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Noshaba Cheema

PhD Candidate @ MPII (IMPRS)
Researcher @ DFKI (ASR)

Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik
IMPRS-CS: International Max-Planck Research School for Computer Science
Campus E1 4
66123 Saarbrücken
Germany

Email: Get my email address via email

Research Interests

Animation
Games
VR/AR
Graphics
Vision
Machine Learning

News

2024/08 Devcom & Gamescom Presentation
2024/04 Girls' Day with Daniel Jung at Cisco Systems
2023/11 Co-Organization and Talk at SECTG Workshop for Early Career Researchers
2023/09 Interview with Florian Dalwigk (in German): "Interview mit einer promovierenden Glücksfee 🧚‍♀️"
2023/06 Invited Talk in the "Women in Computer Graphics" Panel at High Performance Graphics 2023
2022/09 Miss Germany 2023 Top 40 (out of ~15.000 candidates).
2021/10 Invited Talk at the Equal Esports festival.
2021/01 Horizon 2020 EIC Pathfinder (FETPROACT-EIC-07-2020) Grant# 101017779 ("Carousel+") accepted. Grants awarded to ~8% of applicants.

Publications

2024

Kosheleva, E.*, Jaiswal, S.*, Shamsafar, F., Cheema, N., Illgner-Fehns, K., Slusallek, P. (2024): Edge-aware Consistent Stereo Video Depth Estimation.
European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) 2024 Workshops.
[PDF]

2023

Cheema, N., Xu, R., Kim, N.-H., Hämäläinen, P., Golyanik, V., Habermann, M., Theobalt, C., Slusallek, P. (2023): Discovering Fatigued Movements for Virtual Character Animation.
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 Conference Papers.
[Project Page] [PDF] [Suppl. Document] [Suppl. Video] [Code]
Jeelani, M., Sadbhawna, Cheema, N., Illgner-Fehns, K., Slusallek, P., Jaiswal S. (2023): Expanding Synthetic Real-World Degradations for Blind Video Super Resolution.
Proc. IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops (CVPR-W) 2023.
[PDF] [Suppl. Document]
Rajpal, A., Cheema, N., Illgner-Fehns, K., Slusallek, P., Jaiswal S. (2023): High-Resolution Synthetic RGB-D Datasets for Monocular Depth Estimation.
Proc. IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops (CVPR-W) 2023.
[PDF] [Suppl. Document] [GTA-V HRSD Dataset]
Kosheleva, E., Jaiswal S., Shamsafar, F., Cheema, N., Illgner-Fehns, K., Slusallek, P. (2023): Edge-aware Consistent Stereo Video Depth Estimation.
arXiv 2023.
[arXiv Preprint]

2022

Top40 (out of 16000) in the Miss Germany competition 2022/2023.

2021

Xu, R.*, Cheema, N.*, Herrmann, E., Hämäläinen, P., Slusallek, P. (2021): Towards Fatigue Modeling for Locomotion Tasks.
Motion, Interaction and Games - Posters.
[PDF] [Fast Forward Video]
Cheema, N., Frey-Law, L., Naderi, K., Lehtinen, J., Slusallek, P., Hämäläinen, P. (2021): Modeling the "Gorilla Arm" Effect with Reinforcement Learning.
Motion, Interaction and Games - Posters.
[PDF] [Fast Forward Video]
Ghosh, A., Cheema, N., Oguz, C., Theobalt, C., Slusallek, P. (2021): Synthesis of Compositional Animations from Textual Descriptions .
Proc. International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) 2021.
[PDF] [arXiv Preprint] [Poster] [Presentation Video]
Taray, S., Jaiswal, S., Sharma, S., Cheema, N., Illger-Fehns, K., Slusallek, P., Ihrke, I.: A Comparative Study of PnP and Learning Approaches to Super-Resolution in a Real-World Setting.
DAGM German Conference on Pattern Recognition (GCPR) 2021. Oral
[Presentation Video]
Ghosh, A., Cheema, N., Oguz, C., Theobalt, C., Slusallek, P. (2021): Text-Based Motion Synthesis with a Hierarchical Two-Stream RNN.
SIGGRAPH 2021 - Posters.
[Abstract] [Poster] [Fast Forward Video] [Presentation Video]
Mitchell, K., Koniaris, B., Tamariz, M., Kennedy, J., Cheema, N., Mekler, E., van den Linden, P., Herrmann, E., Hämäläinen, P., McGregor, I., Slusallek, P., Mac Williams, C. (2021):
Embodied online dance learning objectives of CAROUSEL+.
2021 IEEE Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW).
[PDF] [Presentation Video]

