Marie-Paule Cani is a Professor of Computer Science at Ecole Polytechnique. Her research interests cover both Shape Modelling and Computer Animation. She contributed over the years to a number of high level models for shapes and motion such as implicit surfaces, multi-resolution physically-based animation methods and hybrid representations for real-time natural scenes. Following a long lasting interest for virtual sculpture, she has been recently searching for more expressive ways to create 3D contents such as combining sketch-based interfaces with procedural models based on a priori knowledge or learning.