professor at Technical University Delft is given the prize for his research on modelling and controlling complex collections of media objects (including real-time media and sensor data that are distributed in time and space). The prize comes with 50,000 €, that can be freely spent by the winner to support their own research.

Alina Striner awarded Best Paper Award at ICIDS 2019

Publication date: 2019-12-09

On 22 November, Alina Striner of CWI’s Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group was awarded the Best Paper Award at ICIDS 2019, the International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling. Striner won the award for the paper “A Spectrum of Audience Interactivity for Entertainment Domains”. Coauthors are Sasha Azad and Chris Martens (NC State University).

Ivan Herman Contributes to Contract for the Web

Publication date: 2019-11-25

On 25 November, Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the Web Foundation have published the Contract for the Web. This contract was prepared by a large group of international experts, including Ivan Herman, member of CWI’s DIS research group and W3C Fellow on behalf of CWI.

Farewell Symposium 'Declarative Amsterdam' for Steven Pemberton

Publication date: 2019-10-07

CWI celebrates the career of Web pioneer and CWI researcher Steven Pemberton on 4 October 2019 with the symposium ‘Declarative Amsterdam’. Pemberton is, among others, well-known for his pioneering work on (X)HTML, CSS and XForms and for the inspiring lectures he gives all over the world. His farewell symposium starts with Pemberton’s own tutorial on XForms – a web language that can possibly speed up programming time 10 times.

Personal Quality of Experience for Multi-Party Desktop Video-Conferencing

Publication date: 2019-09-05

Video-conferencing via Skype or Google Hangouts has become one of the standard tools for communication in our daily lives. If we want the video-communication systems to react to network fluctuations and provide the best possible quality, it is necessary to understand what factors impact the users experience. In his PhD thesis “Personal Quality of Experience: Accurately modelling Quality of Experience for multi-party desktop video-conferencing based on systems, context and user factors” PhD student Marwin Schmitt of CWI’s DIS group explores how different aspects of user behavior, user state and context can improve modeling the Quality of Experience (QoE) of users.

Jie Li selected to participate in the 7th Heidelberg Laureate Forum

Publication date: 2019-04-18

Jie Li of the DIS group has been selected to participate in the 7th Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF), to be held from September 22 to 27, 2019, in Heidelberg, Germany. The annual HLF event selects a small group of 200 most qualified Young Researchers worldwide to meet pre-eminent scientists from the fields of mathematics and computer science.

DIS Group Releases Open Source Software Platform for Object-based Broadcasting Production

Publication date: 2019-04-15

H2020 EU-funded project 2-IMMERSE, of which CWI’s Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group is a member had, a successful final review meeting with the reviewers from the EU commission. The goal of the 2-IMMERSE project was to allow TV service providers to break free from the constraints of rendering a broadcast stream onto a single 16x9 frame. The final objective was to enable professionals to develop and deploy customizable interactive and multi-screen experiences that can adapt to the context of use. The results have been successfully demonstrated across multiple number of screens, multiple content genres (sports and drama), and multiple situations (home, schools and in public venues).

DIS at CHI 2019

Publication date: 2019-04-15

The Distributed and Interactive Systems group from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) will be present at CHI 2019 presenting three full papers: (1) a paper on measuring photo sharing experiences in social virtual reality (2) a paper that provides a comparison of unimodal navigation cues for child cyclists, and (3) a paper on sustained spatial relationships between hands and surfaces reveal anticipated action. We will additionally showcase our research on two case-studies, one on object-based broadcasting at the FA Cup in Wembley Stadium, and the other on a model-driven design approach for video-comparisons. CHI is the flagship conference of ACM SIGCHI, the premier international society for professionals, academics and students who are interested in human-technology & human-computer interaction.

Master's Thesis Topics available at DIS

Publication date: 22-07-2019

The Distributed & Interactive Systems group at CWI has new open positions for motivated students who would like to work on their Master’s thesis as an internship in the group. Topics include smart textiles, activity recognition, physiological sensing, virtual reality, point clouds, Internet of things and web technologies. Keep reading for more information about research topics, requirements and contact information.

Master's Thesis Topics available at DIS

Publication date: 11-04-2019

The Distributed & Interactive Systems group at CWI has new open positions for motivated students who would like to work on their Master’s thesis as an internship in the group. Topics include smart textiles, activity recognition, physiological sensing, virtual reality, point clouds, Internet of things and web technologies. Keep reading for more information about research topics, requirements and contact information.

