09w5119 Computational Mathematics of Discrete Surfaces

Arriving Sunday, February 15 and departing Friday, February 20, 2009

Organizers: Konrad Polthier (Freie Universität Berlin), Helmut Pottmann (Vienna University of Technology), Alla Sheffer (University of British Columba).

Confirmed Participants

Press Release: Computational Mathematics of Discrete Surfaces

Information for Participants

Schedule (PDF file)

Mailing List

Workshop Videos

Objectives

Despite the fact that discrete surfaces are a topic of common interest for these different research communities the amount of interaction between the different communities remains fairly limited. Only recently, with the increasing relevance of mathematics of discrete surfaces for computer graphics and scientific computing we start seeing the first steps towards combing the knowledge accumulated in the different communities to develop computational methods for effective and principled processing of discrete surfaces.

Our workshop intends to facilitate this emerging discourse by bringing together researcher who investigate discrete geometry of surfaces from the different perspectives. It will bring together researchers from discrete differential geometry, computer graphics, computational geometry and numerical mathematics to discuss the recent developments in this field on an expert level. By explicitly focusing on a diverse multidisciplinary list of attendees it aims to promote exposure and interaction, hopefully providing a push towards more interdisciplinary approaches for processing of discrete surfaces.

To facilitate a free exchange of information between the diverse set of attendees we expect to keep the set of specific presentation and discussion topic fairly wide, as long as they address geometry of discrete surfaces. We therefore list only a few of the potential topics:

(1) Global parameterization of discrete surfaces with singularity control;

(2) Analysis and processing of developable surfaces;

(3) Reconstruction of discrete surfaces from point clouds, particularly focusing on space-time reconstruction of deforming surfaces.

(4) Computation of curvature and other differential properties on discrete surfaces;

(5) Generation of surface and volume meshes.

This workshop shall initiate interdisciplinary discussions and focus on the central mathematical and algorithmic problems in this field. Therefore we plan, additional to the invited presentations to have a coule of discussion sessions in small and varying groups of participants on the most urgent problems in this field.

Geometry of discrete surfaces has a growing number of industrial applications in architecture, engineering, games and film industries. Based on our discussions with researchers and developers in industry and the interest they expressed, we plan to invite a significant number of industry participants to the workshop.