Vincent Becker, M.Sc.

Short curriculum vitae

I was a PhD student in the Distributed Systems Group at ETH Zurich under the supervision of Prof. Friedemann Mattern. I joined the group in April 2016 and completed my PhD in May 2020. Before joining the group, I received both my M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Computer Science from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany. During my studies I stayed at Carnegie Mellon University, US, from October 2013 until February 2014, to compose my Bachelor's thesis. Furthermore, I stayed at LIAAD, INESC TEC in Porto, Portugal, from September 2015 until March 2016 to do my Master's thesis.

Research interests

My research at ETH Zurich focuses in general on machine learning and data mining.

• Previously, I worked on estimating potential savings in heating energy using occupancy detection to determine whether a household is occupied.
• Now, I am interested in the field of interactions with smart devices. This includes, e.g., object detection from a video stream on mobile devices, gesture-based control of devices, etc.

Teaching

• HS 2016 Distributed Systems as teaching assistant
• FS 2017 Informatik II (D-ITET) as co-head teaching assistant
• HS 2017 Distributed Systems as teaching assistant
• FS 2018 Informatik II (D-ITET) as head teaching assistant
• HS 2018 Informatik I (D-BAUG) as teaching assistant
• FS 2019 Informatik II (D-ITET) as head teaching assistant
• HS 2019 Informatik II (D-ITET) as head teaching assistant. Current tutorial website: Link

Supervised student projects

Publications

• Mihai Bâce, Vincent Becker, Chenyang Wang, Andreas Bulling
  Combining Gaze Estimation and Optical Flow for Pursuits Interaction.
  Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications. ETRA '20, ACM, Stuttgart, Germany, June 2020
  doi: 10.1145/3379155.3391315
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  The first three authors contributed equally. This paper received the best paper award.
  
  
• Vincent Becker, Sandro Kalbermatter, Simon Mayer, Gábor Sörös
  Tailored Controls: Creating Personalized Tangible User Interfaces from Paper.
  Proceedings of the 2019 ACM International Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces. ISS '19, ACM, ISBN 978-1-4503-6891-9/19/11, Daejeon, South Korea, November 2019
  doi: 10.1145/3343055.3359700
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  
  
• Vincent Becker, Linus Fessler, Gábor Sörös
  GestEar: Combining Audio and Motion Sensing for Gesture Recognition on Smartwatches.
  Proceedings of the 2019 International Symposium on Wearable Computers. ISWC '19, ACM, ISBN 978-1-4503-6870-4, London, UK, September 2019
  doi: 10.1145/3341163.3347735
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  
  
• Vincent Becker, Felix Rauchenstein, Gábor Sörös
  Connecting and Controlling Appliances through Wearable Augmented Reality.
  Augmented Human Research, Springer, August 2019
  doi: 10.1007/s41133-019-0019-0
  Abstract, BibTeX
  
  
• Vincent Becker, Felix Rauchenstein, Gábor Sörös
  Investigating Universal Appliance Control through Wearable Augmented Reality.
  Proceedings of the 10th Augmented Human International Conference. AH '19, ISBN 978-1-4503-6547-5, 2019
  doi: 10.1145/3311823.3311853
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  
  
• Vincent Becker, Pietro Oldrati, Liliana Barrios, Gábor Sörös
  TouchSense: Classifying Finger Touches and Measuring their Force with an Electromyography Armband.
  Proceedings of the 2018 International Symposium on Wearable Computers. ISWC '18, ACM, ISBN 978-1-4503-4835-5, Singapore, October 2018
  doi: 10.1145/3267242.3267250
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  For the code, go to https://github.com/vincentbecker/TouchSense
  
  
• Vincent Becker, Wilhelm Kleiminger, Vlad Coroama, Friedemann Mattern
  Estimating the Savings Potential of Occupancy-based Heating Strategies.
  Energy Informatics. DACH+ Energieinformatik 2018 Vol. 1, No. 1, Springer, pp. 35–54, October 2018
  doi: 10.1186/s42162-018-0022-6
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  Best paper runner-up award
  
  
• Vincent Becker
  Augmented Humans Interacting with an Augmented World.
  Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2018). ACM, pp. 1–2, Barcelona, Spain, September 2018
  doi: 10.1145/3236112.3236179
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  
  
• Vincent Becker, Wilhelm Kleiminger
  Exploring zero-training algorithms for occupancy detection based on smart meter measurements.
  Computer Science - Research and Development. DACH+ Energieinformatik 2017 Vol. 33, No. 1, Springer, ISBN 1865-2042, pp. 25–36, February 2018
  doi: 10.1007/s00450-017-0344-9
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  This is a postprint version. Please find the published article here.
  
  
• Vincent Becker, Pietro Oldrati, Liliana Barrios, Gábor Sörös
  TouchSense: Classifying and Measuring the Force of Finger Touches with an Electromyography Armband.
  Proceedings of the 9th Augmented Human International Conference. AH '18, ISBN 978-1-4503-5415-8, pp. 34:1–34:3, 2018
  doi: 10.1145/3174910.3174947
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  
  
• Vincent Becker, Wilhelm Kleiminger, Friedemann Mattern
  Automatically Estimating the Savings Potential of Occupancy-based Heating Strategies.
  pp. 1–47, December 2017
  doi: 10.3929/ethz-b-000219545
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  This is a preprint version of an article submitted for publication.
  
  
• Mihai Bâce, Philippe Schlattner, Vincent Becker, Gábor Sörös
  Facilitating Object Detection and Recognition through Eye Gaze.
  Proceedings of the Workshop on Object Recognition for Input and Mobile Interaction at the 19th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2017). ACM, Vienna, Austria, September 2017
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  
  
• Vincent Becker, Mihai Bâce, Gábor Sörös
  Wearable machine learning for recognizing and controlling smart devices.
  Proceedings of the Workshop on Object Recognition for Input and Mobile Interaction at the 19th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2017). ACM, pp. 1–3, Vienna, Austria, September 2017
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  
  

• Energy Spotlight Article: Estimating the Savings Potential of Smart Household Thermostats

Former students

• Christian Mnuk (now Master's student at ETH)
• Erfan Abdi (now at Google Zurich)
• Maximilian Wurm (now at Venios GmbH)
• Pietro Oldrati (now Master's student at ETH)
• Linus Fessler
• Felix Rauchenstein (now at infix development GmbH)
• Alexander Kayed (now at OneOffix)
• Sandro Kalbermatter
• Chenyang Wang

Activities

• June 2016 - I attended the IfI summer school 2016 in Zurich.
• September 2016 - I attended Ubicomp 2016 in Heidelberg.
• June 2017 - I attended the UBISS summer school 2017 in Oulu.
• September 2017 - I attended MobileHCI 2017 in Vienna.
• September 2018 - I attended Augmented Human 2018 in Seoul.
• August 2018 - I attended the ACM SIGCHI Summer School on Computational Interaction 2018 in Cambrige, UK.
• September 2018 - I attended MobileHCI 2018 in Barcelona.
• October 2018 - I attended Ubicomp/ISWC 2018 in Singapore.
• October 2018 - I attended Augmented Human 2019 in Reims.
• June to September 2019 - I went to London for a PhD internship at Google for three months.
• September 2019 - I attended Ubicomp/ISWC 2019 in London, UK.
• November 2019 - I attended ISS 2019 in Seoul, South Korea.

Other

I was a reviewer for the IMWUT journal, The Web Conference 2020, ISWC 2019, Energieinformatik 2017, ACM SAC 2017 (Data Streams track), the Machine Learning Journal (Springer), ACM SAC 2016, IEEE TKDE, and FCT 2016.