Mathias DELAHAYE's profile picture

Dr. Mathias DELAHAYE

Ph.D. in Virtual Reality at EPFL and Engineer from Mines DOUAI in Computer Sciences

Contact

Languages

  • French
  • English
  • Spanish - Professional

Interests

  • Computer sciences
  • Photography
  • Electronics
  • Music
  • Sports
    • Mountain Biking
    • Climbing
    • Mountaineering
    • Paragliding
    • Dances
    • Ski/Ski Touring
    • Motor sports

Who am I?

I am a French engineer from Mines DOUAI and a Ph.D. from the EPFL. I am currently working at the HUG on training for surgery in Virtual Reality. I like designing items from constraints to a hardware solution embedding electronics, software, networks, and servers to end up with a connected system that communicates with its environment. Aside from crafting things or doing construction work, I like doing sports like hiking in the mountains, biking, climbing, or dancing. More recently, I started photography, and you can check out some of my photographs here!

Education

PhD Student

2019 → 2023
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) - Lausanne, Switzerland

During my thesis, I worked on Finger-Level Hand Control and Polymorphic Embodiment within the Immersive Interaction Group (IIG) at EPFL, led by Dr. Ronan BOULIC.
My work involved:

  • Implementing occlusion recovery systems for active motion tracking to accurately capture the user’s skeleton.
  • Normalizing body posture and self-contact information.
  • Iteratively re-applying the normalized posture to a target avatar using inverse kinematics to enable realistic embodiment.

Technologies used:

  • Unity3D
  • PhaseSpace Impulse X2 tracking system and SteamVR with Vive Trackers and Vive Pro Eye
  • CUDA for real-time GPU-accelerated computational shaders
  • R for data analysis and LaTeX for article writing

Skills developed:

  • Literature review, research question formulation, and experimental protocol design
  • Pilot testing and running experiments
  • Data collection & analysis
  • Academic writing and presentation skills

Engineer from Mines DOUAI

2015 → 2018
Mines DOUAI - Douai, France

I majored in Computer Science at Mines DOUAI

Classes Préparatoires aux Grandes Ecoles

2012 → 2015
Lycée Claude Bernard - Paris, France

Mathematics Physics branch

N.B. You can find a numerical version of this resume here!

Experiences

Research Engineer

2023 → Current
HUG - Hôpitaux de Genève - Geneva, Switzerland

At the VMC, we actively promote the use of XR technologies at the HUG to enhance patient comfort, advance clinical research, and improve medical education. Building on this mission, my work mainly involves:

  • Developing collaborative VR simulations with autonomous agents and built-in automatic evaluation.
  • Prototyping XR applications, creating interactive demos, and implementing experimental protocols to support clinical research and educational use cases.
  • Managing the VMC’s IT infrastructure and providing support for XR technologies in medical training and research.

Teacher Assistant

2019 → 2023
EPFL - Lausanne, Switzerland

I assisted Dr. BOULIC Ronan for Virtual Reality and C++ programming courses for which I wrote the hands-on support (VR course) and implemented an automated evaluation web interface for students (ICC).

Master project supervision

2019 → 2023
EPFL - Lausanne, Switzerland

I supervised Bachelor and Master projects, providing guidance on design, implementation, and reporting.

Internship as a PhD Student

10/2018 → 11/2018
ENSTA Bretagne - Brest, France

During one month I had the chance to work with Pr. LAGADEC Loïc, to learn and work with FPGAs overlays.

Infrastructure and electronic designer

2017-04 → 2017-08
Unéole - Euratechnologies, Lille, France

I designed a system enabling a windmill to send data to a server, including an electronic board providing simple feedback control over the brake system. Technologies used:

  • Raspberry Pi
  • PHP, Python
  • Electronics (UART, I2C, Analog readings and PWM controls)

Application designer

2016-04 → 2016-07
Soufflet Group - Nogent-Sur-Seine, France

Design of an application providing support for printers. Technologies used:

  • C# with the .NET framework
  • Microsoft SQL
  • Microsoft AD

GreenFit project

2015-09 → 2016-04

Design of a connected machine able to recover energy produced by sportsman.

