Alec's Weblog: SIGGRAPH Asia 2026 in Malaysia would be unsafe for LGBTQ+ attendees
Alec Jacobson
Alec Jacobson

Alec Jacobson

Associate Professor of Computer Science
Associate Professor of Mathematics (courtesy appointment)
Canada Research Chair in Geometry Processing

Dynamic Graphics Project
Department of Computer Science
Department of Mathematics
University of Toronto

Faculty Member, Vector Institute

Senior Research Scientist, Adobe Research Toronto

AXL Faculty Fellow

Curriculum Vitæ

Contact

Email: jacobson@cs.toronto.edu

Office: Bahen Center, 40 St. George Street, Room 5266, Toronto

Phone: +1 416 946 86 30

Fax: +1 416 978 38 71

Post: Alec Jacobson
Department of Computer Science
University of Toronto
40 St. George Street
Room 4283
Toronto, ON
M5S 2E4 Canada

Publications

Image Medial Sphere Preconditioning for Knot Untangling and Volume-Filling Curves
Yuta Noma, Alec Jacobson, Karan Singh
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2025
Paper (Coming Later)

Image RoMo: Robust Motion Segmentation Improves Structure from Motion
Lily Goli, Sara Sabour, Mark Matthews, Marcus Brubaker, Dmitry Lagun, Alec Jacobson, David J. Fleet, Saurabh Saxena, Andrea Tagliasacchi
ICCV 2025
Project Page | Paper (Arxiv)

Image Uniform Sampling of Surfaces by Casting Rays
Selena Ling, Abhishek Madan, Nicholas Sharp, Alec Jacobson
Symposium on Geometry Processing 2025
Paper (Arxiv) | Code

Image Putting Rigid Bodies to Rest
Hossein Baktash, Nicholas Sharp, Qingnan Zhou, Keenan Crane, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH North America? 2025
Paper | Project

Image Variational Green and Biharmonic Coordinates for 2D Polynomial Cages
Elie Michel, Alec Jacobson, Siddhartha Chaudhuri, Jean-Marc Thiery
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2025
Paper (coming later)

Image Stochastic Preconditioning for Neural Field Optimization
Selena Ling, Merlin Nimier-David, Alec Jacobson, Nicholas Sharp
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2025
Project Page | Paper (Arxiv)

Image SpotlessSplats: Ignoring Distractors in 3D Gaussian Splatting
Lily Goli, Sara Sabour, George Kopanas, Mark Matthews, Dmitry Lagun, Leonidas Guibas, Alec Jacobson, David J. Fleet, Andrea Tagliasacchi
ACM Transactions on Graphics 2025
Project Page | Paper (Arxiv)

Image 2D Neural Fields with Learned Discontinuities
Chenxi Liu, Siqi Wang, Matthew Fisher, Deepali Aneja, Alec Jacobson
Eurographics 2025
Paper (Arxiv)

Image Rigid Body Adversarial Attacks
Aravind Ramakrishnan, David I.W. Levin, Alec Jacobson
3DV 2025
Paper (Arxiv)

Image The Triangle is Dead, Long Live the Triangle
Alec Jacobson
Symposium on Geometry Processing, Keynote, 2024
Blog | Video

Image A LoRA is Worth a Thousand Pictures
Chenxi Liu, Towaki Takikawa, Alec Jacobson
ArXiv 2024
Paper (Arxiv)

Image Text-guided Controllable Mesh Refinement for Interactive 3D Modeling
Yun-Chun Chen, Selena Ling, Zhiqin Chen, Vladimir G. Kim, Matheus Gadelha, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2024
Paper (Arxiv) | Project Page

Image Trust-Region Eigenvalue Filtering for Projected Newton
Honglin Chen, Hsueh-Ti Derek Liu, Alec Jacobson, David I.W. Levin, Changxi Zheng
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2024
Paper (Arxiv) | Project Page

Image Sharpening and Sparsifying with Surface Hessians
Dylan Rowe, Alec Jacobson, Oded Stein
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2024
Paper | Project Page

Image Cascading upper bounds for triangle soup Pompeiu-Hausdorff distance
Leonardo Sacht, Alec Jacobson
Eurographics/ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Geometry Processing 2024
🏆 Best Paper Honourable Mention 🏆
Paper (Arxiv) | Supplemental | Code

