About & CV
Academic background, research interests, and professional experience
Short Bio
Yizhak (Itzik) Ben-Shabat is a Senior Scientist at Roblox, specializing in 3D computer vision, machine learning, and implicit neural representations. He completed his PhD at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in 2019, followed by postdoctoral research at the Australian National University as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Fellow. His research focuses on deep learning for 3D point clouds, surface reconstruction, and action understanding. He is also the founder of the Talking Papers Podcast, a platform for early-career researchers to discuss their latest work.
About Me
I am currently a Senior Scientist at Roblox. Before that, I was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Australian National University (ANU) and Technion – Israel Institute of Technology as part of my Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Fellowship (MSCA-GF), working with Prof. Stephen Gould. Before that, I was a Research Fellow with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Robotic Vision (ACRV).
My research interests lie on the intersection of 3D computer vision, machine learning and geometry. In particular, I was working on applying deep learning methods to 3D point clouds (detection, classification and action recognition). On my quest to change the world, I created the Talking Papers Podcast, a podcast by researchers for researchers that aims to be a new medium for disseminating research and help early career academics.
I received my PhD in 2019 from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology at the department of mechanical engineering in the laboratory for CAD and Lifecycle engineering. My PhD supervisors were Prof. Anath Fischer and Prof. Michael Lindenbaum. I received both my B.Sc (Cum Laude 2008) and M.Sc (Summa Cum Laude 2015) in mechanical engineering from the Technion.
Research Interests
- Surface Reconstruction using Implicit Neural Representation
- Normal estimation for 3D point clouds
- 3D action understanding
- Deep Learning for 3D data
- Point cloud descriptors
- Over-segmentation of 3D point clouds
Academic Degrees
PhD, Mechanical Engineering
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, 2019
Supervisors: Prof. Anath Fischer and Prof. Michael Lindenbaum
M.Sc, Mechanical Engineering (Summa Cum Laude)
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, 2015
B.Sc, Mechanical Engineering (Cum Laude)
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, 2008
Honours & Awards
Research
- 2020 – Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Individual Global Fellowship (MSCA-IF-GF)
- 2019 – Israel Scholarship Education Foundation (ISEF) International Fellowship
- 2018 – Best poster award at the Mechanical Engineering Research Day, Technion
- 2017 – Scholarship for academic excellence, Jacobs Award for doctoral students
- 2016 – Scholarship for academic excellence, Daniel Award for doctoral students
- 2016 – Mechanical Engineering department scholarship for academic excellence
- 2015 – HP Indigo award for Academic Excellency
- 2008 – B.Sc in Mechanical Engineering, Dean's Excellency (Cum Laude), Technion
Teaching
- 2015-2017 – Consistent Honorary TA (five awards), CAD Systems 1, Mechanical Engineering, Technion
- 2013-2014 – Honorary TA (three awards), CAD Systems 1, Mechanical Engineering, Technion
Professional Experience
Senior Scientist
Roblox | 2024 – Present
Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Fellow
Australian National University & Technion | 2021 – 2023
Project: "3DinAction: Understanding human action from unstructured 3D point clouds using deep learning methods"
Supervisor: Prof. Stephen Gould
Research Fellow
ARC Centre of Excellence for Robotic Vision, ANU | 2019 – 2020
Project: "Robots, Humans, and Actions"
Supervisor: Prof. Stephen Gould
Research Visit
Visual Computing Group, Technical University of Munich | 2018
Host: Prof. Matthias Nießner
Mechanical Engineer
IDF | 2008 – 2012
Teaching Experience
- 2015 – 2019 – Lecturer, CAD Systems 1 (Undergraduate course), Mechanical Engineering, Technion
- 2013 – 2019 – Teaching Assistant, CAD Systems 1 (Undergraduate course), Mechanical Engineering, Technion
- 2008 – Teaching Assistant, CAD Lab (Undergraduate course), Mechanical Engineering, Technion
- 2007 – 2008 – Teaching Position, Asat (Technion Student Organization)
Community Service
- 2022 – Present – Founder, The Talking Papers Podcast
- 2025 – Social Media Chair, Winter Conference on Applications in Computer Vision (WACV 2025)
- 2022 – Website and Poster Chair, Robotic Vision Summer School 2022
- 2021 – Program Chair, Robotic Vision Summer School 2021
- 2020 – Organizer, ECCV tutorial on Deep Declarative Networks
- 2008 – 2012 – Mentor, FIRST Robotics Competition (Ironi D High School Tel Aviv)
- 2005 – 2008 – Instructor, Perach Project (Big Brother program)
Reviewer for: CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICLR, TPAMI, CAD, Remote Sensing
Personal
I was born in 1985 in the city of Hadera, Israel. Everyone I know calls me Itzik (common Israeli nickname for Yizhak – see how to pronounce it). I am married to the talented Anna and father to the adorable, Shaked and Keshet (boy and girl). We currently live in Foster City, California, USA (previously in Atlit, Israel, and before that Canberra Australia).
In my free time, I enjoy playing volleyball (formerly semi-professionally in Haifa team in Israel's second league). I love teaching and every activity that combines it with technology (mentoring in FIRST Robotics Competition probably influenced me more than it did the kids). I like to think of myself as a "Maker" and I enjoy DIY projects that include mechanics, electronics, and programming.