Very nice profile of our group’s research by @csail.mit.edu — geometry is everywhere! cap.csail.mit.edu/engage/spotl...

When prompted to translate text, ChatGPT (in this case version 4o) also fixes a math mistake without telling the user it did so. This might feel like a feature but to me it illustrates a serious flaw: People using AI tools as "intermediaries" might not have their text faithfully translated.

Dartmouth response to the Trump Administration Compact president.dartmouth.edu/news/2025/10...

By the way, I was involved with a committee of ACM SIGGRAPH (a large computer graphics conference) which in 2022 wrote a similar guide for new researchers. Some of this is specific to that field, but it also has useful tutorial material for all fields. (@justinmsolomon.bsky.social)

And once again in lecture I demonstrate that it’s impossible to correctly row reduce a 3x3 matrix by hand in front of 50 people.

i think my job as “Guy Who Counts Down to Halloween” is safe for now

We just wrapped up the 5th Summer Geometry Initiative (SGI), bringing 30 Fellows to our cohort of 150+ alumni, who go on to PhD/MS programs, industry jobs, and more. Despite overwhelming success, SGI26 is uncertain thanks to the changing funding landscape. Please help by helping identify sponsors!

I will be singing this. How should I interpret the final line that ends with “a r n O”

Had one of the most bizarre/strangely memorable days of my academic career. Feel free to send cute pet photos while I dissociate in the Vancouver airport for a bit.

I could not be more disappointed in the management of SIGGRAPH for this, the most spineless of PR blog posts. Count me as someone who will not have their name on any submission to SIGAsia 2026. If enough of us withhold the content they sorely need, maybe next time they will engage more earnestly.

Mark your calendars for the #SIGGRAPH 2025 Thesis Fast Forward in-person event. Recent PhD graduates will present their thesis work and answer questions on Monday 11 August, 10:30-11:30am: s2025.conference-schedule.org/presentation...

After 6+ mos of discussion and an open letter with 600+ signatures, SIGGRAPH leadership finally responded with...a short blog post? It only obliquely *acknowledges* the issue and doesn't articulate concrete change. What are the "nuances and complexities"? Insulting. www.siggraph.org/news/listeni...

Meschers got picked up by Gizmodo! gizmodo.com/meet-mescher... Thanks to @gayoung.bsky.social for the story!

Really excited to share this with you all! The website is already live at anadodik.github.io/publication/...

While I was in Rotterdam for CogSci '24, I visited the Escher Museum and fell in love with his work all over again. Now, a year later, I'm delighted by this SIGGRAPH paper led by my friend Ana! (Say what you will about the technical details, you must admit that we came up with the ~perfect~ title.)

MIT News today features a fun SIGGRAPH paper by GDP student Ana (@geometry.gay) collaboarting w/ students @yukaryote.bsky.social @kartikchandra.bsky.social plus us old folks. This work explores what it means to do geometry processing on Escher-like "impossible" shapes! news.mit.edu/2025/mit-mes...

I'll be the Technical Papers Chair at SIGGRAPH 2026 and @justinmsolomon.bsky.social will be the Technical Papers Assistant Chair. If you're interested in joining the SIGGRAPH 2026 TPC member pool, please fill in the following nomination form by Aug 15th 2025: forms.gle/FwY1KwBh7grt...

Sigh. Not even @microsoft.com MS Paint is free of AI-ensh*ttification. I'm not looking for a bad clone of Illustrator/Photoshop, just a tool to quickly edit a pixel or two or crop a screen grab. Who asked for this??

Managed to carve out an entire work day of “professor stuff” (in this case, writing up the HMC algorithm for new textbook edition in a way that isn’t morally/mathematically objectionable in its face) and it was glorious. No meetings, grant reports, fires to put out. Wish this happened more often.

🎉☕ Announcing WiGRAPH Conference Coffees: SIGGRAPH 2025 Edition! ☕🎉 Are you a researcher of an underrepresented gender registered for SIGGRAPH? Do you want an opportunity to network with your peers? Learn more and sign up here: www.wigraph.org/events/2025-...

🚨🚨 WiGRAPH CONFERENCE COFFEE @ SIGGRAPH '25 🚨🚨 Sign up now to be randomly matched with peers for a SIGGRAPH conference coffee!

SGI 2025 starts in 1.5 hours! Excited to kick of year 5 of this program --- now with many volunteers who are SGI alumni who have gone off to graduate programs in the field.

Something about these giant 👍 gmail-generated email responses feels highly aggressive.