Main tasks:

  • Electronic design
  • Design and machining mechanical parts

Exhibitions:

  • Paris BodyFitness Exhibition, 2016
  • Startup Day, PSB (Paris School of Business), 2016
  • National competition of Enactus France, 2016

Computer science Skills

Computer Science

  • Systems & Infrastructure
    • Linux / OpenBSD servers
    • Firewalls & networks
    • Hypervisors & virtualization
    • SQL & NoSQL databases
    • Certificates & security
    • Infrastructure as Code
    • Monitoring & Logging (Prometheus, Grafana, egrep)
  • Software Engineering
    • Design patterns & Software Architecture
    • Version Control Systems (Git, GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket)
    • Continuous integration (CI/CD)
    • Test-oriented development (TDD)
    • Debugging & Profiling (gdb, Valgrind, profilers)
    • Containerization (Docker)
  • Programming Languages
    • Low-Level & Systems (C, C++, Rust, Assembly)
    • High-Level & Application (OOP: C#, Python, Ruby, PHP, Java + Frameworks)
    • Web & Frontend (JavaScript)
    • Scripting & Automation (Bash)
    • Data Science & Statistical Analysis (R)
  • Web Technologies
    • REST APIs
    • jQuery, Ajax
    • WebSockets
    • Web servers (nginx, Apache)
    • TLS / HTTPS
  • Embedded Systems
    • Microcontrollers (PIC32MZ, AtMega, ESP32, STM32)
    • Assembly & register-level programming

Target Devices & Platforms

  • Backend services
  • Desktop applications
  • Microcontrollers
  • Android applications
  • Web browsers
  • Unity3D (multi-platform)

Other Skills

Hardware & Engineering

  • Electronics
    • PCB design (KiCAD)
    • SMD soldering & assembly
  • Mechanical Design & Fabrication
    • CAD (OpenSCAD, SolidWorks)
    • Machining (manual lathe, milling, CNC)
    • Welding
  • General Technical Skills
    • Electricity
    • Plumbing
    • Home installation
    • Painting
    • Mechanical maintenance

General

  • Driver's license
  • Paragliding license

Rewards

First Prize Photo Contest

2022
Club Photo EPFL / RESCO - Lausanne, Switzerland

First Prize won with a collection of four pictures from EPFL’s cafeterias.

IC - Teacher Assistant Award

2021
EPFL - Lausanne, Switzerland

Prize won for my involvement in the ICC Course, with the implementation of an online autograder website allowing students to submit their projects and get live feedback on their grades (the backend builds, runs, and tests the C++ projects on public and private evaluation cases), and in the VR course for which I wrote the practical part with hands-on available here: hands-on support.

Lauz'Hack 2019 - Contest Winner For Bobst Challenge

2019
Lauzhack - Lausanne, Switzerland

Hackaton organized in different challenges to solve in 24h proposed by other companies. The prize was won by implementing an innovative way to control a Bobst fictive production line using finger tracking (Leap Motion) combined with Eye tracking (Tobii).

Publications

A Computational Medical XR Discipline
Papagiannakis, G., Greenleaf, W., Cole, M., Zhang, M., Datta, R., Delahaye, M., & Kannape, O. A.
Springer Nature Switzerland - Computer Graphics International Conference (pp. 55-70).
Avatar error in your favor: Embodied avatars can fix users' mistakes without them noticing
Mathias Delahaye, Olaf Blanke, Ronan Boulic, Bruno Herbelin
PLOS One
User study of omnidirectional treadmill control algorithms in VR
Mathias Delahaye, Ronan Boulic
2023 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW), Shanghai, China
Real-Time Neural Network Prediction for Handling Two-Hands Mutual Occlusions
Dario Pavllo, Mathias Delahaye, Thibault Porssut, Bruno Herbelin, Ronan Boulic
Computers & Graphics : X
Does scaling player size skew one's ability to correctly evaluate object sizes in a virtual environment?
Neal Hartman - Mathias Delahaye, Hugo Decroix, Bruno Herbelin, Ronan Boulic
MIG '20: Motion, Interaction and Games
On the Importance of Providing a Tangible Haptic Response for Training Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation in Virtual Reality
Mathias Delahaye, Boris Zbinden, Bruno Herbelin, Ronan Boulic
ICAT-EGVE 2020
Partial Finger Involvement Reflects into Grasping Tasks Performance and Accuracy
Loën Boban, Mathias Delahaye, Ronan Boulic
ICAT-EGVE 2020
Real-time neural network prediction for handling two-hands mutual occlusions
Dario Pavllo, Mathias Delahaye, Thibault Porssut, Bruno Herbelin, Ronan Boulic
Computers & Graphics: X