Frederickson Keynote Speaker at 2012 Shape Modeling International Conference

05-31-2012

Professor of Computer Science Greg N. Frederickson was a keynote speaker at the 2012 Shape Modeling International (SMI) conference, held May 22 through May 25 at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.

SMI provides an international forum for the dissemination of new mathematical theories and computational techniques for modeling, simulating, and processing digital representations of shapes and their properties to a community of researchers, developers, students, and practitioners across a wide range of fields. SMI'2012 was organized in cooperation with ACM, ACM SIGGRAPH, The Bridges Organization: Art and Mathematics, and ISAMA: The International Society of the Arts, Mathematics, and Architecture.

Frederickson's keynote address was titled "Beyond Swinging: Hinged Dissections that Twist or Fold" and its focus was on geometric dissections, the cutting of geometric figures into pieces that can be rearranged to form other figures. The talk introduced a variety of twist-hinged and fold-hinged dissections of regular polygons and stars, and other figures such as polyominoes, emphasizing both appreciation and understanding of these fascinating mathematical recreations. Read the complete abstract for Frederickson's lecture.

Professor Frederickson's primary area of research is the design and analysis of algorithms, and he also pursues interests in mathematical recreations, specifically geometric dissection. On this topic he has published three books and a number of articles. He has twice won the George Polya Award from the Mathematical Association of America. He contributed "A Parade of Algorithmic Mathematical Art" – a collection of computer-generated images that illustrate geometric dissections of increasing sophistication – to the Lawson Computer Science Building's 2011-2012 art exhibition.