Jonathan Shewchuk

(Circa 1991, before I grew my bangs out. Portrait by Anthony van Dyck, Flemish, 1599-1641. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

Associate Professor in Computer Science
University of California at Berkeley

Office
University of California at Berkeley
Computer Science Division
Berkeley, California 94720-1776
(510) 642-3936 [(510) NICE ZEN]
Fax: (510) 642-3962
625 Soda Hall

Home
2360 Woolsey #H
Berkeley, California 94705-1927
(510) 666-9495 [(510) NOM? WHY, J!]

I usually work at home, but I have voice mail only at the office. Hence, if you want to talk to me in person, please call my home first (after noon Pacific time); if you're content to leave a message, call my office first. Correspondence should always be mailed to my office.
I conduct research in scientific computing, computational geometry, mesh generation, numerical methods, and compilers for parallel systems. If you came here with a specific object in mind, you're probably looking for my triangular mesh generator Triangle, or my paper An Introduction to the Conjugate Gradient Method Without the Agonizing Pain.

Product

TRIANGLE. A production-quality C program for two-dimensional constrained Delaunay triangulation and quality mesh generation. See the Triangle page to obtain the source code or for hypertext instructions. I expect to release its three-dimensional successor, Pyramid, in the near future. The algorithms behind Triangle and Pyramid are discussed in my dissertation and in several other papers on my Papers page.

EXACT ARITHMETIC AND ROBUST GEOMETRIC PREDICATES. I've written a set of fast routines for exact floating-point addition and multiplication, which I've used to create fast correct geometric predicates, namely the two- and three-dimensional orientation and incircle tests. These predicates are used to make the Delaunay triangulation routines in Triangle and Pyramid robust against roundoff error. See my Robust Predicates page for more information, for papers, or to obtain the C source code.

Proselytization

PAPERS. All my publications are available here. The conjugate gradient method Mesh generation Large-scale earthquake simulation Parallel finite element methods Numerically robust geometry Higher-dimensional constrained Delaunay triangulations Route planning on real-world maps Communication requirements of unstructured simulations

RESEARCH OVERVIEW. Here's a self-contained summary of my recent research. (Hence, it duplicates information given in more detail on some of my other pages.) This is the fastest way to learn a bit about my work. My research overview is also available as PostScript (251k, 4 pages).

THREE SINS OF AUTHORS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE AND MATH. A short crotchety essay that will improve your technical writing, or annoy you trying. You won't find these sins decried in the usual books of writing advice.

Projects

QUAKE. The Quake Project is a multidisciplinary Grand Challenge Application Group studying ground motion in large basins during strong earthquakes, with the goal of characterizing the seismic response of the Los Angeles basin. We've created some of the largest unstructured finite element simulations ever performed.

ARCHIMEDES. Our secret to producing such huge unstructured simulations? With the collaboration of David O'Hallaron, I've written Archimedes, a chain of tools for automating the construction of general-purpose finite element simulations on parallel computers.

Promotion

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY'S SCHOOL OF COMPUTER SCIENCE IS HELL. My t-shirt design for the 1992 Immigration Course, a three-week departmental orientation for new doctoral students. If you want to print it, I recommend downloading the full-size version (3888 x 6456, 784k GIF). It's a 600 dpi scan of a sheet of legal-size paper.

CALVIN AND HOBBES AND CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY'S SCHOOL OF COMPUTER SCIENCE. My t-shirt design for the 1994 Immigration Course. For printing, here's the full-size version (3553 x 5861, 621k GIF), which is also a 600 dpi scan of a sheet of legal-size paper.

Profile

I WAS BORN in Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada, and remain a Canadian citizen. I obtained my B.Sc. in Physics and Computer Science from Simon Fraser University in 1990, and my M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, the latter in 1997. I joined the Computer Science Division of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Berkeley in 1998.
(Early 1997, after I grew my bangs out. Photo by Audra Assad, US, 1968-.)