Michael Wessely

Postdoctoral Associate at HCI Engineering Group
CSAIL, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

email: me@michaelwessely.com
office: Room 32-208, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

I argue that in the future everyone will create physical user interfaces in any shape, function and of any material. Physical user interfaces like mobile phones, or wearable health monitors fundamentally changed how we live and work. However, they mainly rely on rigid and rectangular touch-screens and their fabrication is still exclusive to industry and manufacturing experts. I develop tools and technologies that enable the fabrication of customizable physical user interfaces that integrate computing capabilities in various materials, and that can be soft, and flexible. In addition, I develop smart materials that can interactively change their physical properties, i.e., their color, stiffness, and surface texture.

Work Experience

01/2019 - 09/2022 Postdoctoral Associate at HCI Engineering Group, CSAIL, MIT, USA
03/2015 - 04/2015 Research Assistant at Embodied Interaction group
01/2015 - 10/2015 Research Assistant at Perception, Displays and Fabrication group
10/2013 - 03/2014 Research Assistant at Exploratory Data Analysis group

Education

11/2015 - 12/2018 PhD student at INRIA, Université Paris Sud, France
Supervisors: Theophanis Tsandilas, Wendy Mackay
06/2017 Visiting Student at Hybrid Ecologies Lab, UC Berkeley
11/2012 - 03/2015 Visual Computing(MSc), Saarland University
01/2010 - 10/2012 Computer Science(MSc), Saarland University
10/2005 - 12/2009 Computer Science(BSc), Saarland University

Program Committee

ACM UIST'20,'21,'22
ACM CHI'20,'22

Organizing Committee

ACM UIST'22: Demo Chair
ACM UIST'21: Social Event Chair
ACM UIST'18,'19: Publicity Chair

Reviewing

80+ reviews at:
ACM CHI ('17-'21), ACM UIST ('17-'21), ACM TEI ('18,'19,'20), ACM DIS '21, ACM NordiCHI'18, ACM MobileHCI'19, ACM SUI'18, ACM Siggraph Asia'18, ACM IMWUT'20

Awards and Research Grants

2020 Best Paper Honorable Mention, ACM CHI
2019 Best Talk Award, ACM UIST
2019 Best Paper Award, ACM UIST
2017 STIC Grant: Augmented Reality for Physical Modeling and Design
2015 Land of Ideas Award, Federation of German Industries
2014 Best Paper Award ACM UIST

Demos and Exhibitions

ACM UIST'20 MorphSensor
ACM UIST'19 Photo-Chromeleon
ACM UIST'18 ShapeMe & Interactive Tangrami
ACM UIST'16 Stretchis
ACM PERDIS'15 PrintScreen
CeBIT '15 "Embodied Interaction"
ACM UIST'14 Printscreen

Invited Talks

2022 Indiana University
2022 Aarhus University
2022 Aalto University
2021 Advanced Imaging Festival '21, South Korea
2021 TU Dresden
2021 Carnegie Mellon University, HCII, Host: Alexandra Ion
2021 Stanford, Host: Prof. Sean Follmer
2021 IST Austria, Host: Prof. Bernd Bickel
2021 Guest Lecture in Architecture and Digital Fabrication, ETH Zurich
2021 Guest Lecture on Functional Fabrics, MIT and AFFOA
2019 Host: Prof. Robert D. Howe, Harvard Biorobotics Lab
2019 MIT-nano Symposium, Color-Changing Materials
2018 Fab14 Paris, Science&Research Panel, Interactive Materials with Printed Electronics
2014 Schloss Dagstuhl, Science Journalism Workshop, PrintScreen

Workshops, Seminars, Summer Schools

2020 Organizer of ACM CHI Workshop on color-changing materials
2018 Organizer of a workshop on "Rapid Prototying with Interactive Materials", Fab14, Toulouse
2017 Participant at Summer School on "Computational Fabrication and Smart Matter", MIT
2015 Tutor at "Workshop on Printed Electronics", Saarland Unversity

Co-Advised Students

2021
Marwa AlAlawi [paper in preparation]
Faraz Faruqi [advised paper: SliceHub [NP9]]
2020
Diego Pinochet
Yunyi Zhu [advised paper: Lenticle Objects [11]]
Junyi Zhu [advised paper: MorphSensor [9]]
Paolo Boni [advised paper: ChromoPrint [NP8]]
Sabina Chen [advised paper: ChromoPrint [NP8]]
Daniela A. Zaidenberg
2019
Aradhana Adhikari [adivsed paper: Chromeleon[6]], Outstanding Research Award
Jackson Snowden [advised paper: Sprayable UIs [8]]
Carlos Castillo Lozada [advised paper: Sprayable UIs [8]], Lickleader Best UROP Award
Cattalyya Neungsigkapian [advised paper: ChromoUpdate [10]]
Alexey Kashapov [advised paper: ChromoUpdate [10]]
2016
Niels Mourette [advised paper: Stretchis [2]]

Teaching

2021 Engineering Interactive Technologies (Co-Instructor), MIT CSAIL
2020 Engineering Interactive Technologies (Co-Instructor), MIT CSAIL
2017 Digital Fabrication (Co-Instructor), Universite Paris-Saclay
2017 Introduction to Computer Graphics (TA), École Polytechnique

