Election of the new Chair of the
IEEE Technical Committee on Haptics (TCH)

 

The candidates for Chair of TCH

After the closure of the Call for Nominations, the Election Committee contacted the nominees and deliberated on identifying suitable candidates. At the end of the process, two candidates have been identified:

Their respective bio-sketch and their vision statement are available below.

Please note that the deadline for voting is Monday, March 10, 2008.

To cast your vote, proceed directly to the following link.


MarcErnst

  • Marc O. Ernst


    Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Germany
 

Bio-sketch

Since the beginning of 2007 I am leader of the Research Group on Human Multisenory Perception and Action at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany. The group is interested in human multimodal perception and sensorimotor integration. For our investigations, we mainly use quantitative psychophysical and neuropsychological methods together with Virtual Reality techniques and Bayesian models of sensory perception. I studied Physics in Heidelberg and Frankfurt/Main. In 2000 I received my Ph.D. at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics for investigations on human visuomotor behavior. For this work I was awarded the Attempto-Prize (2000) from the University of Tübingen and the Otto-Hahn-Medaille (2001) from the Max-Planck-Society. Starting in 2000 I spent almost 2 years as a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley working with Prof. Martin Banks on psychophysical experiments and computational models investigating the integration of visual-haptic information. End of 2001 I returned to the Max Planck Institute and became principle investigator of the Sensorimotor Lab in the Department of Prof. Heinrich Bülthoff. Currently, the group participating in several international grants, including the EU Project ImmerSence and a HFSP project, and I am coordinating the 6th Framework IST European Project “CyberWalk”, which explores the human sensory processes involved in the control of locomotion.

More information about the group, CV, publication list, and international collaborations can be found at http://www.kyb.tuebingen.mpg.de/ernstgroup/
 

Vision Statement

My candidature for the TCH Chair at first might seem to be somewhat out of the ordinary because first my background is in neuroscience and second my main interest is in multisensory integration (that is, how touch interacts with the other human senses). However, I think that both these points are to my benefit. First the haptic community is very broad and in order to not narrow the field I think it is of benefit to have a chair who also represents this in his person. Secondly, to see what activities are going on in other (bigger) fields, such as vision or audition, may certainly help our emerging field of haptics to develop on a solid foundation.      
That is, my vision for leading TCH in the coming years is to keep the community as broad as it is (covering engineering, psychology, neuroscience, and applied sciences), while at the same time ensure scientific quality by helping to structure the scientific communication with dedicated scientific meetings. I think at the long run we need one major haptic meeting with significant impact where Americans, Europeans, Asians and the rest of the world feels represented. 
I have been working on haptic and multisensory perception for the last 10 years. I was Principle Investigator on several European Projects (e.g., Touch-HapSys and Immersence) focussing on haptics. These projects brought together many different research directions from engineering, psychology to neuroscience. Thus, I gathered much experience working in a very interdisciplinary field talking to people with very different backgrounds.  From this work several significant papers and book chapters on human haptic and multisensory perception emerged. I am a co-founder of the EuroHaptics society, and I served on Committees for the EuroHaptics, the Worldhaptics and the Haptic Symposium for the last 6 years. I am on the Editorial Board of the IEEE Transactions on Haptics and the ACM Transactions on Applied Perception, and I am a member of IEEE and of the TCH since the beginning.
I have traveled to most major haptic meetings in the past and would continue to do so if elected the TCH chair in order to network and to represent THC at these meetings. The research institute I am currently at is willing to support me when conducting this job. On average I could probably put in 5% of my time for this job which would correspond to 1,5 days a month – if certain issues are pressing of course more time can be devoted.
MatthiasHarders

  • Matthias Harders


    ETH Zurich, Switzerland

 

Bio-sketch

Matthias Harders is lecturer and senior researcher at the Computer Vision Lab of ETH Zurich, where he leads the Virtual Reality in Medicine Group. His current research focuses on haptic interaction and biomedical simulation. In the former area, he investigates data driven haptic rendering, integration of haptics in augmented reality environments, quantitative evaluation of deformation models, and haptically enhanced human computer interaction. He co-authored 57 publications, including two book chapters and one book on haptics-related topics.
Matthias Harders studied Computer Science at the University of Hildesheim, Technical University of Braunschweig, and University of Houston. Thereafter, he finished his doctoral degree on visuo-haptic medical segmentation at ETH Zurich in 2002, and completed his habilitation at ETH Zurich in 2007.
He led and is leading activities of ETH in several EU and Swiss haptics research projects.
In addition to this, he is a co-founder of the EuroHaptics conference series, the
EuroHaptics Society, and the IEEE RAS/CS Technical Committee on Haptics. He has
been strongly involved in the launch of the IEEE Transactions on Haptics, and acts as Associate Editor for the ACM Transactions on Applied Perception as well as the IEEE ToH.
He served as a guest editor for ACM TAP. Moreover, he has been involved in the
organization of conferences and events in haptics, for instance as program co-chair of WorldHaptics and Eurohaptics meetings, as well as organizer of several haptis-related tutorials, seminars, and symposia.
Matthias Harders contributed to the start of the IEEE RAS/CS Technical Committee on Haptics as initial co-chair. For this activity he has been one of the recipients of the IEEE RAS Most Active Technical Committee Award 2007. In addition, for his work he has also received the ETH-TIT Award 2003 and the CAOS Award 2006. Finally, he is also the co-founder of the ETH spin-off company VirtaMed which focuses on commercializing visuo-haptic surgical training systems.
 