Image Optimized Dual-Volumes for Tetrahedral Meshes
Alec Jacobson
Eurographics/ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Geometry Processing 2024
Paper (Arxiv)

Image Surface-Filling Curve Flows via Implicit Medial Axes
Yuta Noma, Silvia Sellán, Nicholas Sharp, Karan Singh, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2024
Project | Paper

Image Stabler Neo-Hookean Simulation: Absolute Eigenvalue Filtering for Projected Newton
Honglin Chen, Hsueh-Ti Derek Liu, David I.W. Levin, Changxi Zheng, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2024
Project | Paper (arxiv)

Image Gender Diversity of Graphics Conference Leadership
Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH North America “Talks” 2024
Blog post

Image I❤️Mesh: A DSL for Mesh Processing
Yong Li, Shoaib Kamil, Keenan Crane, Alec Jacobson, Yotam Gingold
ACM Transactions on Graphics 2024
Paper

Image VecFusion: Vector Font Generation with Diffusion
Vikas Thamizharasan, Difan Liu, Shantanu Agarwal, Matthew Fisher, Michael Gharbi, Oliver Wang, Alec Jacobson, Evangelos Kalogerakis
CVPR 2024
🏆 Highlight 🏆
Paper (Arxiv)

Image Bayes’ Rays: Uncertainty Quantification for Neural Radiance Fields
Lily Goli, Cody Reading, Silvia Sellán, Alec Jacobson, Andrea Tagliasacchi
CVPR 2024
🏆 Highlight 🏆
Project | Paper

Image Neural Stochastic Screened Poisson Surface Reconstruction
Silvia Sellán, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2023
Paper (Arxiv)

Image Constructive Solid Geometry On Neural Signed Distance Fields
Zoë Marschner, Silvia Sellán, Hsueh-Ti Derek Liu, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2023
Project | Paper | Paper (low res)

Image Compact Neural Graphic Primitives with Learned Hash Probing
Towaki Takikawa, Thomas Müller, Merlin Nimier-David, Alex Evans, Sanja Fidler, Alec Jacobson, Alexander Keller
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2023
Paper (Coming Later)

Image An Adaptive Fast-Multipole-Accelerated Hybrid Boundary Integral Equation Method For Accurate Diffusion Curves
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2023
Seungbae Bang, Kirill Serkh, Oded Stein, Alec Jacobson
Paper (Arxiv)

Image Progressive Shell Quasistatics for Unstructured Meshes
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2023
Jiayi Eris Zhang, Jérémie Dumas, Yun (Raymond) Fei, Alec Jacobson, Doug L. James, Danny M. Kaufman
Paper (Coming Later)

Image Bézier Spline Simplification Using Locally Integrated Error Metrics
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2023
Siqi Wang, Chenxi Liu, Daniele Panozzo, Denis Zorin, Alec Jacobson
Paper (Coming Later)

Image Fast Complementary Dynamics via Skinning Eigenmodes
Otman Benchekroun, Jiayi Eris Zhang, Siddhartha Chaudhuri, Eitan Grinspun, Yi Zhou, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2023
Paper (Arxiv)

Image Differentiable Heightfield Path Tracing with Accelerated Discontinuities
Xiaochun Tong, Hsueh-Ti Derek Liu, Yotam Gingold, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2023
Paper

Image Neural Progressive Meshes
Yun-Chun Chen, Vladimir G. Kim, Noam Aigerman, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2023
Paper | Paper (low res)

Image Surface Simplification using Intrinsic Error Metrics
Hsueh-Ti Derek Liu, Mark Gillespie, Benjamin Chislett, Nicholas Sharp, Alec Jacobson, Keenan Crane
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2023
Paper (Arxiv)

Image Data-Free Learning of Reduced-Order Kinematics
Nicholas Sharp, Cristian Romero Garcia, David Levin, Alec Jacobson,, Etienne Vouga, Paul Kry, Justin Solomon
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2023
Paper (Arxiv)

