Ron Fedkiw
Associate Professor
Stanford Computer Science

Ph.D. Applied Mathematics, UCLA


Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Gates Computer Science Bldg., Room 207
Stanford, CA 94305-9020
fedkiw@cs.stanford.edu
directions to Stanford
directions to the Gates building

Brief Bio
Fedkiw received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from UCLA in 1996 and did postdoctoral studies both at UCLA in Mathematics and at Caltech in Aeronautics before joining the Stanford Computer Science Department. He was awarded an Academy Award from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Science Award for Initiatives in Research, a Packard Foundation Fellowship, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), a Sloan Research Fellowship, the ACM Siggraph Significant New Researcher Award, an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program Award (ONR YIP), the Okawa Foundation Research Grant, the Robert Bosch Faculty Scholarship, the Robert N. Noyce Family Faculty Scholarship, two distinguished teaching awards, etc. Currently he is on the editorial board of the Journal of Computational Physics, Journal of Scientific Computing, and he participates in the reviewing process of a number of journals and funding agencies. He has published over 90 research papers in computational physics, computer graphics and vision, as well as a book on level set methods. Since joining Stanford, he has graduated 20 Ph.D. students. For the past eleven years, he has been a consultant with Industrial Light + Magic. He received screen credits for his work on "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines", "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith", "Poseidon" and "Evan Almighty". Most recently, he has become quite interested in omniscient technology - hardware/sensors both wearable and throughout the environment - and has co-founded a sapling company PIVOT to better focus on its potential everyday use.

"Currently I am taking Ph.D. students in computational math/physics and computer graphics, but am *not* taking students in omniscient technology. This latter field is too new for the kind of research that leads to a Ph.D. thesis, and would probably require outside fellowships for funding. On the other hand, if a prospective student could convince me otherwise, well I am always open to new ideas."

NEW COURSE ANNOUNCEMENT: Cell Phones, Sensors, and You
Although the cell phone started out merely as a portable phone, it has become much more including a portable albeit limited computer that can handle email, games, etc. This class will focus on something else that cell phones have become. They are the first prevalent wearable sensors that gather information about you such as your physical location, whether the phone is being held in an upright position, how fast you might accelerate in motion, etc. This information can be used to help you in your everyday life, but it can also be used for marketing, sales, or to track whether or not you may be at home for the sake of committing a home invasion robbery. In this class we will explore this rapidly advancing field including the current state of technology, what could be accomplished in the near future, sociological and privacy implications, potential governmental regulation, etc. We will also address issues surrounding some of the other instances of this omniscient "big brother" technology in our everyday lives including radar guns used by law enforcement and the recording devices that led to the Watergate scandal. Students will be expected to gather and compile information on various subjects and come to class ready to discuss and debate formulated opinions on the topics.


Research
My research is focused on the design of new computational algorithms for a variety of applications including computational fluid dynamics and solid mechanics, computer graphics, computer vision and computational biomechanics.


MANTASUIT
The goal is to design an underwater diving suit that provides a diver with an exoskeleton for enhanced locomotion, as well as augmented reality enhancements for underwater vision and directional sound detection. Concept art by Wilson Tang.



Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Scientific and Technical Awards - Since 1930/31 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has conducted a program for honoring the artisans whose contributions have made it possible for an industry known as "The Movies" to exist. Recognition of ingenuity, efficiency and economy toward achieving the end result is the basic purpose of the Scientific and Technical Awards.

National Academy of Sciences
NAS Award for Initiatives in Research - awarded to recognize innovative young scientists and to encourage research likely to lead toward new capabilities for human benefit. The award is to be given to a citizen of the United States, preferably no older than 35 years of age. The field of presentation rotates among the physical sciences, engineering, and mathematics.

The David and Lucille Packard Foundation
Fellowships for Science and Engineering - The Foundation has a long-standing interest in strengthening both university-based research and graduate education. Each year, they generously(!) select 20 Fellows to receive individual grants of $625,000 over five years. The Fellowship Program was established in 1988.

Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers
PECASE - I went to the White House for the PECASE awards ceremony (thank you Wen & ONR!) which included a wonderful speech by President George W. Bush.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Sloan Research Fellowships - Currently a total of 116 fellowships are awarded annually in seven fields: chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, and physics.

ACM SIGGRAPH
ACM SIGGRAPH Awards Program - The ACM SIGGRAPH Awards program recognizes individuals who have made a significant contribution to the computer graphics community through their research, teaching, service, or writing.

The Okawa Foundation
The Okawa Foundation Research Grant - The Foundation was established in 1986 as an authorized non-profit organization to promote the growth and development of the information and telecommunications fields, through donations from the late Mr. Isao Okawa.


Publications

Computational Physics...

Ph.D. thesis...

Computer Graphics, Vision & Biomechanics...


Students

Ph.D. Students

Postdoctoral Scholars Former Ph.D. Students Former Postdoctoral Scholars


PhysBAM



We are making certain aspects of our Physics Based Modeling code (PhysBAM) available here on this web site.