Research

[12] Yoonji Kim, Junyi Zhu, Mihir Trivedi, Dishita G. Turakhia, Ngai Hang Wu, Donghyeon Ko, Michael Wessely, Stefanie Mueller.
SensorViz: Visualizing Sensor Data Across Different Stages of Prototyping Interactive Objects.
In Proceedings of DIS 2021
(to appear)
[11] Jiani Zeng, Honghao Deng, Yunyi Zhu, Michael Wessely, Axel Kilian, Stefanie Mueller.
LenticleObject: 3D Printed Objects with Lenticular Lens Surfaces that Can Change their Appearance Depending on the Viewpoint.
In Proceedings of UIST 2021
[PDF] [ACM] [Video]
[10] Michael Wessely,Yuhua Jin, Cattalyya Nuengsigkapian, Aleksei Kashapov, Isabel Qamar, Dzmitry Tsetserukou, Stefanie Mueller.
ChromoUpdate: Locally Updating Photochromic Multi-Color Textures for Fast Design Iterations.
In Proceedings of CHI 2021
[PDF] [ACM] [Video]
[9] Junyi Zhu, Yunyi Zhu, Jiaming Cui, Leon Cheng, Jackson C Snowden, Mark Chounlakone, Michael Wessely, Stefanie Mueller.
MorphSensor: An Electronic Design Tool for Reforming Sensor Modules.
In Proceedings of UIST 2020
[PDF] [ACM] [Video]
[8] Michael Wessely, Ticha Sethapakdi, Carlos Castillo, Jackson C Snowden, Ollie Hanton, Isabel Qamar, Mike Fraser, Anne Roudaut, Stefanie Mueller.
Sprayable User Interfaces: Prototyping Large-Scale Interactive Surfaces with Sensors and Displays.
In Proceedings of CHI 2020
[PDF] [ACM] [Video]
[7] Ollie Hanton, Michael Wessely, Stefanie Mueller, Mike Fraser, Anne Roudaut.
ProtoSpray: Combining 3D Printing and Spraying to Create Objects with Interactive Displays.
In Proceedings of CHI 2020, Best Paper Honorable Mention
[PDF] [ACM] [Video]
[6] Yuhua Jin*, Isabel Qamar*, Michael Wessely*, Aradhana Adhikari, Katarina Bulovic, Parinya Punpongsanon, Stefanie Mueller. [* shared first authors]
Photo-Chromeleon: Re-Programmable Multi-Color Textures Using Photochromic Dyes
In Proceedings of UIST 2019, Best Paper Award
[PDF] [ACM] [Video]
[5] Michael Wessely, Theophanis Tsandilas, and Wendy E. Mackay
Shape-Aware Material: Interactive Fabrication with ShapeMe
In Proceedings of UIST 2018
[PDF] [ACM] [Video]
[4] Michal Piovarči, Michael Wessely, Michał Jagielski, Marc Alexa, Wojciech Matusik, Piotr Didyk
Design and analysis of directional front projection screens
Computers & Graphics, Volume 74, 2018,12 pages
[PDF] [Video]
[3] Michal Piovarči, Michael Wessely, Michał Jagielski, Marc Alexa, Wojciech Matusik, and Piotr Didyk
Directional screens
ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication (SCF '17), 10 pages
[PDF] [ACM] [Video]
[2] Michael Wessely, Theophanis Tsandilas, and Wendy E. Mackay
Stretchis: Fabricating Highly Stretchable User Interfaces
In Proceedings of UIST '16
[PDF] [ACM] [Video] [Poster]
[1] Simon Olberding, Michael Wessely, and Jürgen Steimle
PrintScreen: fabricating highly customizable thin-film touch-displays
In Proceedings of UIST '14, Best Paper Award
[PDF] [ACM] [Video]


Extended Abstracts, Demos, Workshops, and Magazine Articles

[NP9] Faraz Faruqi, Kenneth Friedman, Leon Cheng, Michael Wessely, Sriram Subramanian, Stefanie Mueller.
SliceHub: Augmenting Shared 3D Model Repositories with Slicing Results for 3D Printing.
CHI 2022, Late Breaking Work, to appear
[NP8] Isabel P. S. Qamar, Sabina W. Chen, Dimitri Tskhovrebadze, Paolo Boni, Michael Wessely, Stefanie Mueller.
ChromoPrint: A Multi-Color 3D Printer Based on a Reprogrammable Photochromic Resin.
CHI 2022, Late Breaking Work, to appear
[NP7] Junyi Zhu, Yunyi Zhu, Jiaming Cui, Leon Cheng, Jackson C Snowden, Mark Chounlakone, Michael Wessely, Stefanie Mueller
Demonstration of MorphSensor: A 3D Electronic Design Tool for Reforming Sensor Modules
UIST Adjunct '20, 3 pages
[ACM]

[NP6] Ollie Hanton, Michael Wessely, Stefanie Mueller, Mike Fraser, Anne Roudaut
ProtoSpray: Combining 3D Printing and Spraying to Create Objects with Interactive Displays.
CHI EA '20, 4 pages
[ACM]

[NP5] Yuhua Jin, Isabel Qamar, Michael Wessely, Stefanie Mueller
Photo-Chromeleon: Re-Programmable Multi-Color Textures Using Photochromic Dyes
SIGGRAPH '20, 2 pages
[ACM]

[NP4] Yuhua Jin, Isabel Qamar, Michael Wessely, Stefanie Mueller
Introduction to Re-Programmable Color-Changing Materials
CHI EA 2020, 4 pages
[ACM]

[NP3] Michael Wessely, Nadiya Morenko, Jürgen Steimle, Michael Schmitz
Interactive Tangrami: Rapid Prototyping with Modular Paper-folded Electronics
UIST 2018, 2 pages
[PDF] [ACM] [Video]

[NP2] J. Li, M. Wessely, S. Follmer and S. Mueller,
Summer School for Computational Fabrication and Smart Matter
IEEE Pervasive Computing, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 50-53, October-December 2017.
[IEEE]

[NP1] Jürgen Steimle, Simon Olberding, Michael Wessely
Digitale Fabrikation von flexiblen Displays und Touch-Oberflächen
Mensch&Computer Workshopband 2014: 19-20