Scholar Spotlight: Lea Müller

IMPRS-IS aims to recognize the outstanding accomplishments of its doctoral researchers through our scholar spotlight. We would now like to highlight our IMPRS-IS scholar Lea Müller who received multiple best paper nominations at CVPR during her tenure at IMPRS-IS and is now preparing to pursue her next career step as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Lea joined IMPRS-IS in October of 2019, working in the Perceiving Systems Department of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems under the supervision of Dr. Michael Black. Working in the field of Computer Vision, her research interests focus on 3D human pose and shape estimation, in particular when humans are interacting with each other, e.g., when hugging or shaking hands. 

In 2019 and 2021, Lea received best paper nominations at CVPR for work on body shape estimation and 3D pose reconstruction for poses with self-contact. She and co-authors currently have a patent application in process for their idea of using words that describe body shape for the task of 3D human shape estimation. You can find out more about Lea and her list of publications from her personal MPI-IS profile: https://ps.is.mpg.de/person/lmueller2

In addition to her doctoral studies, Lea was recently awarded as Outstanding Female Doctoral Student Prize Honorable Mention by the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. She also served as a valuable¬¬ member of the IMPRS-IS community, volunteering her time as one of the program's S4 student organizers. As a member of S4, she worked to create the series of professional development workshops available to our scholars. 

Lea holds a BA from Heidelberg University in mathematics and a MSc in Computational and Data Science from University of Jena under Prof. Joachim Denzler. Her hobbies include tennis, skiing, and long distance hiking. When it comes to hiking, she mentions that she is, “happy to answer questions about Kungsleden, Fisherman’s Trail, and West Highland Way.”  She enjoys solving jigsaw puzzles which finds to be a relaxing winter activity. She has also listened to every episode of Zeit Verbrechen, her favorite true crime podcast. 

Lea is currently in the process of completing her doctorate and intends to graduate from the University of Tübingen. She has already been offered an exciting new opportunity to continue her academic career, joining UC Berkeley as a postdoctoral researcher where she will be work with Dr. Jitendra Malik and Dr. Angjoo Kanazawa. 

We wish Lea success with this future career endeavor and thank her for her valuable contributions to IMPRS-IS. We are proud to have Lea Müller recognized as an IMPRS-IS Scholar Spotlight.