Geometry Processing Summer Institute 2021

This award provides support for a 6-week program titled the Summer Geometry Institute (SGI), a workshop intended to introduce a broad pool of students to geometry processing research through immersive interaction with top researchers in the discipline. The Institute will be held July 19-August 28, 2021 online; more information can be found on its website (http://geometry.institute).

Overall, SGI aims to accomplish the following objectives: (1) spark wide collaboration among students and researchers in geometry processing, (2) launch inter-university research projects in geometry processing involving team members across broad levels of seniority (undergraduate, graduate, faculty, industrial researcher), (3) introduce students to geometry processing research and development, and (4) diversify the "pipeline" of students entering geometry processing research, in terms of gender, race, socioeconomic background, and home institution. The first week of the Institute will train undergraduate and MS student participants on state-of-the-art techniques in geometry processing, intended as their first exposure to this discipline.

Then, for the remaining weeks, student teams collaborate on research problems, with the goal of exploring directions suggested by senior attendees. Beyond these day-long interactions, visitors will give talks on frontier areas and lead relevant tutorials. The opportunity cost for students taking six weeks to participate will be covered by the workshop.

As a discipline, geometry processing presents substantial theoretical challenges motivated by practical considerations of manufacturing/fabrication, computer vision, physical simulation, and high-performance computing. Participants will be exposed to---and will advance state-of-the-art in---technical problems ranging from the development of a toolkit for discrete differential geometry to the incorporation of probability/uncertainty in the shape processing pipeline.

Participating in geometry processing research also gives mathematics students exposure to fields like differential geometry in a more tangible environment, coupled with computer visualizations and concrete applications with immediate impact. Our workshop is designed to make progress on several concrete challenges in geometry processing, including development of robust geometry processing algorithms, design of high-throughput shape analysis methods, design of sensible machine learning architectures for understanding and processing geometry built on foundations from differential/algebraic geometry, and extending machinery from geometry processing to higher-dimensional problems.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.