Jonathan Shewchuk Explained

Jonathan Shewchuk
Birth Place:	Cranbrook, British Columbia^[1]
Workplaces:	University of California, Berkeley
Alma Mater:	Simon Fraser University Carnegie Mellon University
Doctoral Advisor:	Gary Miller and David O'Hallaron
Thesis Title:	Delaunay Refinement Mesh Generation
Thesis Year:	1997
Thesis Url:	https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~glmiller/Publications/ShewPHD.pdf
Awards:	J. H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software (2003)
Website:	http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jrs/

Jonathan Richard Shewchuk is a Professor in Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

He obtained his B.S. in Physics and Computing Science from Simon Fraser University in 1990, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, the latter in 1997.^[2]

He conducts research in scientific computing, computational geometry (especially mesh generation, numerical robustness, and surface reconstruction), numerical methods, and physically based animation.

He is also the author of Three Sins of Authors In Computer Science And Math.

In 2003 he was awarded J. H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software for writing the Triangle software package which computes high-quality unstructured triangular meshes.^[3]

He appears in online course videos of CS 61B: Data Structures class in University of California, Berkeley.

Controversies

In March 2024, Shewchuk came under criticism for making comments in response to a post made by a student on EdStem, an educational communication platform, asking for advice about his struggles dating, that was reported to the University by some who thought the comment was misogynistic.^[4] He stated

This statement was met with widespread condemnation by UC Berkeley faculty. Berkeley spokesperson Roqua Montez stated that comments was threatening and hurtful to students, especially women, and went against UC Berkeley's values. EECS Chair Claire Tomlin issued an apology on behalf of her department. Shewchuk issued an apology on the same platform, stating that he did not intend to disrespect women and only intended to help a student.^[5]

External links

• Homepage at Berkeley
• Homepage at CMU
• Tetrahedral Meshes with Good Dihedral Angles video of presentation at North Carolina State University in 2007

Notes and References

1. Web site: Jonathan Shewchuk's homepage . Berkeley . 27 December 2012.
2. Web site: Jonathan Shewchuk EECS at UC Berkeley. 2022-01-07. www2.eecs.berkeley.edu.
3. Web site: J. H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software Argonne National Laboratory. 2022-01-07. www.anl.gov. en.
4. News: Lamb . Matt . Threatening’ to women: UC Berkeley condemns professor for dating advice . 22 March 2024. The original comment was made in response to a student asking for advice on both their inability to find a date in the Bay Area and their fears about finding work in computer science. Shewchuk responded by telling the student to “get out of the Bay Area” in order to find a girlfriend..
5. News: Wymer . Rae. UC Berkeley community condemns EECS professor’s misogynistic discussion post. 22 March 2024. “We want to be absolutely clear that the offensive content of the original post goes against the values and Principles of Community we adhere to at UC Berkeley,” said UC Berkeley spokesperson Roqua Montez in an email. “The comment was hurtful and threatening to students - particularly women - in his class and beyond.”.