About us

Meshcapade is the leading platform for the creation, animation, sharing, and use of realistic 3D digital humans. Our patented SMPL body model technology is the de facto industry standard. We should know. We created it.

Meshcapade avatars are widely used in research, apparel, biomechanics, virtual reality, film, and as training data for deep learning. But we're not finished. From fantasy game characters to digital doubles, our goal is to power all the world’s avatars providing portability and security.

avatar dancing hiphop

The Digital Human Experts

Using our expertise in computer vision, generative models and
machine learning to bring you the best avatars with the least friction.
Naureen Mahmood
Naureen was one of the earliest members of the Perceiving Systems group at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. She is a key author of several SIGGRAPH papers, and has been deeply involved in developing multiple groundbreaking 3D human body modeling and motion capture technologies.
Co-founder | CEO

Naureen Mahmood

Talha Zaman
Talha is an experienced engineering leader who helped build Kyruus, an enterprise startup transforming healthcare through big data, and earlier worked at Google. Prior to Meshcapade, he focused on turning research into production quality software at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems.
Co-founder | CTO

Talha Zaman

Michael Black
Michael is a founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and an honorary professor at the University of Tübingen. He is a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and a member of the German Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina. He co-founded Body Labs Inc. and was a Distinguished Scientist at Amazon. He serves as the speaker of Cyber Valley, Europe’s largest AI ecosystem. His pioneering research on virtual humans was a foundation for Meshcapade.
Co-founder | Chief Scientist

Michael Black

Nicolas Keller
Nicolas joined Meshcapade after falling in love with it as one of Meshcapade‘s angel investors and is responsible for all things that sound suspiciously vague - including Business Development. He still dabbles in the dark arts of venture capital as a Venture Partner at Vsquared Ventures, a European deep tech VC fund. Prior to his life in VC, he was the VP Business Development & one of many co-founders at Franka Emika, a robotics startup.
Business Development

Nicolas Keller

Anica Wilhelm
Anica brings together tech, sales and ops, and thus loves being the translator between her colleagues and different stakeholders to keep things moving at a fast pace. She studied business informatics with a focus on Big Data and AI. Previously, she worked at Deutsche Telekom and replex, an IT startup which was acquired by Cisco AppDynamics.
Operations Manager

Anica Wilhelm

Sherine Nouh
Sherine is an accomplished technical sales professional and business consultant who worked earlier at Microsoft, Oracle and Dell EMC. She previously helped drive business growth by guiding numerous customers to adopt the right technologies for their needs and unlock potential opportunities. Her educational background includes a Masters of Science in Information Management and Business Technology from Loughborough University in the UK.
Growth Manager

Sherine Nouh

Nikolas Hesse
Nikolas is a researcher and software engineer working at the intersection of computer vision and medicine. Before joining Meshcapade, he was a research associate at Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation (IOSB), and completed his Ph.D. at University of Freiburg. Nikolas continues to be a post-doctoral fellow at Children’s Hospital, Zürich while consulting for Meshcapade.
Research Consultant

Nikolas Hesse

Denis Heid
Denis brings together computer graphics and machine learning applications, molding them into pipelines and software products. Previously, he worked at IBM as a DevOps Engineer and graduated at the University Tübingen (M.Sc) with a focus on computer graphics and deep learning.
Backend Engineer

Denis Heid

Stefan Dachwitz
Stefan has been dabbling with computer graphics software since the days of the apple][ and finished his CS studies with a focus on interactive and graphical systems. After some experience with SGI computers and medical image processing, he joined aliaswavefront to work on Maya. He loved working on interactive installations, developed web apps and map rendering at HERE, and is now working for Meshcapade as a Graphics Engineer.
Web developer - 3D Graphics

Stefan Dachwitz

Daryl Alexsy
Daryl is a versatile development-driven designer who specializes in combining art with technology. Prior to joining Meshcapade, she worked for over a decade as a fine artist and illustrator before deciding to pursue a career in tech after discovering a love for designing and programming games. She graduated from the Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan, located in Tübingen’s sister city of Ann Arbor.
Creative Lead