Just feels real bad to be told your existence is too controversial to allow children to know about it

SIGGRAPH Asia 2026 is slated to be in Malaysia, which has some of the harshest anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the region, and will make many queer graphics people concerned for their safety to attend; the response to concerns so far has amounted mostly to "try not to stick out and offend local sensibilities" —

I signed and encourage colleagues to do the same. Venue selection is fraught. Inevitably attendees will encounter visa issues, distance, expense, local politics, and other challenges. This venue, however, is simply unsafe for LGBTQ+ researchers, and the leadership's defensiveness is unacceptable.

New MIT GDP Group (left) and Summer Geometry Initiative (right) mugs just dropped! Collect them all: visitors to our lab get GDP mugs, and SGI mentors/volunteers/participants get SGI mugs. ☕️🫖🍵

MIT News today features a paper with fun examples coming out this summer by our brilliant PhD student Leticia Mattos Da Silva, postdoc—and Columbia professor in a matter of days!— @silviasellan.bsky.social, and PhD student collaborator Natalia Pacheco-Tallaj. news.mit.edu/2025/animati... Flubber!

"For me, the answer now lies in refusal, the withdrawal of participation from systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging." Today I am resigning from the National Science Board and the Library of Congress Scholars Council. I wrote about my decision in TIME. time.com/7285045/resi...

What an amazing start to our #Eurographics2025 keynotes from @justinmsolomon.bsky.social on optimization for geometry processing - lots of useful optimization tools, and so many more interesting challenges yet to be solved!

The aftermath — I’m impressed with our colleagues’ ability to consume pizza and Costco products.

Our final talk: Ed Chien and Ben Jones on computational knitting!

A record number of NESG posters this year!

Now @mandyxmq.bsky.social, sharing her work on optical simulation and inverse rendering!

Now Wojciech Jarosz, our keynote, to tell us about Monte Carlo geometry/PDE!

Next up: Ticha Sethapakdi, helping us bridge between HCI, fabrication, and graphics!

After a brief (5 year 🤔) hiatus, the New England Symposium on Graphics is back! Kudos to our many audience members who got up early on a Saturday to catch @jamestompkin.bsky.social, our first speaker of the day. Not too late to join us! Find a schedule here: nesg.graphics

Our Summer Geometry Initiative is more popular than ever, with a record # of applicants. But thanks to "2025 problems," SGI needs sponsors for it to survive past 2025. Please contact me if you're interested or have ideas!

My work days in 2025 largely involve being an armchair lawyer+therapist for students/postdocs anxious about visas, funding, job markets, discrimination, and a host of other topics I have no qualification to advise on. My professional training qualifies me to advise on matters involving...triangles?

📢New England Symposium on Graphics 2025 is BACK on April 26 at at MIT. Join us for inspiring talks, including a keynote by Prof. Wojciech Jarosz (Dartmouth) plus a poster session, networking, and more. Attendance is FREE—register now: forms.gle/5zWWAQL4KtU7.... Full details: nesg.graphics

SGI applicants: The site we use to host/process applications went down, and we haven’t received an update when it’ll be restored. Please hold tight and know we will release decisions as soon as we can. (Meanwhile, please refrain from emailing for an update or early decision.)

When *reading* rec letters, does anyone actually find it useful when a rec includes a lengthy bio under their signature? I find the situations where I read a letter, read the bio, then think something like "oh, I need to reread in light of them having won 'best paper runner up' in 2012" uncommon...

Fun fact: This is substantially less than the monthly cost of full-time effort by 2+ PhD students at MIT with my supervision, charging full overhead (yes, that crazily high overhead we have heard a lot about lately). Hope the AI is doing some good work, given the struggle to fund a research group.

A nice profile of our close collaborator (and friend!) Misha @m-yurochkin.bsky.social research.ibm.com/blog/misha-y...

The @mbta.com signage at Davis Square says the next train is “stopped 3 stops away.” Which is impressive, because we are the second-to-last stop.

Google's AI has the confident incorrectness of a student panicking while taking a calculus exam. The irrelevant "attribution" link is a nice touch.

Undergraduate research opportunities are incredibly valuable, both for the students and for the progress of the work. And having undergraduate research experience is a massive help for grad school admission. REU cancellations harm students’ preparedness & career prospects, and slow research progress

These programs are a tiny cost to the NSF/taxpayer and are major means of bringing undergrads from all backgrounds (privileged and not) into science and engineering, including industry. My path to a job at MIT in CS started with an REU at a government lab on mesh geometry—exactly what I work on now.

I think it’s not helpful to repeat claims that the administration is working on eliminating “DEIA” as though it’s some kind of corporate strategy; just say explicitly that they’re trying to eliminate diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, and explain how.

The American Mathematical Society has also started a page to coordinate support for professional mathematics, so far focusing on executive orders impacting the National Science Foundation: www.ams.org/government/g...