E-mail: edchien@bu.edu
Snail mail:
Boston University
Department of Computer Science
665 Commonwealth Ave, Rm 836
Boston, MA 02215
Overview
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science here at Boston University.
Research interests: geometry processing, computational fabrication, quad/hex meshing, applied optimal transport, harmonic and bounded distortion mappings
I obtained my Ph.D. in Mathematics in 2015 from Rutgers University under Prof. Feng Luo, studying low-dimensional topology and geometry. More specifically, my thesis constructed square tilings of surfaces arising from discrete harmonic differential 1-forms.
Afterwards, I transitioned to applied work, working as a postdoc with Prof. Ofir Weber at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. While there, I focused on harmonic and bounded distortion methods for mapping, parametrization, and interpolation.
For my second postdoc, I returned to the States for three years in the Geometric Data Processing Group at MIT, led by Prof. Justin Solomon. There I began research in hex meshing and applied optimal transport. My work continues in these directions today, with a recent focus on applications in computational fabrication. I have thoroughly enjoyed combining my theoretical training with complex engineering problems.
News
- July 2024: I served on the SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 Technical Papers Committee, and participated in the meetings prior to SIGGRAPH 2024. It was a pleasure to serve and hear about some of the exciting works coming out at the conference in December.
- June 2024: I co-chaired an excellent SGP 2024 Graduate School with Silvia Sellan. It was a joy to organize with Silvia, and many thanks to all the excellent tutorial speakers! Recordings of the talks have been uploaded to YouTube.
- May 2024: Anming Gu, a graduating senior in our lab, has won the prestigious College Prize, awarded to the top computer science major in the graduating class. He is applying for PhD programs this coming cycle, and has done impressive work in applied OT for ML.
- May 2024: Our paper Winding Number Features for Vector Sketch Colorization has been accepted to SGP 2024! See you in Boston!
- April 2024: We have a conference paper, Singular Foliations for Knit Graph Design, conditionally accepted to SIGGRAPH 2024. We determine precise topological control of spinning-form-based stripe patterns, and present an automatic short row matching optimization, building on our SIGGRAPH 2023 work. See you in Denver!
- Feb. 2024: Matteo Couplet, a graduating Mech. Eng. PhD student from UC Louvain will be joining our lab in October as a postdoc. He has done impressive work on formulating/solving for integrability of odeco tensor fields, a fundamental problem at the heart of quad/hex meshing. We are very excited to have him join us!