Dinesh ManochaDinesh Manocha, the 2020 Pierre Bézier Award Recipient
- Personal Website: www.cs.umd.edu/people/dmanocha
Dinesh Manocha has been awarded Pierre Bézier Award in 2020 for fundamental contributions to geometric modeling, including symbolic methods, algebraic-numeric techniques for intersection problems, collision and proximity computation algorithms, GPU computing, and widespread transition into CAD and virtual prototyping systems.
Manocha has contributed many fundamental results in geometric computing and physically-based modeling. His earlier work focused on the use of symbolic methods and development of algebraic-numeric methods for intersection problems. He proposed efficient and accurate methods for the boundary evaluation of curved surfaces. Manocha developed many new state of the art algorithms and software systems for collision and proximity queries. He designed reliable approximation methods for challenging high-dimensional geometric problems, including swept volumes, medial axis, Minkowski sums, and configuration-space computations. He was among the first set of researchers that exploited the parallelization capabilities of GPUs for geometric problems and physics-based simulation. Manocha has also worked on many geometric application areas, including interactive rendering of massive CAD models, simulation of rigid and deformable models, motion planning of high-dimensional robots, multi-agent navigation, and acoustic simulation. Manocha has published groundbreaking work that has been characterized by mathematical rigor as well as geometric engineering and his work is highly cited. His group has developed a number of software packages for multi-agent simulation, GPU computing, and physics-based simulation that have been used by hundreds of thousands of users and licensed to more than 60 commercial vendors. He has supervised 40 PhD students and many of his advisees are leading academic researchers or hold senior positions in industry. Manocha was the program co-chair of ACM SPM in 2007 and 2008, and has served on the editorial board of leading journals in geometric computing, graphical models, and computer graphics.