Image OptCtrlPoints: Optimizing Control Points for Biharmonic 3D Shape Deformation
Kunho Kim, Mikaela Angelina Uy, Despoina Paschalidou, Alec Jacobson, Leonidas Guibas, Minhyuk Sung
Pacific Graphics 2023
Paper (Arxiv)

Image VectorAdam for Rotation Equivariant Geometry Optimization
Selena Ling, Nicholas Sharp, Alec Jacobson
Neural Information Processing Systems 2022
Project | Paper (ArXiv)

Image Stochastic Poisson Surface Reconstruction
Silvia Sellán, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2022
Project | Paper | Paper (ArXiv)

Image H❤️rtDown: Document Processor for Executable Linear Algebra Papers
Yong Li, Shoaib Kamil, Alec Jacobson, Yotam Gingold
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2022
Project | Paper

Image Progressive Simulation for Cloth Quasistatics
Jiayi Eris Zhang, Jérémie Dumas, Yun (Raymond) Fei, Alec Jacobson, Doug L. James, Danny M. Kaufman
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2022
Project | Paper

Image BoolSurf : Boolean Operations on Surfaces
Marzia Riso, Giacomo Nazzaro, Enrico Puppo, Alec Jacobson, Qingnan Zhou, Fabio Pellacini
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2022
Project | Paper

Image Breaking Good: Fracture Modes for Realtime Destruction
Silvia Sellán, Jack Luong, Letícia Mattos Da Silva, Aravind Ramakrishnan, Yuchuan Yang, Alec Jacobson
ACM Transactions on Graphics 2022
Project | Paper (ArXiv)

Image Breaking Bad: A Dataset for Geometric Fracture and Reassembly
Silvia Sellán, Yun-Chun Chen, Ziyi Wu, Animesh Garg, Alec Jacobson
Neural Information Processing Systems 2022, Datasets & Benchmarks Track
Project | Paper (ArXiv)
🏆 Featured Paper Presentation 🏆

Image Spelunking the Deep: Guaranteed Queries on General Neural Implicit Surfaces via Range Analysis
Nicholas Sharp, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2022 Paper (ArXiv)
🏆 Best Paper Award 🏆

Image Learning Smooth Neural Functions via Lipschitz Regularization
Hsueh-Ti Derek Liu, Francis Williams, Alec Jacobson, Sanja Fidler, Or Litany
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2022
Project page | Paper | Paper (ArXiv)

Image Variable Bitrate Neural Fields
Towaki Takikawa, Alex Evans, Jonathan Tremblay, Thomas Müller, Morgan McGuire,
Alec Jacobson, Sanja Fidler
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2022
Project page | Paper

Image Neural Shape Mating: Self-Supervised Object Assembly with Adversarial Shape Priors
Yun-Chun Chen, Haoda Li, Dylan Turpin, Alec Jacobson, Animesh Garg
CVPR 2022
Project page | Paper (ArXiv)

Image Active Learning Neural C-space Signed Distance Fields for Reduced Deformable Self-Collision
Xinhao Cai, Eulalie Coevoet, Alec Jacobson, Paul Kry
Graphics Interface 2022
Paper

Image I❤️LA: Compilable Markdown for Linear Algebra
Yong Li, Shoaib Kamil, Alec Jacobson, Yotam Gingold
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2021
Rethinking ML Papers - ICLR 2021 Workshop
Project page | Paper | Paper (ArXiv)

Image Large Steps in Inverse Rendering of Geometry
Baptiste Nicolet, Alec Jacobson, Wenzel Jakob
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2021
Project page | Paper

Image Surface Multigrid via Intrinsic Prolongation
Hsueh-Ti Derek Liu, Jiayi Eris Zhang, Mirela Ben Chen, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2021
Project page | Paper | Paper (ArXiv)

Image Swept Volumes via Spacetime Numerical Continuation
Silvia Sellán, Noam Aigerman, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2021
Project page | Paper | Paper (low res)

Image Interactive Modelling of Volumetric Musculoskeletal Anatomy
Rinat Abdrashitov, Seungbae Bang, David I.W. Levin, Karan Singh, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2021
Project page | Paper | Paper (low res)

