Brandon Haworth is a Tenured Research Stream Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering & Computer Science at the University of Victoria. He is the Director of the Graphics, Artificial Intelligence, Design, & Games (GAIDG) Lab and a Research Fellow at the Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health at the University of Victoria. Brandon received the B.Sc. Honours degree in Computer Science from York University in 2013, M.Sc. in 2016, and Ph.D. in 2019, and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Ontario Research Fund/Intelligent Systems for Sustainable Urban Mobility (ORF/ISSUM) project in 2019/2020. His past research concerned the development and gamification of interactive motor speech rehabilitation for people with neurodegenerative diseases. Brandon works within the broad areas of Graphics, Gaming, Simulation, Artificial Intelligence, and Human-Computer Interaction. He was awarded the Cowie Faculty Innovation Award by the University of Victoria in 2022. He is a Member of the ACM, an Associate Editor of the Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds journal, and the Editor-in-chief of the Canadian Human-Computer Communications Society (CHCCS) / Société canadienne du dialogue humain-machine.
Academic Interests
- Computer Graphics
- Crowd Simulation
- Deep/Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning
- Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence & Augmented Intelligence
- Agent-based Modelling
- Game Design and Development
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Virtual Reality
- Architectural Design and Optimization
- Assistive and Healthcare Technologies
- Behavioural Sciences
- Rehabilitation Sciences
Research Lab
The GAIDG Lab explores difficult problems in the representation, visibility, and decision-making of digital agents and humans. We create and innovate in human behaviour & movement modelling, human-centred artificial intelligence, game design, game AI, architectural optimization, augmented intelligence in complex design, assistive technologies, rehabilitative technologies, and more.
Professional Associations
- Member ACM
- Member Canadian Human-Computer Communications Society, CHCCS/SCDHM Special Interest Group within the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS)
Latest News
- December 6, 2024: I co-host the SparkCG SPARK ANIMATION (Made in Canada Vol. 2 screening and talk by Denver Jackson) event
- September 11, 2024: Paper accepted at ACM SIGGRAPH Conference on Motion, Interaction and Games (MIG 2024): Deformable Elliptical Particles for Predictive Mesh-Adaptive Crowds
- August 12-28, 2024: I designed, direct and co-teach the University of Victoria microcredential 3D Graphics and Rendering Essentials for Video Games
- July 22-26, 2024: I teach the Science Venture Video Game Realization course for secondary school students
- July 1, 2024: I have been promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure
- June 6, 2024: I join the Canadian Human-Computer Communications Society (CHCCS/SCDHM) Executive Committee as Editor-in-chief
- May 1, 2024: Paper accepted at 37th International Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents (CASA 2024) and published in the Computer Animation & Virtual Worlds (CAVW) journal: Toward comprehensive Chiroptera modeling: A parametric multiagent model for bat behavior
- September 7, 2023: B.C. Knowledge Development Fund (BCKDF) has approved their matching funding for earlier CFI infrastructure award approval, solidifying the John R. Evans Leaders Fund award to support the GAIDG Lab’s Human Motion at the Intersections of Engineering and Art through Extended Realities
- November 30, 2023: Distinguished speaker at the 2023 City Talks Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Cities series, Designing the AI City: Simulation and Human-Centred Urban Design
- October 2023: I join the Graphics Interface 2024 (GI ’24) conference committee as Chair of Graphics
- August 2023: I join the Annual Modeling and Simulation Conference ANNSIM 2024 as Co-Chair of the Machine Learning and AI in Simulation Track
- August 2023: I designed and taught a high school level course in game development with ScienceVenture @ UVic
- May 2023: Received the Outstanding Reviewer (PC Member) Recognition for the 2023 Annual Modeling and Simulation Conference
