Computational Geometry at Stony Brook

Computational geometry is the study of efficient algorithms to solve geometric problems. The methodologies of computational geometry allow one to design and analyze algorithms for the efficient solution of numerous geometric problems that arise in application areas such as manufacturing, computer-aided design, robotics, computer vision, graphics, and cartography.

Researchers at Stony Brook:

Several faculty at Stony Brook are directly involved in computational geometry research projects, including:

We also have a very strong group of our faculty colleagues at Stony Brook doing research in closely allied application areas of computational geometry, including computer graphics, visualization, volume rendering, modeling, and computer vision, including:

Students and postdocs working in the group:

Current Projects:

Current projects include basic and applied research funded by NSF, Sandia, and ONR. Also, industrial applications projects are under way with Boeing (virtual environments), Hughes Aircraft (GIS, weighted region shortest paths, military mission planning, simulation), Bridgeport Machines (tool path generation and verification), Seagull Technologies, Inc., Sun Microsystems (triangulation algorithms), and Syngen Corp. (OCR, automated text processing). A sample of some projects (this list under construction!):

Fall Workshops in Computational Geometry:

The series of fall workshops in computational geometry were started at Stony Brook in 1991 and have become an established venue for the field of computational geometry. The workshops were originally funded by the Mathematical Sciences Institute (MSI), through the Army Center for the Mathematics of Nonlinear Systems at Stony Brook. (MSI is funded by the U.S. Army Research Office.) The Fifth MSI-Stony Brook Workshop on Computational Geometry took place on October 20--21, 1995. The Sixth annual Fall Workshop on Computational Geometry, was held on October 11-12, 1996, hosted by the Center for Geometric Computing, Johns Hopkins University. The Seventh annual Fall Workshop took place October 18-19, 1997, Center for Geometric Computing, Duke University (P. Agarwal, organizer). The Eighth annual Fall Workshop took place October 11-12, 1998, Center for Geometric Computing, Brown University. The Ninth annual Fall Workshop, took place October 15-16, 1999, Center for Geometric Computing, Johns Hopkins University. In its tenth year the workshop is coming back to Stony Brook. The Tenth annual Fall Workshop, took place October 27-28, 2000, Math Tower, SUNY at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY. The 11th Annual Fall Workshop on Computational Geometry took place November 2-3, 2001, Polytechnic University, Brooklyn, NY. The twelfth workshop was part of the Special Focus on Computational Geometry and Applications at DIMACS in the fall of 2002. The thirteenth workshop was the Workshop on the Mathematical Foundation of Geometric Algorithms, as part of the special semester on computational geometry at Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, Berkeley, October 13-17, 2003. The 14th Annual Fall Workshop in Computational Geometry was at MIT in Cambridge, MA, November 19-20, 2004. The 15th Annual Fall Workshop in Computational Geometry was at the University of Pennsylvania on Friday and Saturday, November 18 and 19, 2005, hosted by Suresh Venkatasubramanian. The 16th Fall Workshop on Computational Geometry, Nov 10-11, was at Smith College, hosted by Ileana Streinu and Joe O'Rourke. The 17th Fall Workshop on Computational Geometry, fall 2007 (Nov 9-10, tentative), at IBM, hosted by Jon Lenchner.

Course in Computational Geometry:

For Spring 2003, an undergraduate course was offered for the fourth time: See AMS 345/ CSE 355: Computational Geometry (Spring 2003)

The course Computational Geometry (AMS 545/CSE 555) is offered each year (usually in the fall) by Joe Mitchell. It is intended as an introductory graduate course.

Reading Group:

We hold weekly informal sessions with interested faculty and students who want to broaden or deepen their knowledge of algorithms and computational geometry. Each week, we either have a volunteer informally present a recent research paper, or have an ``open problem session'' to discuss interesting research topics. Students may receive 1 credit by participating and signing up for the course (CSE 652 -- Seminar in the Analysis of Algorithms, or Joe's link). For Fall 2004, we meet at 11:45-1:15 on Fridays in the CS Lounge. All are welcome!

Operations Research Seminar Series:

There is an operations research seminar series at Stony Brook, which often includes talks in the field of computational geometry and related disciplines (graph algorithms, optimization, etc). The seminar is generally on Wednesdays, 12:00-1:00, in Harriman 104.


For more information, contact Joe Mitchell (jsbm@ams.sunysb.edu, (631) 632-8366).

Joe Mitchell -- Applied Math & Statistics -- Computer Science -- SUNY Stony Brook