Daryl Alexsy

Antonia Beller
Coming from a background of biology, Antonia discovered her passion for software engineering during her master thesis. After obtaining a second masters degree in Bioinformatics she spent one year doing research at the University of Tübingen before joining Meshcapade as a Backend Engineer.
Backend Engineer

Antonia Beller

Nitin Saini
Nitin is a Machine Learning Scientist working in the field of 3D computer vision. He is interested in human motion and appearance reconstruction from videos. During his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, he developed a markerless aerial mocap system for long-range outdoor human motion capture. He has worked for Adobe Research and Samsung Research.
Machine Learning Scientist

Nitin Saini

Gabriele Calissi
Gabriele is a Web Developer, passionate about technology all around. He fell in love with virtual reality and started a new journey, learning about the wonderful world of 3D. With a background in consulting he’s ready to solve problems and delivering great products to keep customers happy. Favorite technologies: React, ThreeJS and Blender!
Frontend Web Developer

Gabriele Calissi

Pritpal Trevisan
Pritpal brings a combination of experience from large, corporate businesses and startups. Having an understanding of what works well in each of these types of businesses is what enables her to combine the best of both worlds and build an effective talent acquisition function. Her most recent experience includes Replex, a SaaS startup and Kaiko, a digital asset data startup. Nowadays, working with senior leaders and helping them scale to realise their vision is what excites and drives Pritpal.
Talent Acquisition Manager

Pritpal Trevisan

Nathan Bajandas
Nathan integrates Meshcapade's technologies into other platforms such as Unreal and Unity. He joins Meshcapade with a background in building VR, desktop, and mobile training applications for various professions such as scuba divers, mechanics, and fighter pilots. He has computer science (B.Sc.) and visualization science (M.Sc.) degrees from Texas A&M University.
3D Graphics Engineer

Nathan Bajandas

Matteo Maponi
Matteo is a senior DevOps Engineer and automation enthusiast. He has a wide-spanning academic background - covering ML, NLP, and AI, but he focuses on Kubernetes, Terraform, and CI/CD pipelining. Prior to Meshcapade he worked at Nuance Communications (Microsoft), where he built and maintained several K8S clusters as part of the Infrastructure team. He believes that humans should focus their time on what matters most.
DevOps Engineer

Matteo Maponi

Mona Wu
Mona is a 3D artist studying Creative Media and Game Technologies at the Saxion University of Applied Science in Enschede, the Netherlands. Pursuing this study comes from her passion for games, as well as drawing in her leisure time.
3D Rendering Artist Intern

Mona Wu

Radu Alexandru Rosu
Alex is a research scientist working at the intersection of deep learning and computer graphics. During his PhD at the University of Bonn, he focused on 3D reconstruction from images and real-time rendering methods. Before joining Meshcapade, he interned at Reality Labs where he worked on new methods for the reconstruction and rendering of strand-based hair.
Research Scientist

Radu Alexandru Rosu

Sun Yu
Yu is a Machine Learning Scientist with a focus on 3D human analysis. During his Ph.D. at the Harbin Institute of Technology and interning at JD.com, he pioneered a series of one-stage & real-time methods - namely ROMP, BEV, and TRACE - for estimating 3D human pose, shape, and trajectory from monocular images. Outside of work, he enjoys exploring natural landscapes and observing wildlife.
Machine Learning Scientist

Sun Yu

Our Advisors

Leaders in industry and academics with years of experience,
bringing together the best of avatar technology.
Dr. Silvia Zuffi
Dr. Silvia Zuffi is a research scientist at the CNR Institute for Applied Mathematics and affiliated researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (Tübingen, Germany). She holds a degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Bologna, and a PhD from Brown University (Procidence, RI). Her research interests span from colour imaging and reproduction to machine learning, computer vision and graphics, with focus on motion capture and 3D modelling of humans and animals.
Scientific Advisor

Dr. Silvia Zuffi

Andrew Hamel
Andrew is a former senior executive at Amazon and a recognized leader in digital transformation strategies. Hamel spent more than a decade with Amazon, where he led development of core technical services including the company’s search function, recommendation engines, and other machine-learning strategies. Andrew knows how to build and manage large teams and how to deliver mission critical software at Enterprise scale.
Advisor | Investor

Andrew Hamel

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