- May 2, 2023: Paper accepted at GI ’23: Graphics Interface 2023, Saliency Driven Gaze Control for Autonomous Pedestrians
- March 23, 2023: Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) has approved major infrastructure funding for the GAIDG Lab
- March 20, 2023: Paper published in the journal Computer Graphics Forum, Cognitive Model of Agent Exploration with Vision and Signage Understanding. Journal publication of work from 21st ACM SIGGRAPH / EUROGRAPHICS Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA 2022)
- September 14, 2022: Recipient of the 2022 W.E. Cowie Faculty Innovation Award
- August 10, 2022: Paper accepted at SAP ’22: ACM Symposium on Applied Perception, Impact of Manikin Display on Perception of Spatial Planning
- July 27, 2022: Paper accepted at the 21st ACM SIGGRAPH / EUROGRAPHICS Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA 2022), Cognitive Model of Agent Exploration with Vision and Signage Understanding
- March 27, 2022: Paper accepted at Computers & Graphics, Automatic estimation of parametric saliency maps (PSMs) for autonomous pedestrians
- December 22, 2021: Paper accepted at IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Heterogeneous Crowd Simulation using Parametric Reinforcement Learning
- September 24, 2021: Paper accepted at the IEEE AIVR workshop Modeling and Animating Realistic Crowds and Humans (MARCH 2021), Representative Synthetic Crowds for Inclusive Environment Design
- September 7, 2021: Paper accepted at the 14th ACM SIGGRAPH Conference on Motion, Interaction and Games (MIG 2021), PSM: Parametric Saliency Maps for Autonomous Pedestrians
- September 6, 2021: Paper accepted at the 16th International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC 2021), DeepSolfège: Recognizing Solfège Hand Signs using Convolutional Neural Networks
- July 1, 2021: Paper accepted at the ICML workshop Unsupervised Reinforcement Learning, MASAI: Multi-agent Summative Assessment Improvement for Unsupervised Environment Design
- June 15, 2021: NSERC Discovery Grant funded, my research program Diverse Synthetic Crowds in Media, Design, and Analysis will be supported over the next five years
- January 7, 2021: Invited talk at the IJCAI workshop Neuro-Cognitive Modeling of Humans and Environments, Learning to Move – Reinforcement Learning in Navigation
- September 23, 2020: Two papers accepted at 13th ACM SIGGRAPH Conference on Motion, Interaction and Games (MIG 2020), (1) Deep Integration of Physical Humanoid Control and Crowd Navigation (2) Watch Out! Modelling Pedestrians with Egocentric Distractions
- August 25, 2020: Paper accepted for a Regular Issue in The Visual Computer journal, Modeling Distracted Agents in Crowd Simulations.
- July 23, 2020: Paper accepted for a Special Issue in Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds journal, Democratizing the Simulation
of Human-Building Interactions - July 1, 2020: I join the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering at the University of Victoria as an Assistant Professor
- April 29, 2020: Paper accepted at Computer Graphics International 2020, Modeling Distracted Agents In Crowd Simulations
- March 3, 2020: Paper accepted at SimAUD 2020, SimService: A Cross-browser Cloud-based Crowd Analytics Platform for Architectural Design Analysis
- February 28, 2020: Two papers accepted at the CHI2020 HabiTech Workshop, (1) Representative Synthetic Crowds for Inclusive Environment Design (2) Simulation-as-a-Service: A Cross-Platform Framework for Analyzing Human-Building Interactions
- February 27, 2020: I join the excellent Editorial Board of Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds Journal as Associate Editor
- November 11, 2019: Paper accepted at IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Gamification of Crowd-Driven Environment Design
- October 1, 2019: Paper accepted at NeurIPS 2019 Deep Reinforcement Learning Workshop, Multi-Agent Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning for Humanoid Navigation
- August 15, 2019: Paper accepted at IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Interactive Architectural Design with Diverse Solution Exploration
Contact
Department of Computer Science
Office 568, Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) building
University of Victoria Victoria, BC
bhaworth@uvic.ca
+1 250-472-5772