Vision Statement

More than a decade ago my involvement and interest in the field of haptics was kindled. From the beginning I was fascinated by the interdisciplinarity of the area which brings together researchers from very diverse backgrounds.
Said interdisciplinarity has always been the guiding motto of my contributions to the creation of a haptics community. It was for instance the underlying notion for the foundation of the EuroHaptics conference series in Zurich in the summer of 2000 by Alan Wing and me. The same is true for my involvement in the launch and establishment of the IEEE Technical Committee on Haptics.
Together with Hong Tan and Hiroyuki Kajimoto – backed by an excellent team of vice chairs and senior advisors – we were able to successfully establish the TC jointly in the IEEE Computer Society and Robotics and Automation Society in a very short time. Supported by our members – whose number has now grown to 330 – this process was carried on spawning further highlights for the community. One significant milestone, related to the TC, that I had the privilege to be involved in was the setup of the IEEE Transactions on Haptics; the first issue of which will be published this year. Furthermore, I guided the submission of the three proposals of TCH to the RAS Initiative Grants Call 2007. Of a total 39 submitted proposals ten where funded – including two of our TCH. For these and other activities in setting up the TC we were happy to receive the IEEE RAS Most Active Technical Committee Award 2007.
As outlined above, the setup of TCH has been quite successful so far, nevertheless, work still remains to be done. I would be honored and happy if I could continue our activities in the role of Chair of TCH. I plan to put a focus on the interdisciplinarity of haptics by trying to increase the involvement of researcher outside of the engineering field. This can be facilitated by membership drives similar to the one we were able to organize through the
RAS Initiative Grant. Also in 2008 I will encourage and guide the participation of TCH members in this Call. A further focus will be supporting the start and growth of the Transactions on Haptics which we hope to establish as the top journal in our field. Moreover, I will strive to extend our membership base by providing further services to the members, for instance information dissemination via newsletters or additional functionality of the webpage.
Finally, a charter according to IEEE requirements has to be set up for the TCH – jointly in CS and RAS. Related to this, a central part in my future activity would be the negotiation between the representatives of both Societies and strengthening our position as a joint Technical Committee. This for instance includes the organization of haptics conferences under the TCH umbrella. My earlier involvement as co-chair in previous discussions and
contact to the key players will be quite beneficial in this step.
In conclusion, I would be happy to serve our community as Chair of the Technical Committee on Haptics and would be happy about your support!

Cast your vote

Votation is now closed. Results will be soon available.

Election Committee:

Mandayam A. Srinivasan (Chair), MIT Touch Lab
Antonio Frisoli, PERCRO Scuola Superiore S. ANNA
Dong-Soo Kwon, KAIST

 

 

 

 

Call for nominations: chair, IEEE Technical Committee on Haptics

Nominations are sought for Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Haptics (TCH) for the April 2008 to March 2010 term.  Please fill out the nomination form at the following website on or before Saturday, February 2, 2008. 

We encourage self-nominations as well as nominations of others. You need to be a member of TCH to nominate or be a candidate. To become a member of TCH, please click on the following link.

After the nomination deadline, the election committee will choose the final candidates for election from the pool of nominees. Following the agreement of the finalists to be candidates in the election, additional documents such as their bios and position statements will be requested and posted on the TCH election website by the election committee.

Information about the IEEE Technical Committee on Haptics can be found at http://www.worldhaptics.org

For further information on the TCH election procedures, see the following link.

Please circulate this notice to your colleagues.

Mandayam A. Srinivasan (Chair)
Antonio Frisoli
Dong-Soo Kwon

Election Committee for TCH Chair

 

 

Procedure to elect the new Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Haptics (TCH) for April 2008 to March 2010

 

  • 1. Form an election committee: The chair of the election committee will be appointed by the current TCH chair/co-chairs. The appointed chair will then form the election committee.

  • 2. Issue a call for nomination: TCH Members will be invited to submit nominations online at the TCH website. Self-nominations will be accepted. To become a member of TCH, please click on the following link.

  • 3. Select 2-3 final candidates: The election committee will aim to select the top 2 to 3 candidates and request them to send their bios and position statements. The candidates need to be members of TCH.

  • 4. Vote for the candidates: The candidates' bios and position statements will be posted online. TCH members will vote for only one of the candidates on the TCH website. Alternatively, to ensure that a popular candidate is not eliminated in the nomination process, the voters will be able to write-in a new candidate.

  • 5. Announcement of the new chair/co-chairs: The candidate who receives most votes from the TCH membership will become the next TC chair. The new chair will select two co-chairs. It is suggested that the chair and co-chairs be from different continents.

 

Acknowledgements for nomination web support to Prof. Antonio Frisoli (Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Italy), Technical Committee on Haptics Vice Chair for Information Dissemination.