Image Neural Geometric Level of Detail: Real-time Rendering with Implicit 3D Shapes
Towaki Takikawa, Joey Litalien, Kangxue Yin, Karsten Kreis, Charles Loop, Derek Nowrouzezahrai, Alec Jacobson, Morgan McGuire, Sanja Fidler
CVPR 2021
Paper (ArXiv) | Project page
Image

Image Supporting Reference Imagery for Digital Drawing
ICCV Workshop on Sketching for Human Expressivity 2021
Josh Holinaty, Alec Jacobson, Fanny Chevalier
Paper
Image

Image Normal-Driven Spherical Shape Analogies
Hsueh-Ti Derek Liu, Alec Jacobson
Eurographics/ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Geometry Processing 2021
Paper (ArXiv)

Image Levitating Rigid Objects with Hidden Rods and Wires
Sarah Kushner, Risa Ulinski, Karan Singh, David I.W. Levin, Alec Jacobson
Eurographics 2021
Paper | ArXiv preprint | Project

Image Fast Updates for Least-Squares Rotational Alignment
Jiayi Eris Zhang, Alec Jacobson, Marc Alexa
Eurographics 2021
Paper | Project page

Image Scrappy: Using Scrap Material as Infill to Make Fabrication More Sustainable
Ludwig Wilhelm Wall, Alec Jacobson, Daniel Vogel, Oliver Schneider
ACM CHI 2021
Paper | Project page

Image On the Effectiveness of Weight-Encoded Neural Implicit 3D Shapes
Thomas Davies, Derek Nowrouzezahrai, Alec Jacobson
Technical Report 2021
Paper (ArXiv)

Image Role-Playing Paper-Reading Seminars
Alec Jacobson, Colin Raffel
Pedagogy Report 2021
Blog post | PDF

Image Learning Deformable Tetrahedral Meshes for 3D Reconstruction
Jun Gao, Wenzheng Chen, Tommy Xiang, Alec Jacobson, Morgan Mcguire, Sanja Fidler
Neural Information Processing Systems 2020
Paper | Project page

Image Complementary Dynamics
Jiayi Eris Zhang, Seungbae Bang, David I.W. Levin, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2020
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project

Image Opening and Closing Surfaces
Silvia Sellán, Jacob Kesten, Ang Yan Sheng, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2020
Paper | Project

Image Chordal Decomposition for Spectral Coarsening
Honglin Chen, Hsueh-Ti Derek Liu, Alec Jacobson, David I.W. Levin
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2020
Paper | Project

Image Developability of Heightfields via Rank Minimization
Silvia Sellán, Noam Aigerman, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2020
Paper | Project

Image Neural Subdivision
Hsueh-Ti Derek Liu, Vladimir G. Kim, Siddhartha Chaudhuri, Noam Aigerman, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2020
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project

Image A Smoothness Energy without Boundary Distortion for Curved Surfaces
Oded Stein, Alec Jacobson, Max Wardetzky, Eitan Grinspun
ACM Transactions on Graphics 2020
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project

Image EMU: Efficient Muscle Simulation in Deformation Space
Vismay Modi, Lawson Fulton, Shinjiro Sueda, Alec Jacobson, David I.W. Levin
Computer Graphics Forum 2020
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project

Image A Simple Discretization of the Vector Dirichlet Energy
Oded Stein, Max Wardetzky, Alec Jacobson, Eitan Grinspun
Eurographics/ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Geometry Processing 2020
Paper | Project | Talk

Image Spectral Mesh Simplification
Thibault Lescoat, Hsueh-Ti Derek Liu, Jean-Marc Thiery, Alec Jacobson, Tamy Boubekeur, Maks Ovsjanikov
Eurographics 2020
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project

Image Interacting with Self-Similarity
Josef Graus, Alec Jacobson, Yotam Gingold
Computer-Aided Design 2020
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project page

Image A System for Efficient 3D Printed Stop-Motion Face Animation
Rinat Abdrashitov, Alec Jacobson, Karan Singh
ACM Transactions on Graphics 2019
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project

Image A mixed finite element method with piecewise linear elements for the biharmonic equation on surfaces
Oded Stein, Eitan Grinspun, Alec Jacobson, Max Wardetzky
Technical Report 2019
ArXiv

