Kai Hormann

Kai Hormann is a full professor in the Faculty of Informatics at USI Lugano. He received a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in 2002 and spent two years as a postdoctoral research fellow at Caltech in Pasadena and the CNR in Pisa, before joining Clausthal University of Technology as an assistant professor in 2004. During the winter term 2007/2008 he visited Freie Universität Berlin as a BMS substitute professor and came to Lugano as an associate professor in 2009. In 2018, he was a visiting professor at NTU Singapore. His research interests are focussed on the mathematical foundations of geometry processing algorithms as well as their applications in computer graphics and related fields. In particular, he is working on generalized barycentric coordinates, subdivision of curves and surfaces, barycentric rational interpolation, and dynamic geometry processing. Professor Hormann has published over 80 highly cited papers in the professional literature and is an associate editor of Computer Aided Geometric Design, Computers & Graphics, and the Dolomites Research Notes on Approximation. He served as chair of the SIAM Activity Group on Geometric Design in 2017/2018 and is entrusted with the chairmanship of the steering board of the international conference Geometric Modeling and Processing (GMP) since 2017.

The interdisciplinary research field of digital geometry processing combines concepts from computer science, applied mathematics, and engineering for the efficient acquisition, reconstruction, optimization, editing, and simulation of geometric objects. Applications of geometry processing algorithms can be found in a wide range of areas, including computer graphics, computer aided design, architecture, geography, and scientific computing. Current projects include interactive shape deformations, processing of time-dependent objects, efficient 3D visualization, and design of GPU-accelerated algorithms.