2020

Sprenger, J., Du, H., Cheema, N., Fischer, K., Slusallek, P. (2020): Variational Interpolating Neural Networks for Locomotion Synthesis.
Advances in Transdisciplinary Engineering (TIIS) 11: DHM 2020, pp 71-81.
[PDF]
Cheema, N., Frey-Law, L., Naderi, K., Lehtinen, J., Slusallek, P., Hämäläinen, P. (2020): Predicting Mid-Air Interaction Movements and Fatigue Using Deep Reinforcement Learning.
Proc. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2020.
Telekom Women's STEM Award 2020 - Category: Artificial Intelligence
[PDF] [Fast Forward Video]

2019

Herrmann, E., Du, H., Antalki, A., Rubinstein, D., Schubotz, R., Sprenger, J., Hosseini, S., Cheema, N., Zinnikus, I., Manns, M., Fischer, K. Slusallek, P. (2019):
Motion Data and Model Management for Applied Statistical Motion Synthesis.
Smart Tools and Applications in Graphics 2019.
[PDF]
Sprenger, J., Du, H., Cheema, N., Herrmann, E., Fischer, K., Slusallek, P. (2019): Learning a Continuous Control of Motion Style from Natural Examples.
Motion in Games 2019.
[PDF] [Presentation Video]
Herrmann, E., Du, H., Cheema, N., Sprenger, J., Hosseini, S., Fischer, K., Slusallek, P. (2019): Adaptive Gaussian Mixture Trajectory Model for Physical Model Control using Motion Capture Data.
ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games 2019.
[PDF]
Cheema, N.*, Hosseini, S.*, Sprenger, J., Herrmann, E., Du, H., Fischer, K. and Slusallek, P. (2019):
Fine-Grained Semantic Segmentation of Motion Capture Data using Dilated Temporal Fully-Convolutional Networks.
Eurographics 2019.
SCA 2018 Best Poster Award
[PDF] [arXiv Preprint] [Fast Forward Video]
Du, H., Herrmann, E., Sprenger, J., Cheema, N., Hosseini, S., Fischer, K., Slusallek, P. (2019): Stylisitc Locomotion Modeling with Conditional Variational Autoencoder.
Eurographics 2019.
[PDF]

2018

Cheema, N.*, Hosseini, S.*, Sprenger, J., Herrmann, E., Du, H., Fischer, K. and Slusallek, P. (2018): Dilated Temporal Fully-Convolutional Network for Semantic Segmentation of Motion Capture Data.
ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation 2018 - Posters. Best Poster Award
[PDF] [arXiv Preprint] [Poster] [Fast Forward Video]

2017

Zetzsche, C., Rosenholtz, R., Cheema, N., Gadzicki, K., Fridman, L. and Schill, K.(2017): Neural Computation of Statistical Image Properties in Peripheral Vision.
Computational and Mathematical Models in Vision (MODVIS) 2017.
[PDF]

2016

Cheema, N., Fridman, L., Rosenholtz, R. and Zetzsche, C. (2016): Optimum statistical representation obtained from an intermediate feature level of the visual hierarchy.
In Proceedings of the 13th Biannual Conference of the German Cognitive Science Society (KogWis). Oral
[PDF]
(Part of Bachelor Thesis Media Informatics)
Cheema, N., Fridman, L., Rosenholtz, R. and Zetzsche, C. (2016): Neurobiologically realistic model of statistical pooling in peripheral vision.
(Part of Bachelor Thesis Media Informatics)

Research Funding

Horizon 2020 EIC Pathfinder (FETPROACT-EIC-07-2020) Grant# 101017779 ("Carousel+"). ~3.6 Mio.€ funding of which +1 Mio.€ for ASR-DFKI. Grants awarded to ~8% of applicants.