Image Cubic Stylization
Hsueh-Ti Derek Liu, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2019
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project page

Image Non-Linear Sphere Tracing for Rendering Deformed Signed Distance Fields
Dario Seyb, Alec Jacobson, Derek Nowrouzezahrai, Wojciech Jarosz
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2019
Paper | Project

Image Learning to Predict 3D Objects with an Interpolation-based Differentiable Renderer
Wenzheng Chen, Jun Gao, Huan Ling, Edward J. Smith, Jaakko Lehtinen, Alec Jacobson, Sanja Fidler
Neural Information Processing Systems 2019
Paper | Project

Image Spectral Coarsening of Geometric Operators
Hsueh-Ti Derek Liu, Alec Jacobson, Maks Ovsjanikov
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2019
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project

Image TriWild: Robust Triangulation with Curve Constraints
Yixin Hu, Teseo Schneider, Xifeng Gao, Qingnan Zhou, Alec Jacobson, Denis Zorin, Daniele Panozzo
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2019
Paper | Paper (low res)

Image Beyond Pixel Norm-Balls: Parametric Adversaries using an Analytically Differentiable Renderer
Hsueh-Ti Derek Liu, Michael Tao, Chun-Liang Li, Derek Nowrouzezahrai, Alec Jacobson
ICLR 2019
Paper | ArXiv 2018

Image Latent-space Dynamics for Reduced Deformable Simulation
Lawson Fulton, Vismay Modi, David Duvenaud, David I. W. Levin, Alec Jacobson
Eurographics 2019
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project
Image

Image Volumetric Michell Trusses for Parametric Design & Fabrication
Rahul Arora, Alec Jacobson, Timothy R. Langlois, Yijiang Huang, Caitlin Mueller, Wojciech Matusik, Ariel Shamir, Karan Singh, David I.W. Levin
ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication, 2019
Paper | Paper (low res) | ArXiv 2018 | Project

Image Interactive Design of Castable Shapes using Two-Piece Rigid Molds
Oded Stein, Alec Jacobson, Eitan Grinspun
Computers & Graphics 2019
Paper

Image RodSteward: A Design-to-Assembly System for Fabrication using 3D-Printed Joints and Precision-Cut Rods
Alec Jacobson
Pacific Graphics 2019
Paper | Paper (low res) | ArXiv | Project

Image Geometry Processing in the Wild
Alec Jacobson
Keynote
Talk Slides | Video

Image Solid Geometry Processing on Deconstructed Domains
Silvia Sellán, Herng Yi Cheng, Yuming Ma, Mitchell Dembowski, Alec Jacobson
Computer Graphics Forum 2018
Paper | Paper (low res) | ArXiv preprint | Project

Image Paparazzi: Surface Editing by way of Multi-View Image Processing
Hsueh-Ti Derek Liu, Michael Tao, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2018
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project

Image Fast Winding Numbers for Soups and Clouds
Gavin Barill, Nia Dickson, Ryan Schmidt, David I.W. Levin, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2018
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project

Image Tetrahedral Meshing in the Wild
Yixin Hu, Qingnan Zhou, Xifeng Gao, Alec Jacobson, Denis Zorin, Daniele Panozzo
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2018
Paper | Paper (low res) | GitHub

Image Natural Boundary Conditions for Smoothing in Geometry Processing
Oded Stein, Eitan Grinspun, Max Wardetzky, Alec Jacobson
ACM Transactions on Graphics 2018
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project | ArXiv (2017)

Image Collision-Aware and Online Compression of Rigid Body Simulations via Integrated Error Minimization
Timothy Jeruzalski, John Kanji, Alec Jacobson, David I.W. Levin
ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation 2018
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project
Image

Image Seamless Reconstruction of Part-Based High-Relief Models from Hand-Drawn Images
Marek Dvorožňák, Saman Sepehri Nejad, Ondřej Jamriška, Alec Jacobson, Ladislav Kavan, Daniel Sýkora
Expressive, 2018
Paper | Project

Image Seamless: Seam erasure and seam-aware decoupling of shape from mesh resolution
Songrun Liu, Zachary Ferguson, Alec Jacobson, Yotam Gingold
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2017
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project