A Note on Rejected Papers

All too often young researchers get discouraged when they receive peer reviews that are incorrect, misinformed, or all too often merely intended to silence the authors and their ideas. Personally, I have always been amazed that academics who devote their lives to producing new information actually work to censure and diminish the work produced by others, and often take pride in doing just that. As time goes on, one learns to distinguish between those in academia who love the work and those that have instead turned academia into some sort of career aggressively optimizing their stature at the expense of the community as a whole. For young researchers this can be quite daunting, but I strongly encourage you to stick to your ideas and goals and the pursuit of what interests you. Remember, the content of your paper and the value of its ideas are not diminished because it was rejected from your preferred venue. The content of the paper itself does not change because of the name of the journal printed on the upper corner of the page! To emphasize this, I decided to list my 3 most cited REJECTED papers along with their google scholar citation counts:
  • "Fast Surface Reconstruction using the Level Set Method", 282 citations, rejected from Siggraph
  • "Simulation of Clothing with Folds and Wrinkles", 272 citations, rejected from Siggraph
  • "A Boundary Condition Capturing Method for Multiphase Incompressible Flow", 268 citations, rejected from J. Comp. Phys.


    Google Scholar 2.0

    They might not call it 2.0, but there's a major update to Google Scholar, and it's very nice. Go to Google Scholar and click "My Citations" at the bottom, and you can add yourself. There are various "Actions" to add your papers, delete incorrect references, merge references that appear in duplicate, view other researchers in your chosen groups, etc. Here's a link to my Google Scholar profile. They have the h-number, but no G-number as of yet...


    G-number (some data is a year or so out of date... updates are currently happening in a top down fashion)

    A (G)raphics researcher's G-number is calculated as the number of papers/books/citations on (G)oogle Scholar that contain more than 200 cites. Note that the best way to search Google scholar seems to be by using the first initial of the first name, e.g. "r fedkiw". (G)eez, there are so many citation indexes out there, I just felt like we needed another one. Note that G comes before H (as in h-number), and that G also stands Graphics, Google, and even Goober. This is only a partial list that I put together when I was bored one day. No omissions or errors are intentional, but rather an indication of my competence. Please feel free to email me corrections, additions... or even a complete list. Since this has been posted, I have received emails about a few people who collaborate with graphics folks (applied math, computer vision and robotics researchers) and have added some suggested names to the list - just for fun... NOTE: I will periodically update the names on this list to the best of my ability, but finding new names to add to the list is more difficult - emails pertaining to this are greatly appreciated!