Students Advised

Master Thesis

Priyanka Upadhyay (2022): "Adversarial Text-to-Image Generation using Contrastive Learning".
Reviewers: Dr. Sunil Jaiswal, Prof. Dr. Philipp Slusallek
Anindita Ghosh (2021): "Synthesizing Compositional Animations from Textual Descriptions Using an RNN-based Hierarchical Two-Stream Network".
Reviewers: Prof. Dr. Christian Theobalt, Prof. Dr. Philipp Slusallek
Rui Xu (2021): "Learning Symmetric Locomotion using a Modified Cumulative Biomechanical Reward Function for Reinforcement Learning".
Reviewers: Prof. Dr. Perttu Hämäläinen, Prof. Dr. Philipp Slusallek

External Master Thesis

Aakash Rajpal - K-Lens (2022): "Attention Network Based Monocular Depth Estimation".
Main supervisor (1st) / reviewers: Dr. Sunil Jaiswal, Prof. Dr. Philipp Slusallek
Mehran Jeelani K-Lens (2022): "Video Super Resolution in the Wild: Designing a Practical Degradation Model for Blind Video Super Resolution".
Main supervisor (1st) / reviewers: Dr. Sunil Jaiswal, Prof. Dr. Philipp Slusallek
Elena Kosheleva - K-Lens (2022): "Consistent Stereo Video Depth Estimation".
Main supervisor (1st) / reviewers: Dr. Sunil Jaiswal, Prof. Dr. Philipp Slusallek
Olha Sokol - K-Lens (2022): "Video depth estimation with Neural Radiance Fields".
Main supervisor (1st) / reviewers Dr. Sunil Jaiswal, Prof. Dr. Philipp Slusallek
Samim Zahoor Taray - K-Lens (2020): "Learning-Based Single Image Super-Resolution Algorithm Analysis and Data Synthesis for Real-World Performance".
Main supervisor (1st) / reviewers: Prof. Dr. Ivo Ihrke, Prof. Dr. Philipp Slusallek

Teaching

Summer Term 2021: Game Development Technologies Seminar at the Univeristy of Saarland
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Philipp Slusallek
Summer Term 2019: Motion Synthesis for Virtual Characters at the Univeristy of Saarland
Supervisor: Dr. Klaus Fischer
Winter Term 2017: Basics of Signal Processing at the Univeristy of Saarland
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Dietrich Klakow
GTC Europe 2017: Intermediate Labs in Healthcare, Finance, Deep Reinforcement Learning, Content Creation using Tensorflow and/or Caffe with the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute Munich
Reference: Ana Martarello
Summer Term 2015: Applied Mathematics (for Media Computer Science) at the University of Applied Sciences Bremen
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Martin Hering-Bertram
Summer Term 2014: Applied Mathematics (for Media Computer Science) at the University of Applied Sciences Bremen
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Martin Hering-Bertram

In the Press

Interview with Florian Dalwigk:Interview mit einer promovierenden Glücksfee 🧚‍♀️
Equal eSports Festival 2021: How to combine tech and arts - My personal story
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ): Robotern Tanzen Beibringen
Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS): Robotern Tanzen Beibringen
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ): Erfolgreich die Promotion Meistern
Saarland Informatics Campus (SIC): Short interview with PhD student Noshaba Cheema about her time as a student
SOL.de: Saarländische Forscherinnen gewinnen Informatikerinnenpreis
Saarland Informatics Campus (SIC): Zwei Informatikerinnen der Universität des Saarlandes gewinnen Frauen MINT-Award
Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz (DFKI): Informatikerin Noshaba Cheema mit Frauen MINT-Award der Deutschen Telekom geehrt
Industry-of-Things.de: Frauen-MINT-Award - Mit virtuellen Agenten Bedienelemente verbessern
Elektroniknet.de: Frauen MINT-Award der Deutschen Telekom - Saarbrücker Informatikerinnen gewinnen
Saarbrücker Zeitung: Zwei Informatikerinnen der Saar-Uni ausgezeichnet
Saarländischer Rundfunk (SR): Noshaba Cheema: "Ich finde, die Informatik ist nur ein Mittel zum Zweck"
Saarländischer Rundfunk (SR): Zwei Informatikerinnen mit Mint-Award ausgezeichnet
idw-online.de: Informatikerin Noshaba Cheema mit Frauen MINT-Award der Deutschen Telekom geehrt

Awards and Honors

Max-Planck Fellowship from the International Max-Planck Research School for Computer Science (April 2016 - present)
Reference: Jennifer Gerling
Women's STEM Award 2020 - Category: Artificial Intelligence from Deutsche Telekom
Reference: Telekom Karriere
Diversity Scholarship from High Performance Graphics 2019
Reference: Apollo Ellis
Best poster award at the ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation 2018
Reference: Dr. Melina Skouras
YRF Scholarship from the Human-Centered Computing School 2016
Reference: Prof. Dr. Mehul Bhatt
Deutschlandstipendium from the University of Applied Sciences Bremen, Deutsche Telekom AG and Rotary Club Bremen 1850 (September 2012 - February 2016)
Reference: Jürgen-Peter Henckel

