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Philip Torr

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Philip Torr
Alma mater
Known forComputer Vision
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsComputer Science
InstitutionsUniversity of Oxford
ThesisOutlier Detection and Motion Segmentation (1995)
Doctoral advisorDavid Murray[disambiguation needed][4]
Doctoral students
[5]
Websitehttps://torrvision.com/

Philip Torr FREng,[2] FRS,[1] is a British scientist and a professor at the University of Oxford, and a researcher in machine learning and computer vision.[6]

Education[edit]

Professor Philip Torr was educated at the Manchester Grammar School.[7] He went on to graduate with a first in pure mathematics from Southampton University, and then went on to do his DPhil at the Active Vision Group of the University of Oxford under Professor David Murray.[8] He worked for another three years at Oxford as a research fellow with Andrew Zisserman in the Visual Geometry Group.[9]

His thesis work was involved in the algorithm design for Boujou, released by 2D3, together with Prof. Andrew Zisserman, Dr. Paul Beardsley and Dr. Andrew Fitzgibbon.[10] Boujou was used in such films as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1,[10] which was awarded an Oscar for Best Visual Effects. Boujou has won a clutch of industry awards, including Computer Graphics World Innovation Award, IABM Peter Wayne Award, and CATS Award for Innovation, and a technical EMMY.[11]

Career and research[edit]

He left Oxford to work for six years as a research scientist for Microsoft Research, first in Redmond[disambiguation needed], USA, in the Vision Technology Group, then in Cambridge, UK founding the vision side of the Machine Learning and Perception Group.[6] He then became a Professor in Computer Vision and Machine Learning at Oxford Brookes University. During this time he worked closely with several companies, including Sony, his group is credited for computer vision on the title of the Wonderbook Book of Spells,[12][13] which sold over 660,000 units. During this time Professor Torr also worked closely with Oxford-based company Vicon on markerless motion capture, this work was awarded Best Knowledge Transfer Partnership of the year in 2009.[14] In 2013, Philip returned to University of Oxford as a full professor where he established the Torr Vision group.[15]

In 2016 he founded Oxsight[16][17] a social enterprise to help the partially sighted use computer vision techniques to enhance their life. In 2019 he founded AIstetic a company to do 3D reconstruction.[18] He is also the advisor for numerous high-tech companies, most notable he has been chief scientific advisor for Five AI[19] from their formation in 2016 through their journey to acquisition in 2022 by Bosch.[20] Recently Professor Torr became a Chief Scientific Advisor for DreamTech, Exient established by ex-members of the Torr Vision Group.

Professor Philip Torr has been chair for many of the major conferences in his field including ECCV 2008,[21] ICCV 2013,[22] CVPR 2019[23] and ICCV 2029.[24] He is also invited as a speaker of Starmus Festival in 2024.

Professor Torr is interested in AI safety and is a fellow of the Future of Life Institute,[25] as well as Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford. [26] He is interested in ensuring that its benefits are distributed equally to all of society. [27]

Awards and honours[edit]

Torr won several awards including:[28]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c Philip Torr at the Royal Society.
  2. ^ a b c Philip Torr at the Royal Academy of Engineering.
  3. ^ a b ICCV Best Paper Award (Marr Prize)
  4. ^ Philip Torr at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  5. ^ People page, Torr Vision Group
  6. ^ a b Philip Torr, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford.
  7. ^ Manchester Grammar School Alumni
  8. ^ People page, Active Vision Group, University of Oxford
  9. ^ People page, Visual Geometry Group, University of Oxford
  10. ^ a b UOA15-10: Boujou: special effects software for the film industry at REF 2014
  11. ^ 2002 Engineering Emmy Awards For 2D3's Boujou And Apple's FinalCut Pro at Animation World Network.
  12. ^ Wonderbook, Book of Spells
  13. ^ Sony’s Wonderbook: theoretical mathematics contributes to enriching the gaming experience
  14. ^ Outstanding partnership clinches major award from the Oxford Brookes University News Archive
  15. ^ Torr Vision Group
  16. ^ These AR Glasses Could Help Legally Blind People See Again at techthelead
  17. ^ Oxford spinout develops smart glasses giving legally blind the ability to read and navigate
  18. ^ Oxford startup Aistetic receives £1.2m to fund new AI fashion tool at the business magazine
  19. ^ Our People at Five AI]
  20. ^ Bosch picks up Five.ai after the self-driving startup pivoted to B2B and then put itself up for sale at TechCrunch
  21. ^ ECCV 2008 committees
  22. ^ ICCV 2013
  23. ^ CVPR 2019 organizers
  24. ^ ICCV 2029
  25. ^ Philip Torr at Future of Life Institute
  26. ^ Research Associates, Oxford AI Ethics
  27. ^ Will artificial intelligence erode our rights? at BBC
  28. ^ Prize page, Torr Vision Group, University of Oxford
  29. ^ Turing World Leader
  30. ^ Two Oxford University professors appointed first Turing Artificial Intelligence Research Fellows, University of Oxford
  31. ^ Award page, ECCV 2010
  32. ^ BMVC 2010, BMVA news
  33. ^ List of best paper awards for CVPR
  34. ^ Award page, NIPS 2007
  35. ^ Trustees’ report and financial statement, the Royal Society
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