Image Generalized Matryoshka: Computational Design of Nesting Objects
Alec Jacobson
Eurographics/ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Geometry Processing 2017
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project

Image A Dirac Operator for Extrinsic Shape Analysis
Hsueh-Ti Derek Liu, Alec Jacobson, Keenan Crane
Eurographics/ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Geometry Processing 2017
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project

Image libigl: A simple C++ geometry processing library
Alec Jacobson, Daniele Panozzo, and others
libigl on GitHub
Eurographics/ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Geometry Processing 2014 Graduate School
Course notes
Eurographics/ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Geometry Processing 2017 Graduate School
Course video
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia Courses 2017
Image

Image Thingi10K: A Dataset of 10,000 3D-Printing Models
Qingnan Zhou, Alec Jacobson
Technical Report 2016
Paper | Thingi10K dataset
Image

Image Mesh Arrangements for Solid Geometry
Qingnan Zhou, Eitan Grinspun, Denis Zorin, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2016
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project | Code in libigl

Image Computational Design of Reconfigurables
Akash Garg, Alec Jacobson, Eitan Grinspun
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2016
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project

Image Rig Animation with a Tangible and Modular Input Device
Oliver Glauser, Wan-Chun Ma, Daniele Panozzo, Alec Jacobson, Otmar Hilliges, Olga Sorkine-Hornung.
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2016
Paper | Project

Image Physically Based Video Editing
Jean-Charles Bazin, Claudia Plüss (Kuster), Guo Yu, Tobias Martin, Alec Jacobson, Markus Gross
Pacific Graphics 2016
Paper | Paper (low res)

Image Nested Cages
Leonardo Sacht, Etienne Vouga, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2015
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project | Code on GitHub

Image Linear Subspace Design for Real-Time Shape Deformation
Yu Wang, Alec Jacobson, Jernej Barbič, Ladislav Kavan
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2015
Paper | Paper (low res) | Erratum | Project | Code in libigl | Code in gptoolbox

Image Breathing Life into Shapes
Alec Jacobson
Computer Graphics & Applications 2015, invited by Jim Foley
Paper

gptoolbox: MATLAB Toolbox for Geometry Processing
Alec Jacobson, and others
gptoolbox on GitHub | gptoolbox on File Exchange

Image Large-Scale Painting of Photographs by Interactive Optimization
Romain Prévost, Alec Jacobson, Wojciech Jarosz, Olga Sorkine-Hornung
Computers & Graphics 2015
Paper | Graphics Interface 2016 Slides | Project

Image Skinning Cubic Bézier Splines and Catmull-Clark Subdivision Surfaces
Songrun Liu, Alec Jacobson, Yotam Gingold
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2014
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project | 2D Code on GitHub | 3D Code on GitHub

Image Fast and Memory-Efficient Topological Denoising of 2D and 3D Scalar Fields
David Günther, Alec Jacobson, Jan Reininghaus, Hans-Peter Seidel, Olga Sorkine-Hornung, Tino Weinkauf
IEEE SciVis 2014
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project

Image Tangible and Modular Input Device for Character Articulation
Alec Jacobson, Daniele Panozzo, Oliver Glauser, Cédric Pradalier, Otmar Hilliges, Olga Sorkine-Hornung
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2014, SIGGRAPH North America 2014 E-tech, UIST 2014 Demos, Cinekid 2015
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project page | Code on GitHub

Image Skinning: Real-time Shape Deformation
Alec Jacobson, Zhigang Deng, Ladislav Kavan, J.P. Lewis
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2014 Course, ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2014 Invited Course, SGP 2015 Invited Course
skinning.org course page

Image Bounded Biharmonic Weights for Real-Time Deformation
Alec Jacobson, Ilya Baran, Jovan Popović, Olga Sorkine
Communications of the ACM 2014, Research Highlights
Paper | Preface by Joe Warren | 中国版 (translated by Kun Zhou) | Original Project Page

Image Ink-and-Ray: Bas-Relief Meshes for Adding Global Illumination Effects to Hand-Drawn Characters
Daniel Sýkora, Ladislav Kavan, Martin Čadík, Ondřej Jamriška, Alec Jacobson, Brian Whited, Maryann Simmons, Olga Sorkine-Hornung
ACM Transactions on Graphics 2014
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project