Postdoc on the Subject of QoE for 3D Immersive Media and Volumetric Videos

Publication date: 26-03-2019

We are looking for excellent postdoctoral researchers to complement our team in Amsterdam. Applicants should be interested and have experience in doing research on Quality of Experience for 3D immersive media and volumetric videos. The appointment is for one year, with a possibility of extension.

Postdocs On The Subject Of Affective Computing In The Automotive Domain

Publication date: 27-02-2019

We are looking for two excellent postdoctoral researchers, one in human-computer interaction (HCI) and the other in machine learning / ubiquitous computing (UbiComp), with interest in doing research on physiological sensing and affective computing in an automotive context. The appointment is for two years, with a possibility of extension.

Award for DIS at ICT Open 2019

Publication date: 01-04-2019

CWI’s DIS group has been awarded with a prize at NWO’s ICT OPEN 2019, the event for ICT research in the Netherlands. The Distributed and Interactive Systems group won the second prize for their poster “Deep Sleep. A ballistocardiographic-based Deep Learning Approach for classifying Sleep Stages." The poster was selected out of 98 posters of which 12 were nominated.

CWI DIS Group Awarded Eu Worth Project Funding

Publication date: 21-03-2019

CWI’s Distributed & Interactive Systems Group (DIS) has been awarded a grant for a project by the EU’s WORTH Partnership Project.

Steven Pemberton In Nieuwsuur TV On Web@30

Publication date: 11-03-2019

To celebrate 30 years since Tim Berners-Lee’s proposal for the World Wide Web, an anniversary event is webcast on 12 March 2019. In the Netherlands, CWI Web pioneer Steven Pemberton was interviewed by Nieuwsuur, which was broadcast on national TV on 8 March.

Demo Prize For Steven Pemberton at XML Prague

Publication date: 11-02-2019

On 8 February Steven Pemberton of CWI’s DIS research group won the Demo Prize at the XML Prague conference for his demonstration ‘A Clock in XForms’. XForms is a web technology and W3C standard, co-designed by Pemberton, originally intended for handling forms on the web. However, since version 1.1 it has been generalized to allow the description of more general applications, and the demo was used to show that.

Best Paper Award for Paper Co-authored by Francesca De Simone at EUSIPCO 2018

Publication date: 14-09-2018

On September 5th 2018 the paper “Rate Distortion Optimized Graph Partitioning for Omnidirectional Image Coding” authored by Mira Rizkallah (INRIA), Francesca De Simone (CWI), Thomas Maugey (INRIA), Christine Guillemot (INRIA), and Pascal Frossard (EPFL), has been awarded with the Best Student Paper Award at the 26th edition of the European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO).

Francesca De Simone awarded with UK Royal Society International Exchanges 2018 Grant

Publication date: 11-09-2018

Distributed and Interactive System (DIS) researcher Francesca De Simone and University College of London (UCL) Assistant Professor Laura Toni have been awarded a Royal Society International exchanges 2018 grant for the project titled “User-centric omnidirectional video streaming for VR”.

Distributed and Interactive Systems Group at IBC 2018

Publication date: 10-09-2018

CWI’s Distributed and Interactive Systems group will be present at IBC 2018, from 14th to 18th of September at RAI Amsterdam, showcasing their research. The International Broadcasting Convention is the world’s most influential media, entertainment and technology show. In its 50th anniversary, IBC2017 had a record attendance attracting more then 57,000 attendees from 170 countries around the world, exhibiting more than 1,700 of the world’s key technology suppliers and showcasing a debate-leading conference. DIS will be presenting two of their ongoing research projects: 2IMMERSE and VRTogether.

Jie Li awarded with best paper award at ACM TV 2018

Publication date: 05-07-2018

On 27 June, Jie Li of CWI’s Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group has been awarded with the Best Paper Award at ACM TVX 2018, the ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for Television and Online Video. Li won the award for the paper “A New Production Platform for Authoring Object-based Multiscreen TV Viewing Experiences”. Co-authors are Pablo Cesar, Maxine Glancy (BBC), Jack Jansen and Thomas Röggla.

CWI contributes to trial new broadcasting system FA Cup final at Wembley

Publication date: 25-06-2018

H2020 EU-funded project 2-IMMERSE, of which CWI’s Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group is a member, passed another milestone at the recent 2018 FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium between Chelsea and Manchester United. They tested their prototype end-to-end live production system for object-based broadcasting, which allows viewers to experience television broadcast in a more immersive, personalized and interactive manner. The FA Cup is the world’s oldest football challenge cup with an audience estimated to be in the hundreds of millions. In addition to the on-site achievements and to illustrate the end-to-end nature of the trial, a small number of remote viewers in UK, Sweden and the Netherlands were engaged. They got the chance to experience the interactive, customizable and multi-screen version live broadcast of the 2018 FA Cup Final.

