■ Abstract
Digital 3D models are gaining more and more relevance in diverse application fields ranging from computer graphics, multimedia and simulation sciences to engineering, architecture, and medicine. Powerful technologies to digitize the 3D shape of real objects and scenes are becoming available even to casual consumers. However, the raw geometric data emerging from, e.g., 3D scanning or multi-view stereo often lacks a consistent structure and meta-information which are necessary for the effective deployment of such models in sophisticated down-stream applications that go beyond mere visualization (like, e.g., animation, simulation, or CAD/CAM). Hence, the overall goal in Geometry Processing is to develop new fundamental algorithms as well as interaction concepts which aim at transforming raw geometric input data into augmented 3D models that are equipped with structural meta information such as feature aligned meshes, patch segmentations, local and global geometric constraints, statistical shape variation data, or even procedural descriptions. In order to provide a taxonomy for the different categories of requirements emerging from different application scenarios, we propose a conceptual hierarchy of abstraction levels that mark the most important stages when bridging the gap between the "syntax" of geometric models (coordinate-wise representation) and their "semantics" (including structural and maybe functional information). In my talk I will present a number of application examples to motivate these abstraction levels and report on recent research results which contribute to the augmentation of digital 3D models by lifting them from lower to higher levels of abstraction.

■ Biography
Leif Kobbelt is a German university professor for Computer Science with a specialization on Computer Graphics. Since 2001 he is the head of the Institute for Computergraphics and Multimedia at RWTH Aachen university. After receiving his diploma in 1992 and his PhD in 1994 in Computer Science from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology he worked at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Max Planck Institute of Computer Science before he switched to RWTH Aachen University in 2001. His research interests include 3D reconstruction, efficient geometry processing, realtime rendering and multi-media applications. Kobbelt published a substantial number of influential papers in international top-conferences and journals.[1] He also acts as a consultant, reviewer, and editor for international companies, research organizations and journals. For his research he was awarded with the Heinz-Maier-Leibnitz price in 2000,[2] the Eurographics Outstanding Technical Contribution Award 2004,[3] the Günther Enderle Award (in 1999 and 2012),[4] an ERC Advanced Grant 2013 and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2014. He was nominated as a Fellow of the Eurographics Association (2008) and as Distinguished Professor of RWTH Aachen University (2013).