Digital Geometry Processing Group
Check www.cs.ubc.ca/~sheffa/papers.html for research papers coauthored by me and my trainees.
For some information on working with me, see information for prospective graduate students.
Current Students / Postdocs
- Daniel Cui, PhD
- Oliver Oxford, PhD
- Ziyu Sun, PhD
- Suzuran Takikawa, PhD
- Leo Foord-Kelcey, MSc
- Andrew Leach, MSc
Alumni
- Jinfan Yang, PhD, 2026
- Congyi Zhang, Postdoc, 2025 (Assistant Professor, UT Dallas)
- Floria Gu, MSc, 2025 (Tesla)
- Leo Foord-Kelcey, Undergraduate RA, 2024–2025 (MSc Student, UBC)
- Chrystiano Araujo, PhD, 2024 (Research Scientist, ROBLOX)
- Nicholas Vining, PhD, 2024 (Senior Research Scientist, NVIDIA)
- Camilo Talero, MSc, 2023 (Geometry Processing Dev, Foresight Mining Software Corporation)
- Chenxi Liu, PhD, 2023 (Assistant Professor, University of Victoria)
- Enrique Alberto Rosales Ruiz, PhD, 2022 (Research Scientist, Huawei Canada)
- Jerry Yin, MSc, 2022 (Graphics Engineer, Adobe)
- Dave Pagurek, MSc, 2021 (Full Stack Developer, Butter Creatives)
- Floria Gu, Undergraduate (Honours Thesis), 2022–2023 (MSc Student, UBC)
- Lei Shu, Undergraduate RA, 2020–21 (PhD Student, ETH Zurich)
- Rebecca Lin, Undergraduate RA, 2020–21 (PhD Student, MIT)
- Silver Burla, MSc, 2020 (Lead Engineer, Cannametrics)
- Edoardo Dominici, MSc, 2020 (R&D Rendering Software Engineer, Animal Logic)
- Nico Schertler, Post-Doc, 2019–2020 (Development Engineer, IAV)
- Shayan Hoshyari, MSc, 2019 (Research Engineer, Adobe Research)
- Xianzhong Fang, Visiting PhD (Zhejiang U), 2018
- Max Limper, Visiting PhD (TU Darmstadt), 2018 (CEO & Co-Founder, Darmstadt Graphics Group)
- Minchen Li, MSc, 2018 (PhD Student, U Pennsylvania)
- Giorgio Gori, MSc, 2017 (Research Engineer, Adobe Research)
- Mikhail Bessmeltsev, PhD, 2016 (Assistant Professor, Université de Montréal)
- I-Chao Shen, MSc (PhD Student, NTU)
- Russell Gillette, MSc, 2015 (Skybox Labs)
- Craig Peters, MSc, 2015 (Electronic Arts, Vancouver)
- Marco Livesu, Visiting PhD (from U Cagliari, Italy), 2012/13, PostDoc, 2014/15 (Researcher at CNR-IMATI, Italy)
- Kasper Hornbak Steenstrup, Visiting PhD (Technical University Denmark), 2014/15
- Chongyang Ma, PostDoc, 2012/13 (Research Engineer, Snap Research)
- Brian Xu, MSc, 2013 (Autodesk)
- Will Chang, PostDoc, 2013/14 (Google)
- Caoyu Wang, MSc, 2012 (Microsoft)
- Ron Maharik, MSc, 2011 (recipient of UBC Faculty of Science Graduate Prize) (Tableau, Vancouver)
- Xi Chen, MSc, 2011 (Google)
- Tiberiu Popa, PhD, 2009 (recipient of Alain Fournier PhD thesis award) (Assistant Professor, Concordia)
- Cody Robson, MSc, 2009 (NVidia)
- Ian South-Dickinson, MSc, 2012 (NVidia)
- Qingnan (James) Zhou, MSc, 2009 (PhD studies at NYU)
- Ravish Mehra, Visitor, 2008/09 (continued to PhD studies at UNC)
- Vladislav Kraevoy, PhD 2007, Postdoc, 2007/08 (Head of R&D at 3D3 Solutions)
- Hongbo Fu, Postdoc, 2007/08 (Associate Professor at City Univ. of Hong Kong)
- Steven Chang, MSc, 2008 (Co-Supervised by Michiel Van de Panne)
- Kenneth Rose, MSc, 2007 (Autodesk)
- Dan Julius, MSc, 2006
- Ciaran Llachlan Leavitt, Undergrad (NSERC USRA), Summer 2007
- Michael Tien, Undergrad (Directed studies), 2006–2007
- Ian Cook, Undergrad (Directed studies), 2006
- Sahar Sajadieh, Undergrad (CDMP/NSERC USRA), Summer 2006
- Yury Kholondyrev, Undergrad (NSERC USRA), Summer 2005
- Beau Skinner, Undergrad (NSERC USRA), Summer 2004
- Vladislav Kraevoy, MSc (Technion), 2003 (Co-Supervised by Chaim Gotsman)
- Oren Sifri, MSc (Technion), 2003 (Co-Supervised by Chaim Gotsman)
- Roni Raab, MSc (Technion), 2003 (Co-Supervised by Chaim Gotsman)
- Maxim Mogilnitski, MSc (Technion), 2004
- Shadi Saba, MSc (Technion), 2005 (Co-Supervised by Irad Yavne and Chaim Gotsman)
Information for Prospective Graduate Students
Area: I do research in computer graphics, focusing on geometry processing and modeling. You should consider joining my group if you enjoy playing with 3D shapes and getting nice pictures (see some examples). Geometry processing research requires a feel for math (geometry), an understanding of algorithms, and quite a bit of programming. If you are interested, you are welcome to e-mail me (sheffa@cs.ubc.ca).
Recommended Study Plan: To be able to do research in geometry processing, you should know basic Computer Graphics (UBC CS 314 or equivalent). A good undergrad course which exposes you to geometry processing is Geometric Modeling (UBC CS 424). Knowledge of numerical optimization (e.g. UBC CS 546) and machine learning (e.g. UBC CS 340) is a plus. Finally, I expect all my students to take the graduate geometry processing class (CS 524) at UBC.
Expectations: I have high expectations for my students. I expect them to perform original research, making a modest contribution to the scientific state-of-the-art. Most of my graduate students publish at least one academic paper and get the opportunity to present their work at a major computer graphics conference.
Some Tips
- Make sure you are a good programmer and enjoy it. Computer graphics research, as with any applied computer science work, must be implemented in order to evaluate its merit. A substantial amount of your time will be spent programming.
- One of the best ways to learn a subject is by teaching it. So if you feel up to it, try to become a TA in one of the above courses.
- Attend research seminars and colloquia on computer graphics and related subjects; at UBC those include the Amore weekly meetings (currently on hiatus), and some of the CS department DLS and FLS talks.
- Browse through the computer graphics literature regularly, most notably the annual SIGGRAPH, Siggraph Asia, Eurographics, and SGP conference proceedings. The top journals are ACM Transactions on Graphics and IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.