Rachel McDonnell

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Graphics, Vision and Visualisation Group in Trinity College Dublin. I am currently working on the Metropolis project which is a novel interdisciplinary project combining computer graphics, engineering, and cognitive neuroscience research. The idea behind the project is to create a simulated lifelike city, where real people will be able to move around and experience total immersion in a computer generated virtual city.

My research interests include perceptually adaptive graphics, real-time crowd simulation, virtual human animation and cloth simulation. I have also done some work on facial modelling. I completed my PhD thesis in 2007 entitled “Realistic Crowd Animation: A Perceptual Approach”.

I recently won a postdoctoral award from the Centre for Women in Science and Engineering Research in Trinity which I will use to assist collaboration with the Robotics Institute in Carnegie Mellon University and the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics.