VC AMU | AI, Synthetic Data & Simulation Lab
Generating images, data, and dynamic models through AI and formal simulation
       


I am an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, where I lead the Visual Computing (VC) AMU Lab — the AI, Synthetic Data & Simulation Lab. Our group develops methods at the intersection of simulation-informed AI, synthetic data generation, and formal modeling of complex systems. Prior to joining AMU, I received my PhD from the University of Calgary and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Sainsbury Laboratory, University of Cambridge.

Research Interests
  • Simulation-Informed AI and Generative Models
  • Synthetic Data Generation
  • Formal Modeling and Simulation of Complex Systems
  • Computational Biology of Plants
Teaching


Publications

2027
P. Bartkowiak, B. Kotrys, D. L. Michels, S. Pirk, W. Palubicki, SADGE: Structure and Appearance Domain Gap Estimation of Synthetic and Real Data, IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), 2027 (to appear)
[Website], [ArXiv], [Code]
2026
P. Bartkowiak, L. Petersen, B. Kotrys, D. L. Michels, S. Pirk, W. Palubicki, MaSC: A Masked Similarity Metric for Evaluating Concept-Driven Generation, Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2026 (to appear)
[Website], [ArXiv], [Code], [PyPI]
A. Burian, A. Kokosza, M. Raczyńska-Szajgin, P. Solansky, M. Timmermans, W. Pałubicki, Self-organization of Vascular Strands Drives their Patterning in the Arabidopsis Shoot Apex, Developmental Cell, 2026
[Paper], [Website], [Nature Plants Highlight]
P. Bartkowiak, M. Marlewski, P. Wójcik, J. J. Lee, D. L. Michels, B. Benes, S. Pirk, W. Palubicki, GreenScapes: Optimized Vegetation Configurations in Cities, ACM SIGGRAPH Asia Conference Paper Track, 2026 (to appear)
[Website], [Video], [Code]
H. Wrede, A. R. Wagner, W. Pałubicki, D. L. Michels, S. Pirk, Flamescapes: Simulating the Wildlandfire Urban Interface, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2026) (to appear)
[Website], [Paper], [Video]
Z. Yang, N. Schwarz, B. Li, D. L. Michels, B. Benes, S. Pirk, W. Pałubicki, Woodstock: Interactive Modeling of Fungal Wood Decay, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2026), Vol. 45, No. 4, Article 155
[Paper], [Website], [Preprint]
J. Nazarenus, D. L. Michels, W. Pałubicki, S. Kou, F.-L. Zhang, S. Pirk, R. Koch, Gaussians on Fire: High-Frequency Reconstruction of Flames, European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), 2026 (to appear)
[Website], [ArXiv], [Video], [Code], [Dataset]
P. Bartkowiak, J. Markil, B. Kotrys, D. L. Michels, S. Pirk, W. Palubicki, SynGallery: A Synthetic Gallery of Real Paintings for Instance-Level Artwork Recognition, VISART VIII Workshop at ECCV, 2026 (to appear)
[Website], [ArXiv], [Code], [Dataset]
S. Mounir, M. Cieslak, N. Dhieb, H. Ghazzai, J. Klein, K. Froehlich, S. Pirk, W. Pałubicki, G. Setti, A. M. Eltawil, D. L. Michels, Text-conditioned Segmentation for Tomato Phenotyping via Procedural Synthetic Data, Computer Vision in Plant Phenotyping and Agriculture (CVPPA) Workshop at ECCV, 2026
[ArXiv]
M. J. Finck, S. P. Lücke, N. C. Koser, Y. Sun, J. B. Hövener, S. Pirk, W. Palubicki, Resource-efficient Fine-tuning of Stable Diffusion for Synthetic Hand Radiograph Generation, Bildverarbeitung für die Medizin (BVM), 2026
[Paper]
2025
B. Li, N. A. Schwarz, W. Palubicki, S. Pirk, D. L. Michels, B. Benes, Stressful Tree Modeling: Breaking Branches with Strands, ACM SIGGRAPH Conference Paper Track, 2025
[Paper], [Website], [Video]
H. Wrede, A. R. Wagner, S. M. Mahfuz, W. Pałubicki, D. L. Michels, S. Pirk, Fire-X: Extinguishing Fire with Stoichiometric Heat Release, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2025), Vol. 44, No. 6, Article 268
[Paper], [Website], [Video], [Two Minute Papers]
D. Liu, J. Klein, F. Rist, W. Palubicki, S. Pirk, D. L. Michels, FLAMEFORGE: Combustion Simulation of Wooden Structures, Proceedings of the ACM on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SCA 2025), Vol. 8, No. 4
