Dr Michael Meredith

Post Doctoral Research Associate

Contact Details

Humanities Research Institute
The University of Sheffield
34 Gell Street
Sheffield
S3 7QY
Telephone: (0114) 2226111
email: m.meredith@sheffield.ac.uk

Qualifications

BEng First Class, Software Engineering (University of Sheffield), PhD (University of Sheffield)

Biography

Dr Michael Meredith is a research associate based at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield, UK. His early research focused on 3D computer character animation, virtual reality, mechanics, biomechanics and gait simulations. More recently, he has worked within the e-Science domain on the Virtual Vellum, Kiosque, Pegasus and Digging into Image Data projects as research associate under the principle investigator Professor Peter Ainsworth of the French department at the university. Michael has also worked alongside the Online Froissart research team assisting with some of the projects technical aspects.

The majority of the e-Science research projects have centred on the Froissart chronicles, making the texts and digitised manuscript images more widely available. This has included developing software tools to interact with this content for both scholarly and general-public; this can be used either online over the web or locally on a standard desktop computer. These technologies have successfully been used during exhibitions at Leeds Royal Armouries and Le Musée de l'Armée, Paris, and are now the focus of the Exhibitor Knowledge Transfer grant. The use of Grid technologies (access and data grids) have also been harnessed to deliver virtual exhibitions.

Current Research and Development Projects

• Kinecting up the Past (JISC-funded)
• Ola Nordmann Goes West (AHRC-funded)
• Q Cinema (Research Enterprise Innovation Fund)
• Augmenting Participation (HEIF-4 and MLA Council funded)
• Personal Signage through Augmented Reality (HEIF-4 funded)
• Exhibitor (HEIF-4 funded)
• Olive Schreiner Letters Online project (ESRC-funded)

Previous Research and Development Projects

• Digging into Image Data to Answer Authorship Related Questions (JISC/NEF/NSF-funded)
• Manuscripts of the West Midlands relauched website (HRI)
• The Online Froissart project (AHRC-funded)
• Pegasus (EPSRC-funded)
• Kiosque (DTI-funded)
• Virtual Vellum (EPSRC/JISC/Arts & Humanities e-Science Initiative and the UK e-Science Core Programme funded)

Administrative/Professional Responsibilities

• Finance duties
• First Aider at Work
• Member of the Research Computing Advisory Group
• Reviewer for the Journal of Virtual Reality and Broadcasting (JVRB)

Publications

• Meredith, M., Ainsworth, P., "Optimising the use of Storage Resource Broker to Host Manuscript Images and Virtual Exhibitions Online", HRI Technical Report (in press)
• Ainsworth, P., Meredith, M., "e-Science for medievalists: options, challenges, solutions and opportunities", Digital Humanities Quarterly, Volume 3 Number 4, Fall 2009
• Martinez Lazalde, O., Maddock, S., Meredith, M., "A Constraint-Based approach to Visual Speech for a Mexican-Spanish Talking Head", International Journal of Computer Games Technology, Volume 2008, 2008
• Martinez-Lazalde, O., Maddock, S., Meredith, M., "A Mexican-Spanish Talking Head", The Third International Conference on Games Research and Development 2007 (CyberGames 2007), pp. 17-24, 2007
• Meredith, M. and Maddock, S., "Approximating Character Biomechanics with Real Time Weighted Inverse Kinematics", Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds, Vol. 18, Issue 4-5, pp. 349-359, 2007
• Meredith, M. and Maddock, S., "Inverse Skinning", CVMP 2006 (The 3rd European Conference on Visual Media Production), pp. 163-172
• Meredith, M, "Adapting and Reconfiguring Human Figure Motion Capture Data through the Application of Inverse Kinematics and Biomechanics-Based Optimisation", PhD Thesis, The Department of Computer Science, The University of Sheffield, UK, March 2006
• Meredith, M. and Maddock, S., "Adapting Motion Capture using weighted Real-Time Inverse Kinematics", ACM Computers in Entertainment, Volume 3(1), Jan/Mar, 2005
• Meredith, M. and Maddock, S., "Individualised Character Motion Using Weighted Real-Time Inverse Kinematics", Proc. GAME-ON 2004, pp. 57-64 (Best paper of the conference)
• Meredith, M. and Maddock, S., "Adapting Motion Capture using weighted Real-Time Inverse Kinematics", Proc. GDTW 2004 (The 2nd annual international workshop in Computer Game Design and Technology), pp. 120-129 (Best paper of the conference)
• Meredith, M. and Maddock, S., "Using a half-Jacobian for real-time inverse kinematics", Proc. CGAIDE'04 (The 5th International Conference on Computer Games: Artificial Intelligence, Design and Education), pp. 81-88
• Meredith, M. and Maddock, S., "Real-Time Inverse Kinematics: The Return of the Jacobian", Department of Computer Science Research Memorandum CS-04-06, University of Sheffield
• Meredith, M. and Maddock, S., "Motion capture file formats explained", Department of Computer Science Technical Report CS-01-11, University of Sheffield