Maria-Paola Forte

I love to create technology that can positively impact people’s lives

Hello! I am Paola - a scientist who loves turning research into real-world technology!

I lead the technical development of a stealth-mode startup, and I am also a guest scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, in the Haptic Intelligence Department (led by Dr. Katherine J. Kuchenbecker), where I work on a bioimpedance sensor that detects self-touch.

My research aims to create assistive technology through interdisciplinary innovation. I develop human-sensing systems that combine computer vision with novel sensor technologies to capture complex human movements and interactions. This approach addresses fundamental challenges in human pose estimation, with applications extending from accessibility for the Deaf community—my main area of expertise—to broader domains such as mental health monitoring and human-computer interaction.

My Ph.D. thesis, “An Interdisciplinary Approach to Human Pose Estimation: Application to Sign Language,” includes three first-author publications that bridge software and hardware innovation. At CVPR 2023, I introduced the first method to reconstruct 3D signing avatars from video using linguistic priors. Recognizing that visual systems struggle to capture self-touch—a critical component in nearly half of all signs—I developed bioimpedance-based sensing approaches. My work published in IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement demonstrates that bioimpedance can reliably detect self-touch across diverse individuals. My bioimpedance sensing technology has led to a patent application currently under examination. Building on this sensing approach, my hybrid system BioTUCH, presented at ICCV 2025, fuses bioimpedance sensing with visual pose estimation, improving 3D pose accuracy during self-contact events.

Beyond academic contributions, I am committed to translating research into real-world technology that makes a difference in people’s lives.

Education

  • Ph.D. Computer Science, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (2025)
  • M.Sc. Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano (2018), including an exchange semester at the University of Queensland
  • B.Sc. Biomedical Engineering, University of Genova (2015)