[Paper], [Video]
J. A. Amador Herrera, J. Klein, D. T. Banuti, S. Pirk, W. Palubicki, D. L. Michels, Thunderstruck: Visually Simulating Electrical Storms, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Vol. 31, No. 12, 2025
[Paper], [Video]
J. Szymkowiak, W. Jakubowska, D. Malarz, W. Smolak-Dyzewska, M. Zieba, P. Musialski, W. Pałubicki, P. Spurek, Neural Surface Priors for Editable Gaussian Splatting, International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), 2025
[ArXiv], [Code]
2024
A. Kokosza, H. Wrede, D. G. Esparza, M. Makowski, D. Liu, D. L. Michels, S. Pirk, W. Palubicki, Scintilla: Simulating Combustible Vegetation for Wildfires, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2024), Vol. 43, No. 4, Article 70
[Preprint], [Website], [Video], [Two Minute Papers]
B. Li, N. A. Schwarz, W. Palubicki, S. Pirk, B. Benes, Interactive Invigoration: Volumetric Modeling of Trees with Strands, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2024), Vol. 43, No. 4, Article 146
[Preprint], [Website], [Video]
J. A. Amador Herrera, J. Klein, D. Liu, W. Palubicki, S. Pirk, D. L. Michels, Cyclogenesis: Simulating Hurricanes and Tornadoes, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2024), Vol. 43, No. 4, Article 71
[Preprint], [Website], [Video],
M. Cieslak, U. Govindarajan, A. Garcia, A. Chandrashekar, T. Hadrich, A. Mendoza-Drosik, D. Michels, S. Pirk, C.-C. Fu, W. Palubicki, Generating Diverse Agricultural Data for Vision-Based Farming Applications, 2024 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops (CVPRW).
[Website], [Paper],
J. Kaluzny, Y. Schreckenberg, K. Cyganik, P. Annighöfer, S. Pirk, D. Michels, M. Cieslak, F. Assaad, B. Benes, W. Palubicki, LAESI: Leaf Area Estimation with Synthetic Imagery, 2024 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops (CVPRW).
[Website], [Paper],
M. Na, J. Klein, B. Zhang, W. Palubicki, S. Pirk, D. L. Michels, A Lennard-Jones Layer for Distribution Normalization, Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR), 2024
[Preprint], [ArXiv], [Video]
J. Deng, S. Marri, J. Klein, W. Palubicki, S. Pirk, G. Chowdhary, D. L. Michels, Gazebo Plants: Simulating Plant-Robot Interaction with Cosserat Rods, under submission, 2024
[Preprint], [ArXiv], [Video]
N. Kalbfuß, A. Strohmayr, M. Kegel, L. Le, F. Grosseholz, B. Brunschweiger, K. Stöckl, C. Wiese, C. Franke, C. Schiestl, S. Prem, S. Sha, K. Franz-Oberdorf, J. Hafermann, M. Thiemé, E. Facher, W. Palubicki, C. Bolle, F. F. Assaad, A Role for Brassinosteroid Signaling in Decision-Making Processes, PLOS Genetics, 2024
[Website], [Paper],
J. Klein, R. E. Waller, S. Pirk, W. Pałubicki, M. Tester, and D. L. Michels, Synthetic Data at Scale: A Development Model to Efficiently Leverage Machine Learning in Agriculture, Frontiers in Plant Science, 2024
[Website]
2023
C. Su, A. Kokosza, X. Xie, A. Pencák, Y. Zhang, P. Raumonen, X. Shi, S. Muranen, M. Kucukoglu Topcu, J. Immanen, R. Hagqvist, O. Safronov, J. Alonso-Serra, G. Eswaran, M. Pavicic Venegas, K. Ljung, S. Ward, A. P. Mähönen, K. Himanen, J. Salojärvi, A. R. Fernie, O. Novák, O. Leyser, W. Palubicki, Y. Helariutta, K. Nieminen, Tree architecture: A strigolactone-deficient mutant reveals a connection between branching order and auxin gradient along the tree stem, PNAS, 2023 Nov 28;120(48):e2308587120.
[Website], [Paper],
F. Maggioli, J. Klein, T. Hädrich, E. Rodolà, W. Palubicki, S. Pirk, D. L. Michels, A Physically-inspired Approach to the Simulation of Plant Wilting, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2023), Vol. 42, No. 6
[Website], [Preprint], [Video],
B. Li, J. Klein, D. L. Michels, B. Benes, S. Pirk, W. Pałubicki, Rhizomorph: The Coordinated Function of Shoots and Roots, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2023), Vol. 42, No. 4
[Website], [Preprint], [YouTube], [Two Minute Papers], [Bibtex]
2022
W. Pałubicki, M. Makowski, W. Gajda, T. Hädrich, D. L. Michels, S. Pirk, Ecoclimates: Climate-Response Modeling of Vegetation, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2022), Vol. 41, No. 4