Education

October 2019 - present:
PhD candidate in Computer Science at the International Max-Planck Research School for Computer Science and the Saarland University - Graduate School of Computer Science
Reference: Prof. Dr. Philipp Slusallek and Prof. Dr. Christian Theobalt
April 2016 - September 2019:
Master student in Computer Science at the University of Saarland and the International Max-Planck Research School for Computer Science
GPA (German): 1.3, GPA (US): ~3.8
Title of Master Thesis: In Silico User Testing for Mid-Air Interactions with Deep Reinforcement Learning
(supervisors: Prof. Dr. Perttu Hämäläinen, Prof. Dr. Jaakko Lehtinen and Prof. Dr. Philipp Slusallek)
Reference: Jennifer Gerling
April 2018 - September 2018:
Master thesis student in Computer Science at Aalto Univeristy - School of Science
Reference: Prof. Dr. Perttu Hämäläinen
April 2016 - March 2019:
Master student in Visual Computing at the University of Saarland and the International Max-Planck Research School for Computer Science
GPA (German): 1.4, GPA (US): ~3.7
Title of Master Thesis: Fine-Grained Semantic Segmentation of Motion Capture Data using Convolutional Neural Networks
(supervisors: Somayeh Hosseini, Prof. Dr. Christian Theobalt and Prof. Dr. Philipp Slusallek)
Reference: Jennifer Gerling
September 2012 - June 2016:
Bachelor student in Media Computer Science at the University of Applied Sciences Bremen
GPA (German): 1.3, GPA (US): ~3.8
Title of Bachelor Thesis: Efficient Coding of Information in Neurobiologically Motivated Deep Network Architectures
(supervisors: Dr. Christoph Zetzsche and Prof. Dr. Martin Hering-Bertram)
Reference: Prof. Dr. Martin Hering-Bertram
September 2014 - December 2014:
Visiting student in Computer Science and Integrated Digital Media at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering - New York University
GPA (US): 3.7, GPA (German): ~1.4
Reference: Meagan D. Watson
August 2004 - July 2012:
Abitur at the Gymnasium Sulingen (Middle and High School)
GPA (German): 2.0, GPA (US): ~3.3
Reference: Ute Lüßmann

Volunteering

Computer Science Conferences and Journals

Chairing

Diversity Co-Chair at High Performance Graphics 2022
Reference: Prof. Dr. Esteban Walter Gonzalez Clua
Diversity Co-Chair at High Performance Graphics 2021
Reference: Dr. Apollo Ellis
Diversity Co-Chair at High Performance Graphics 2020
Reference: Dr. Apollo Ellis

Reviewing

Reviewer for ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2024
Reference: Prof. Dr. Byungjoo Lee
Reviewer for ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2023
Reference: Dr. Aalar Gupta
Reviewer for ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) 2022
Reference: Prof. Dr. Enrico Rukzio
Reviewer for ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) 2022
Reference: Prof. Dr. Enrico Rukzio
Reviewer for IJCAI-ECAI 2022 Special Track on AI, the Arts and Creativity Accepted Papers
Reference: Dr. Christian Guckelsberger
Reviewer for Computer Animation and Social Agents (CASA) 2022
Reference: Prof. Dr. Andreas Aristiduo
Reviewer for Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds (CAVW)
Reference: Prof. Dr. Hubert Shum
Reviewer for Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2016
Reference: Isabelle Guyon

Student Volunteering

Student Volunteer at SIGGRAPH 2020
Reference: Sarah Rust
Student Volunteer Team Leader at SIGGRAPH Asia 2019
Reference: Norbert Drage
Student Volunteer at SIGGRAPH 2016
Reference: Christian Wittorf

Misc.

External PhD Representative at the Max-Planck Institute for Informatics (March 2022 - March 2023)
Reference: Jennifer Gerling
Elected Member at the Computer Science Students' Council of the Saarland Univeristy (October 2017 - May 2018)
Reference: CS Student Council
Consultant in funding, participation outreach and on-site operations for the ESPR Camp 2017
Reference: Jaime Sevilla Molina
AIESEC Global Volunteer for the project EduChange Garzilli
Reference: Flavia Silvia Conoscenti
Mentor at the InTouch Program at the University of Applied Sciences Bremen (September 2015 - February 2016)
Program to help political refugees start school in Germany
Reference: Andrea Thode
Art Director of the Yearbook Commitee 2012 at the Gymnasium Sulingen
Reference: Ute Lüßmann