Image A Simple Method for Correcting Facet Orientations in Polygon Meshes Based on Ray Casting
Kenshi Takayama, Alec Jacobson, Ladislav Kavan, Olga Sorkine-Hornung
Journal of Computer Graphics Tools 2014
Paper | Paper (low res) | Code in libigl

Image Consistently Orienting Facets in Polygon Meshes by Minimizing the Dirichlet Energy of Generalized Winding Numbers
Kenshi Takayama, Alec Jacobson, Ladislav Kavan, Olga Sorkine-Hornung
Technical Report 2014
Paper

Image Schur complement trick for positive semi-definite energies
Alec Jacobson
Technical Report 2014
Paper

Image Bijective mappings with generalized barycentric coordinates: a counterexample
Alec Jacobson
Journal of Graphics Tools 2013
Paper | 2012 Technical Report

Image Consistent Volumetric Discretizations Inside Self-Intersecting Surfaces
Leonardo Sacht, Alec Jacobson, Daniele Panozzo, Christian Schüller, Olga Sorkine-Hornung
Eurographics/ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Geometry Processing 2013
Project | Paper | Paper (low res) | Code in gptoolbox

Image Algorithms and Interfaces for Real-Time Deformation of 2D and 3D Shapes
Alec Jacobson
PhD Thesis, ETH Zurich, 2013
Thesis | Thesis (low res) | Slides | Slides (low res)
Image Image

Image Robust Inside-Outside Segmentation using Generalized Winding Numbers
Alec Jacobson, Ladislav Kavan, Olga Sorkine-Hornung
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2013
🏆 2024 Test of Time Award 🏆
Project | Paper | Paper (low res) | Slides | Slides (low res) | Code in libigl

Image Transfusive Image Manipulation
Kaan Yücer, Alec Jacobson, Alexander Hornung, Olga Sorkine
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2012
Project | Paper | Paper (low res)

Image Smooth Shape-Aware Functions with Controlled Extrema
Alec Jacobson, Tino Weinkauf, Olga Sorkine
Eurographics/ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Geometry Processing 2012
Project | Paper | Paper (low res) | Slides | Slides (low res) | Code in gptoolbox

Image Fast Automatic Skinning Transformations
Alec Jacobson, Ilya Baran, Ladislav Kavan, Jovan Popović, Olga Sorkine
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2012
Project | Paper | Paper (low res) | Slides | Slides (low res) | Code on GitHub | Code in libigl

Image A Cotangent Laplacian for Images as Surfaces
Alec Jacobson and Olga Sorkine
Technical Report, 2012
Subproject page | Paper

Image Stretchable and Twistable Bones for Skeletal Shape Deformation
Alec Jacobson and Olga Sorkine
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2011
Project | Paper | Paper (low res) | Slides | Slides (low res) | Code in gptoolbox

Image Bounded Biharmonic Weights for Real-Time Deformation
Alec Jacobson, Ilya Baran, Jovan Popović, Olga Sorkine
ACM SIGGRAPH North America 2011
Project | Paper | Paper (low res) | Slides | Slides (low res) | Code in libigl | Code in gptoolbox

Image Mixed Finite Elements for Variational Surface Modeling
Alec Jacobson, Elif Tosun, Olga Sorkine, Denis Zorin
Eurographics/ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Geometry Processing 2010
Project | Paper | Paper (low res) | Slides | Slides (low res)

Current Students and Postdocs

Former lab members

Teaching

Image University of Toronto Geometry Processing - Fall 2022
University of Toronto Geometry Processing - Fall 2020
University of Toronto Geometry Processing - Fall 2018
University of Toronto Geometry Processing - Winter 2018
University of Toronto Geometry Processing - Winter 2017
Open Source Assignments on GitHub

Image University of Toronto Seminar on Geometry and Animation - Fall 2022
University of Toronto Seminar on Geometry and Animation - Fall 2020
University of Toronto Seminar on Geometry and Animation - Fall 2019
Columbia University Seminar in Geometry and Animation - Spring 2015