Best paper award for Francesca de Simone at ACM MMSys 2018

Publication date: 21-06-2018

On 14 June Francesca De Simone of CWI’s DIS group has been awarded with the Best Paper Award at the the ACM Multimedia Systems Conference (MMSys 2018), for the paper “Dynamic Adaptive Streaming for Multi-Viewpoint Omnidirectional Videos”, co-authored with Xavier Corbillon (IMT Atlantique, France), Gwendal Simon (IMT Atlantique, France) and Pascal Frossard (EPFL, Switzerland).

Demo prize for Steven Pemberton at 2018 Markup UK conference

Publication date: 20-06-2018

In June, Steven Pemberton (CWI) won a prize for his demonstration ‘A Histogram in XForms’ during the 2018 Markup UK conference at Imperial College London. Pemberton, who is the co-designer of web technology and W3C standard XForms, showed that XForms can reduce the production time and costs of an application by a factor of ten.

Joint industrial PhD program with Xinhuanet

Publication date: 07-06-2018

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) has launched a joint industrial PhD program with Xinhuanet in the research area of Social Internet of Things (IoT), smart textiles, and physiological computing. Xinhuanet Co. Ltd. is a key website in China with global influence, sponsored by Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese national news agency. The Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group, together with Xinhuanet, has hired a full-time PhD student, who will work together with Dr. Pablo Cesar and Dr. Abdallah El Ali, and with the Future Media Convergence Institute at Xinhuanet. The program provides the unique opportunity for conducting research in a top research institute in Europe, based on real-world problems related to healthcare or to the creative industries. This project additionally strengthens bilateral relationships between CWI and Xinhuanet.

Monitoring the Engagement of Groups by Using Physiological Sensors

Publication date: 06-06-2018

We live in a society based on experiences. Whether we look at a commercial for a holiday destination or interact with social media, the consumer experience plays a crucial role in our behavior. Yet, it is surprising to see how little it is actually known about how consumers value these experiences. The high-end technical solutions for shaping experiences sharply contrast with the rather conventional mechanisms used to measure them.

Mediasync: Handbook on multimedia synchronization published

Publication date: 04-05-2018

Recently, MediaSync: Handbook on Multimedia Synchronization edited by DIS members Pablo Cesar and Jack Jansen has been published by Springer. The book is “a unique reference and perfect companion book about the fascinating media synchronization (mediasync) research area. It provides a comprehensive overview of the mediasync research area from complementary perspectives, such as theoretical foundations, available technologies, use cases, standardization efforts and experimental studies.”

DIS at CHI 2018

Publication date: 22-03-2018

CWI’s Distributed and Interactive Systems group will be present at CHI 2018 showcasing their research. CHI is the flagship conference of ACM SIGCHI, the premier international society for professionals, academics and students who are interested in human-technology & human-computer interaction. DIS will present 3 research highlights at CHI: a case-study of developing a multi-sensory clubbing experience during Amsterdam Dance Event 2016, a poster on designing preproduction tools for multiscreen TV viewing, and a session on classifying news media sympathy on Twitter after crisis events. CWI contributes with a case study, a late-breaking work paper, and a long paper.

KIEM funding for developing a smart urban jacket

Publication date: 01-09-2017

CWI’s DIS group led by Pablo Cesar has been awarded KIEM funding by NWO Humanities. The funding will go to “Project Cairo: an intelligent soft-robotic jacket”. DIS will work on this project together with two partners: Borre Akkersdijk (Byborre) and Bas Overvelde (Amolf).

DIS contributes to MPEG’s work on Point Cloud Compression

Publication date: 25-07-2017

The Distributed and Interactive Systems group from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) has been a core contributor to the effort of Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) on 3D point cloud compression technologies. This effort aims at providing efficient representation of static objects and scenes, as well as dynamic objects and real-time acquisition environments. It has resulted in a recent call for proposals from MPEG (which expects to attract many submissions from the most representative industrial partners.

DIS researchers receive Excellence in DASH Award at MMSys 2017

Publication date: 23-06-2017

Jan Willem Kleinrouweler of CWI’s Distributed and Interactive Systems group has received the Excellence in DASH Award at ACM Multimedia Systems 2017 in Taipei, Taiwan.

Steven Pemberton wins 2017 Best Demo Award at XML London

Publication date: 19-06-2017

On 10 June 2017 Steven Pemberton of CWI’s Distributed and Interactive Systems research group won by acclamation the Demo Award at the XML London conference for his demonstration ‘XForms Game’.

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