Research Engineer F/M ShapeUp! Keiki

Contract type :
Fixed-term contract

Renewable contract :
Oui

Level of qualifications required :
Graduate degree or equivalent

Fonction :
Temporary scientific engineer

About the research centre or Inria department

The Inria Grenoble research center groups together almost 600 people in 23 research teams and 7 research support departments.

Staff is present on three campuses in Grenoble, in close collaboration with other research and higher education institutions (University Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, CEA, INRAE, …), but also with key economic players in the area.

Inria Grenoble is active in the fields of high-performance computing, verification and embedded systems, modeling of the environment at multiple levels, and data science and artificial intelligence. The center is a top-level scientific institute with an extensive network of international collaborations in Europe and the rest of the world.

Context

Position:  Research engineer at INRIA – Grenoble, MORPHEO team

Date: The position is open and the candidate can start as soon as possible. Funding is for 12 months (renewable). A start in September 2023 could be possible.

Advisors: The retained candidate will be advised by Sergi Pujades (Morpheo INRIA Grenoble, France)  and Nikolas Hesse (Swiss Children’s Rehab, University Children’s hospital Zurich, Switzerland).

Assignment

Context:

The ShapeUp Keiki  project is the third project of the ongoing ShapeUp Studies  series, where humans in the ages ranging from newborn to 5 year old will be studied.

The purpose of these studies is to explore and develop ways to measure health and body composition from 2D and 3D images, and optical scans. These technologies aim to take a look inside areas of the human body hidden by our skin. The study will test if new imaging machines can provide useful and detailed information about various health and wellness risks. A cohort of voluntary participants will provide the data, creating the largest and most powerful description of optical body shape and its association to body composition, metabolic markers, function, and dietary intake.

Main activities

Objectives

In this project the research engineer will work on the registration of the articulated body model SMIL [1, 2] to scan data (3D point clouds) of infants. An existing code base exists, which is suitable for adults, but infants present several additional challenges. Their poses can not be directed and automatic methods of pose detection will need to be studied. The shape of the participants of the ShapeUp Studies is also different from the shape of the population used to learn the SMIL model. The goal will be to create a more generic body model that better captures the variations in shape.

[1] Learning an Infant Body Model from RGB-D Data for Accurate Full Body Motion Analysis
Hesse, N., Pujades, S., Romero, J., Black, M. J., Bodensteiner, C., Arens, M., Hofmann, U. G., Tacke, U., Hadders-Algra, M., Weinberger, R., Müller-Felber, W., Schroeder, A. S.
In International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), September 2018

[2] Learning and Tracking the 3D Body Shape of Freely Moving Infants from RGB-D sequences
Hesse, N., Pujades, S., Black, M. J., Arens, M., Hofmann, U. G., Schroeder, A. S.
Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 42 (10), Special Issue on RGB-D Vision, pp. 2540-2551, 2019.

Skills

Candidate Profile:

• A master in Computer Science or Applied Mathematics (mandatory).
• 
Strong mathematical background – geometry  – optimization techniques
• 
Strong coding skills (pytorch, pytorch3D)
• 
Good Oral and written English
• Preliminary experience in the following areas is a plus: computer vision – 3D point clouds – registration techniques – geometry processing – 3D pose estimation.

A specific section in the application letter must explain the personal experience in these areas.

Important:

– Due to the collaboration with the Hawaiian Cancer Centers, weekly group meetings are held in the evening in Europe (20h – 22h). The candidate should arrange once a week to be available at this time.

– An annual consortium meeting is held in Hawaii (usually in summer). The candidate should be available for a business travel of approx. a week.

Benefits package

• Subsidized meals
• Partial reimbursement of public transport costs
• Leave: 7 weeks of annual leave + 10 extra days off due to RTT (statutory reduction in working hours) + possibility of exceptional leave (sick children, moving home, etc.)
• Possibility of teleworking (90 days / year) and flexible organization of working hours
• Professional equipment available (videoconferencing, loan of computer equipment, etc.)
• Social, cultural and sports events and activities
• Access to vocational training
• Social security coverage under conditions

Remuneration

From 2,652 € (depending on experience and qualifications).