[Website], [Preprint], [YouTube], [Two Minute Papers], [Bibtex]
W. Raateland, T. Hädrich, J. A. Herrera, D. Banuti, W. Pałubicki, S. Pirk, K. Hildebrandt, D. L. Michels DCGrid: An Adaptive Grid Structure for Memory-Constrained Fluid Simulation on the GPU, ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games, 2022
[Website], [Preprint], [DOI], [Supplementary Material], [Code], [YouTube], [Bibtex]
2021
H. Shao, T. Kugelstadt, T. Hädrich, W. Pałubicki, J. Bender, S. Pirk, D. L. Michels, Accurately Solving Rod Dynamics with Graph Learning, Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2021
[Website], [Preprint], [ArXiv], [Supplementary Material], [YouTube], [Bibtex]
J. A. Amador Herrera, T. Hädrich, W. Pałubicki, D. T. Banuti, S. Pirk, D. L. Michels, Weatherscapes: Nowcasting Heat Transfer and Water Continuity, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2021), Vol. 40, No. 6
[Website], [Preprint], [Video], [Technical Papers Trailer], [Bibtex]
B. Li, J. Kałużny, J. Klein, D.L. Michels, W. Pałubicki, B. Benes, S. Pirk, Learning to Reconstruct Botanical Trees from Single Images, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2021), Vol. 40, No. 6
[Website], [Preprint], [YouTube], [Technical Papers Trailer], [Bibtex]
T. Hädrich, D. T. Banuti, W. Pałubicki, S. Pirk, D. L. Michels, Fire in Paradise: Mesoscale Simulation of Wildfires, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2021), Vol. 40, No. 4
[Website], [Preprint], [YouTube], [Talk], [Two Minute Papers], [Bibtex]
2020
T. Hädrich, M. Makowski, W. Pałubicki, D. T. Banuti, S. Pirk, D. L. Michels, Stormscapes: Simulating Cloud Dynamics in the Now, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2020), Vol. 39, No. 6
[Website], [Preprint], [Technical Papers Trailer], [Bibtex]
T. Hädrich, J. Scheffczyk, W. Pałubicki, S. Pirk, D. L. Michels, Interactive Wood Fracture,
Eurographics / ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Computer Animation - Posters, 2020
[Website], [Preprint], [Video], [Bibtex]
2019
M. Makowski, T. Hädrich, J. Scheffczyk, D. L. Michels, S. Pirk, W. Pałubicki, Synthetic Silviculture: Multi-scale Modeling of Plant Ecosystems, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2019), Vol. 38, No. 4
[Website], [Preprint], [YouTube], [Technical Papers Trailer], [Two Minute Papers], [Bibtex]
Wojtek Palubicki, Andrzej Kokosza, Agata Burian Formal description of plant morphogenesis, Journal of Experimental Botany, Volume 70, Issue 14, 1 July 2019, Pages 3601–3613
[PDF], [Website]
2017
S. Pirk, M. Jarząbek, T. Hädrich, D. L. Michels, W. Palubicki, Interactive Wood Combustion for Botanical Tree Models, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2017), Vol. 36, No. 6
[Website], [Preprint], [YouTube], [Technical Papers Trailer], [Two Minute Papers], [Bibtex]
2015
Y. Coudert, W. Palubicki, K. Ljung, O. Novak, O. Leyser, C. J. Harrison, Three ancient hormonal cues co-ordinate shoot branching in a moss, Elife, 2015 Mar 25;4:e06808
[Website], [Paper],
2009
Wojciech Palubicki, Kipp Horel, Steven Longay, Adam Runions, Brendan Lane, Radomír Mech, Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz Self-organizing tree models for image synthesis, ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2009), Vol. 28, No. 3, Article 58
[PDF], [Website]




Academic Career

2015 – Present Assistant Professor, Department of Artificial Intelligence, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
2012 – 2015 Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Sainsbury Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK
2008 – 2012 PhD Student, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Canada
2007 – 2008 Software Developer, Vizrt Austria GmbH, Schwaz, Austria
2013 PhD in Computer Science, University of Calgary, Canada
Advisor: Prof. Dr. Przemysław Prusinkiewicz.
2007 Diploma of Computer Science, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland