Dr. Nikola Popovic

Research scientist

E-mail: [email protected]

Research interests:
My research focuses on building next-generation spatial intelligence systems that can understand and act in complex environments through multi-modal reasoning. My goal is to enable transformative advances in human-made environments through augmented assistance, robotics, and intelligent automation. To achieve this, I investigate how large-scale 3D scenes can be represented and semantically understood, and how language can be used to interact with these spaces. I am also exploring how to integrate digital twins of human-made environments to extend spatial understanding beyond static perception. Furthermore, I seek to understand how AI systems can dynamically react to changes in the state of the world by leveraging video and other temporal data streams. Finally, I am interested in developing approaches for multi-modal fusion — combining 3D maps, video feeds, digital twins, and operational documents — to achieve continuous, online spatio-temporal reasoning.

Background:
Before joining INSAIT, I have completed my PhD at the Computer Vision Lab at ETH Zurich. During my PhD studies I have worked on: improving implicit neural 3D representations of indoor scenes; model-aware 3D eye gaze tracking through weak supervisions; spatially multi-conditional image generation; compact and efficient multi-task learning. Near the end of my PhD studies, I have conducted a research scientist internship at Meta Reality Labs in Zurich, where I have worked on implicit neural representations of dynamic 3D scene. Before my PhD studies, I was a full-time teaching assistant at the University of Belgrade, School of Electrical Engineering, where I have also completed my MSc and BSc studies specializing in signal processing and control theory. I am also a long-time member of the organizing committee of the PSIML summer school on AI in Serbia.

Links & contacts:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikola-popovic-172252113/
Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aY2lypgAAAAJ&hl=en