Image University of Toronto Computer Graphics - Winter 2022
University of Toronto Computer Graphics - Fall 2019
University of Toronto Computer Graphics - Fall 2018
University of Toronto Computer Graphics - Fall 2017
University of Toronto Computer Graphics - Fall 2016
Open Source Assignments on GitHub

Image ETH Zurich Adv. Graphics and Vision - Fall 2013

Image ETH Zurich Computer Graphics - Fall 2013 (TA)
ETH Zurich Computer Graphics - Fall 2012 (TA)
ETH Zurich Computer Graphics - Fall 2011 (TA)

Image cSplash Introduction to LaTeX course, 2008, 2009

Other websites

Image alecjacobson.com/weblog

Image calendar

Short bio

Alec Jacobson is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Departments of Computer Science and Mathematics at University of Toronto. He is also a Senior Research Scientist at Adobe Research, Toronto. Before his post‑doc at Columbia University, he received a PhD in Computer Science from ETH Zurich advised by Prof. Olga Sorkine‑Hornung, and an MA and BA in Computer Science and Mathematics from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University. His work spans all aspects of geometry processing, including machine learning for 2D/3D geometry, physics-based simulation, computational fabrication, numerical methods for geometric energies and PDEs, and interactive design tools for 2D and 3D. He has published several papers in the proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH. He leads development of the widely used geometry processing library, libigl, winner of the 2015 SGP software award. In 2020, he received the ACM SIGGRAPH Significant New Researcher Award. In 2022, he received a Sloan Research Fellowship. In 2023, he received an Outstanding Teaching Award and a CS-Can/Info-Can Outstanding Early Career Computer Science Research Award.

Acknowledgments

Our research is funded in part by NSERC Discovery (RGPIN–2022–04680), the Ontario Early Research Award program, the Canada Research Chairs Program, a Sloan Research Fellowship, the DSI Catalyst Grant program and gifts by Adobe Inc.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are some questions that I receive fairly regularly in cold-call emails.

Will you hire me as a PhD Student?

Maybe! The first step is to apply directly to the graduate program of the Department of Computer Science or Department of Mathematics. Our regular deadline is in December for students applying to start in the following Fall. Our program is very competitive. Most students put months of effort into their application package. Your research interests should match or harmonize with mine (see publications above for an idea). You should not only mention this in your application (and mention me by name), but also write about how and why we’re a great match. If you’d like to chat about research or life at dgp as a graduate student, feel free to contact me.

Will you hire me as a postdoc?

Maybe! Postdoc positions are very limited. If I’m not already aware of your research then chances are much smaller. In any case, contact me to begin the conversation. Have a one-to-two year research agenda prepared.

In nearly all circumstances, I will ask you to apply for a postdoc fellowship (and I will help you apply). Please review relevant fellowships, including those specifically for Canadian permanent residences (if applicable) or “mobility” fellowships from your home country/country of PhD.

I’m an undergrad from University of Toronto, could I work as your research

assistant?

Maybe! Undergraduate research assistantships are limited and competitive. You should be a proficient programmer and feel confident in Calculus and Linear Algebra. If you haven’t already, sign up for the undergraduate Computer Graphics course and my graduate-level Geometry Processing course (and probably also David Levin’s Computational Fabrication and Kyros Kutulakus’s Foundations of Computational Vision courses). Good performance in these courses will put you at a great advantage. Also, start attending the dgp graphics reading group and the dgp graphics seminar talks. If you’re hoping to work with me over the summer, reach out to me around January/February. Give an indication of what research of mine most interests you and what sort of way you could imagine yourself contributing (in practice, we will try to find a current project to match you with, but this information will help).

I’m an undergrad from X ≠ Unversity of Toronto, could I work as a your

research assistant?

Maybe! External undergraduate research assistantships are even more limited than internal ones. If you can secure or apply for funding from your home institution or country then you will be at a great advantage. If you do not already have a funding source, then before contacting me investigate whether fellowships for exchange programs etc. exist in your institution/country. If there are none, then consider applying to one of the summer undergraduate research fellowship programs at University of Toronto (e.g., at the Fields Institute). Finally, if you still cannot find funding, contact me with an application including a statement of purpose, faculty references, (unofficial) transcripts, and resume.