Basilio Noris (DR'10)

Basilio Noris obtained his PhD at EPFL in 2010 at the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory (LASA) at the School of Engineering. The topic of his thesis: “Machine Vision-Based Analysis of Gaze and Visual Context: an Application to Visual Behavior of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders” enabled him to develop a camera that can follow the eye movements of the individual using it. Thus, you can see on the screen what the person sees in front of him/her and in which direction they are looking.

This device can be used, for example, to study the behavior of autistic children, making it possible to detect where they are focusing their attention, and for how long . This doctoral work enabled Basilio to feature in the list of projects likely to be awarded the EPFL PhD Thesis prize. Prior to this, he was a photographer, a vocation which inspired him to direct his research work towards visual techniques.

He is currently involved with a start-up that he founded, and which supplies merchandising strategy tests and validation to large retailers and brand names by using the technologies developed while he was working on his thesis. However, he is pursuing, as a post-doctoral student at LASA, and in cooperation with the CHUV in Lausanne, the research on children with autism.