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Ms. Rachel Mc Donnell

Ussher Assistant Professor (Computer Science)

 ramcdonn@tcd.ie

 


Research Tags

  Computer & Video Games   Computer Animation   Computer Graphics   Computer Graphics & Vision   Computer Science   HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION

Representations

Details Date
Associate Editor for ACM Transactions on Applied Perception 2013-current
Associate Editor for the Journal of Eurographics, the European Association for Computer Graphics (Computer Graphics Forum) 2012-2015
Program Chair for Symposium on Applied Perception in Graphics and Visualization, Los Angeles, U.S.A. 2012
ACM SIGGRAPH Program Committee Member 2014
Eurographics Program Committee Member 2012
Program Committee Member for ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Applied Perception 2009
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia Sketches and Posters Program Committee Member 2010
Program Committee Member for CASA: Computer Animation and Social Agents conference 2012
Program Committee Member for ACM SIGGRAPH Conference on Motion in Games 2012
Program Committee Member for IEEE VR 2019
Program Committee Member for ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation 2009
Program Committee Member for ACM SIGGRAPH Interactive 3D Graphics and Games (I3D) 2018

Languages

Language Skill Reading Skill Writing Skill Speaking
English Fluent Fluent Fluent
French Basic Basic Basic
Irish Medium Basic Medium

Memberships

Membership of Professional Institutions, Associations, Societies

Details Date From Date To
Association for Computing Machinery
Ylva Ferstl, Rachel McDonnell, A perceptual study on the manipulation of facial features for trait portrayal in virtual agents, 18th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, Sydney, Australia, 2018, pp281 - 288, Notes: [DOI 10.1145/3267851.3267891], Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  DOI  URL
Ylva Ferstl, Rachel McDonnell, Investigating the use of recurrent motion modelling for speech gesture generation, 18th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, Sydney, NSW, Australia , November 05 - 08, 20, 2018, pp93-98 , Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  DOI  URL
Ilaria Torre, Emma Carrigan, Killian McCabe, Rachel McDonnell, Naomi Harte, Survival at the museum: A cooperation experiment with emotionally expressive avatars, International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI), Boulder, CO, USA , 2018, pp423 - 427, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
Emma Carrigan, Ludovic Hoyet, Rachel McDonnell, Quentin Avril, A Preliminary Investigation into the Impact of Training for Example-Based Facial Blendshape Creation, Eurographics 2018 - Short Papers, The Eurographics Association, 2018, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  URL  URL
Katja Zibrek, Elena Kokkinara, Rachel McDonnell, The Effect of Realistic Appearance of Virtual Characters in Immersive Environments - Does the Character's Personality Play a Role?, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 224, (4), 2018, p1681-1690 , Journal Article, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  DOI
Zibrek, K. and Kokkinara, E. and McDonnell, R., Don't stand so close to me: Investigating the effect of control on the appeal of virtual humans using immersion and a proximity-based behavioral task, SAP '17 Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Applied Perception , 2017, pp3-, Notes: [cited By 0], Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  DOI
Joao P. Cabral, Benjamin R. Cowan, Katja Zibrek, Rachel McDonnell, The influence of synthetic voice on the evaluation of a virtual character, Interspeech , 2017-August, 2017, pp229 - 233, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  DOI
Kerstin Ruhland, Mukta Prasad, Rachel McDonnell, Data-driven approach to synthesizing facial animation using motion capture, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 37, (4), 2017, p30-41 , Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Ylva Ferstl, Elena Kokkinara, Rachel McDonnell, Facial features of non-player creatures can influence moral decisions in video games, ACM Transactions on Applied Perception, 15, (1), 2017, p4-, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Carrigan E, Kokkinara E, Gheorghe F, Houlier M, Donikian S, McDonnell R, Crowd appearance affects player performance in game combat scenarios, Proceedings - Motion in Games 2016: 9th International Conference on Motion in Games, MIG 2016, 2016, 2016, pp187 - 192, Notes: [Export Date: 20 February 2017], Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  DOI  URL
  

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Daniel Thalmann, Carol O'Sullivan, Barbara Yersin, Jonathan Maim, Rachel McDonnell, Populating Virtual Environments with Crowds, Eurographics Tutorials, 2007, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
McHugh, J.E., McDonnell, R., Chan, J.S. & Newell, F.N., The Multisensory Perception of Emotions in Real and Virtual Humans, British Psychological Society Annual Conference 2008, Dublin, April 2008, Poster, PRESENTED

  

Awards and Honours

Award Date
Career Development Award (SFI) 2013
Best paper award (top 5) at ACM SIGGRAPH Conference on Motion in Games 2013

Research Interests

Description Of Research Interests

Creating virtual replicas of human beings, in both appearance and motion, is one of the greatest challenges in the field of Computer Graphics and beyond. Faces in particular have still not reached the levels of realism required to convince our perceptual systems that a virtual face is real. However, with the rise of interest and investment from major technology companies (e.g., Microsoft, Intel, Oculus, Google, Facebook) in augmented and virtual reality, the requirement for virtual avatars that can communicate across these platforms is at an all-time high. Advancing the state-of-the-art in virtual faces is therefore a highly competitive field. However, I am credited with a unique approach to this topic that merges new industry-standard technological advancements with results from perceptual experiments. I have made a significant impact by exploring the use of novel perceptual experiments in order to guide computer graphics algorithms to achieve higher levels of realism and plausibility, and to investigate the trade-off between available resources (such as computation power, time, and budget) and acceptability. This approach has proven to both deepen our understanding of how virtual faces are perceived, and also directly provide new algorithms and guidelines for industry developers on where to focus their efforts. I am also currently expanding my research to collaborate with the school of psychology to use virtual characters to improve communication and skills for those with behavioural and developmental problems. I have been awarded >€1M funding on a number of projects that align with this agenda and have published my findings in the top-ranked international conferences and journals (e.g., 6 papers in ACM TOG, the highest ranking journal in Computer, IEEE VR, CGF). According to a recent SFI site review panel of international experts, I have "acquired high visibility in the domain of facial animation", an " "exemplary record" with "outstanding quality" research that "deals with very innovative research questions", whose results have "very strong impacts in the research community and in the industry".