Profile

I'm a computer scientist working at Microsoft's lab in Cambridge in the UK. I currently work on human understanding tasks in computer vision, enabled by high fidelity synthetic data. Since getting my masters in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge I've worked on optical design at Microsoft Research, been an RA at Victoria University of Wellington and had a brief stint at an animation studio in Tokyo. A portfolio of my recent work is available at chewitt.me.

Experience

Senior Research Scientist - Microsoft Sept 2023-present

Research Scientist - Microsoft Dec 2020-Sept 2023

Working at the intersection of computer graphics, computer visions and machine learning as part of the Mixed Reality & AI lab in Cambridge, UK.

Research Consultant - Microsoft Research Jan-Dec 2020

Eighteen month consultancy position with the Graphics & Multimedia group at Microsoft's research lab in Cambridge. Helping to build the next generation of head mounted displays.

R&D Intern - OLM Digital Sep-Dec 2019

Three month internship with the R&D group at OLM Digital animation studio in Tokyo building in-house tooling for their 3D animation and visual effects pipelines. Primarily developing custom modelling tools for Autodesk Maya.

Research Consultant - Microsoft May-Aug 2019

Three months with the Cognition research and development team based at Microsoft's lab in Cambridge, working on application of machine learning to problems in computer graphics and vision.

Research Assistant - Computational Media Innovation Centre Jan-Apr 2019

Three month RA position at the CMIC, Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, working with researchers and industry partners. Independent project work on computer vision techniques for omnidirectional stereoscopic video and its application to immersive mixed reality experiences.

Research Intern - Microsoft Research Jul-Dec 2018

Six month internship at Microsoft Research in Cambridge working on near-eye holographic display technologies for mixed reality. Development of hologram design algorithms and prototyping of holographic display systems, contributed to two patents relating to holographic and near-eye displays.

Intern - Cydar Summer 2017

Two month internship working at Cydar in Cambridge, helping to develop imaging technologies for surgeons to use in the OR. Software development work focussing on web-based technologies and user interaction.

Intern - Jagex Game Studios Summer 2016

Three month internship within the web team at Jagex, focussed on projects involving the exploration of potential future business opportunities. Working as part of a small team to develop prototype web-based software.

Selected Publications

GASP: Gaussian Avatars with Synthetic Priors - CVPR 2025 Project Site

Look Ma, No Markers: Holistic performance capture without the hassle - ToG 2024 Project Site

Hairmony: Fairness-aware hairstyle classification - SIGGRAPH ASIA 2024 Project Site

3D face reconstruction with dense landmarks - ECCV 2022 Project Site

Fake it till you make it: face analysis in the wild using synthetic data alone - ICCV 2021 Project Site

Education

Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge 2014-2018

MEng (distinction) in computer science

Research focussed masters involving lectures as well as independent research projects and a thesis. Courses: Affective Computing, Computer Vision, Probabilistic Machine Learning, Advanced topics in mobile and sensor systems and data modelling and Interaction with machine learning. My thesis was looking at facial alignment, involving application of machine learning to computer vision.

BA (first class) in computer science

Diverse three year course covering topics ranging from physics and computer hardware design to machine learning and human computer interaction.

Skills

• Programming in Python, Julia, C/C++, C#, MATLAB, CUDA, G/HLSL and others.
• Application of machine learning using tools such as SciKit, Keras, (Py)Torch, OpenCV and TensorFlow, primarily in the context of computer vision.
• Using and developing for the 3D modelling applications Blender and Autodesk Maya.
• Knowledge of optics and holography and experience working in optical labs.
• Source code management using Git.
• Deploying software to a number of platforms including Windows, iOS and Android devices.
• Using HTML/CSS, PHP and JavaScript in the production of websites, including use of frameworks such as React, Angular, Bootstrap and Foundation.
• Graphical design experience including UI, UX and icon design using Adobe Photoshop.
• Proficient user of Mac OS, Linux and Windows operating systems.
• Extensive experience with Microsoft Excel, as well as word processing including use of .