  • Takeo Kanade (44);
  • David Donoho (38);
  • Stan Osher (33);
  • Sebastian Thrun (32);
  • Pierre-Louis Lions (31); Jitendra Malik (31);
  • Gene Golub (30);
  • Demetri Terzopoulos (29);
  • Benoit Mandelbrot (26); Richard Szeliski (26);
  • Olivier Faugeras (24); Pat Hanrahan (24);
  • Leo Guibas (23); Jerrold Marsden (23);
  • Wim Sweldens (20); Andrew Witkin (20);
  • Peter Lax (19);
  • Ingrid Daubechies (18); David Salesin (18);
  • Hugues Hoppe (17); Marc Levoy (17);
  • Donald Greenberg (16);
  • Frederick Brooks (15); James Sethian (15);
  • Ron Fedkiw (14);
  • Michael Cohen (13); Pietro Perona (13); Guillermo Sapiro (13); Greg Turk (13);
  • Paul Heckbert (12); Shree Nayar (12);
  • Michael Black (11); Tony DeRose (11); Michael Kass (11); Carlo Tomasi (11);
  • Al Barr (10); John Canny (10); Amiram Harten (10); John Owens (10); Harry Shum (10);
  • Norman Badler (9); Michael Crandall (9); David Forsyth (9); John Platt (9); Carlo Sequin (9); Peter Shirley (9);
  • Alexander Chorin (8); Mathieu Desbrun (8); Steven Gortler (8); Henrik Jensen (8); Leonard McMillan (8); Kenneth Torrance (8); Allen Van Gelder (8);
  • Chris Bregler (7); Brian Curless (7); Bjorn Engquist (7); Henry Fuchs (7); Michael Garland (7); Markus Gross (7); John Hughes (7); Dimitris Metaxas (7); Jean-Michel Morel (7); Holly Rushmeier (7); Bram Van Leer (7);
  • David Baraff (6); Jim Blinn (6); Robert Cook (6); Paul Debevec (6); Tom Duchamp (6); James Foley (6); Aaron Hertzmann (6); Jessica Hodgins (6); Leif Kobbelt (6); Ming Lin (6); Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann (6); Dinesh Manocha (6); Ken Perlin (6); Jarek Rossignac (6); Szymon Rusinkiewicz (6); Jonathan Shewchuk (6); Peter-Pike Sloan (6);
  • Pierre Alliez (5); Nina Amenta (5); Loren Carpenter (5); Irfan Essa (5); Michael Gleicher (5); James Kajiya (5); Dani Lischinski (5); Peter Lindstrom (5); Steve Marschner (5); James O'Brien (5); Hanspeter Pfister (5); Steven Seitz (5); Jos Stam (5); Ivan Sutherland (5); Lance Williams (5);
  • Marc Alexa (4); Eugene Fiume (4); Wolfgang Heidrich (4); William Mark (4); Wojciech Matusik (4); Matthias Mueller-Fischer (5); Zoran Popovic (4); Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz (4); William Reeves (4); Peter Schroder (4); Francois Sillion (4); John Snyder (4); Wolfgang Strasser (4);
  • Kurt Akeley (3); Ian Buck (3); Jonathan Cohen (3); David Cohen-Steiner (3); Julie Dorsey (3); Fredo Durand (3); Ed Catmull (3); Nick Foster (3); Arie Kaufman (3); Frank Losasso (3); Mark Meyer (3); Frederic Pighin (3); Jovan Popovic (3); Jonathan Shade (3); Claudio Silva (3); Denis Zorin (3);
  • David Adalsteinsson (2); Robert Bridson (2); Doug Enright (2); Tau Ju (2); Bruno Levy (2); P. J. Narayanan (2); Craig Reynolds (2); Scott Schaefer (2); Alla Sheffer (2); Michiel van de Panne (2);
  • *** OLD DATA BELOW... these next two groups of (2)'s and (1)'s have not yet been updated
  • Sean Anderson (2); Brian Cabral (2); Paolo Cignoni (2); Alexei Efros (2); Adam Finkelstein (2); Alain Fournier (2); Radek Grzeszczuk (1); Brian Guenter (2); Igor Guskov (2); Mike Houston (2); Timothy Kay (2); David Koller (2); Jehee Lee (2); JP Lewis (3); David Luebke (2); Thomas Porter (2); Kari Pulli (2); Charles Ros - (2); Roberto Scopigno (2); Thomas Sederberg (2); Hans-Peter Seidel (2); Sung Yong Shin (2); Alvy Ray Smith (2); Mark Sussman (2); Andries van Dam (2); Pascal Volino (2); Joe Warren (2); Rudiger Westermann (2); Turner Whitted (2); Yizhou Yu (2); Hongkai Zhao (2); Matthias Zwicker (2);
  • John Anderson (1); Ronen Barzel (1); Brian Barsky (1); Thaddeus Beier (1); Bobby Bodenheimer (1); George Borshukov (1); Mario Botsch (1); Jack Bresenham (1); Marie-Paule Cani (1); Daniel Cohen-Or (1); Gilles Debunne (1); Tom Duff (1); Petros Faloutsos (1); Raanan Fattal (1); Sarah Frisken (1); Steven Glanville (1); Eitan Grinspun (1); John Hart (1); Greg Humphreys (1); Takeo Igarashi (1); Doug James (1); Jan Kautz (1); Mark Kilgard (1); Ron Kimmel (1); Venkat Krishnamurthy (1); Vivek Kwatra (1); John Lasseter (1); Peter Litwinowicz (1); Charles Loop (1); Sebastian Marino (1); Nelson Max (1); Niloy Mitra (1); Claudio Montani (1); Shawn Neely (1); Ren Ng (1); Dinesh Pai (1); Darwyn Peachey (1); Cary Phillips (1); Stephen Platt (1); Nancy Pollard (1); Timothy Purcell (1); Claudio Rocchini (1); Alyn Rockwood (1); Hyeong-Seok Ko (1); Olga Sorkine (1); Seth Teller (1); Li-Yi Wei (1);

    I have been asked why I set the bar so high at 200 citations. Well in this day and age of flashy conferences, smoke, mirrors, and publicity, I wanted the number high enough to weed out the short term hype. It seems that quite a few papers quickly rise to 100 citations and then completely disappear.

    In that spirit, I've also included the notion of G' or G-prime. It has all the properties of the G-number but is based on double the number of citations, i.e. 400 cites. Then G'' would be based on 800 cites, etc. And in order to weed out all the one hit wonders, one is only eligible to advance in the primes if their current number is at least 2. For example, one needs a G number of at least 2 in order to have a G' number, and a G' number of at least 2 in order to have a G'' number, etc. Here are the G' numbers for the people on the G-number list above.

  • David Donoho (19);
  • Jitendra Malik (16);
  • Pierre-Louis Lions (15);
  • Stan Osher (14); Wim Sweldens (14);
  • Gene Golub (13); Sebastian Thrun (13);
  • Olivier Faugeras (12); Demetri Terzopoulos (12);
  • Ingrid Daubechies (11);
  • Marc Levoy (10); Jerrold Marsden (10); Richard Szeliski (10);
  • Takeo Kanade (9); Benoit Mandelbrot (9);
  • Frederick Brooks (8); Tony DeRose (8); Ron Fedkiw (8); Hugues Hoppe (8); James Sethian (8);
  • Peter Lax (7); John Platt (7);
  • Steven Gortler (6); Pat Hanrahan (6); Pietro Perona (6); Guillermo Sapiro (6); Carlo Tomasi (6);
  • Al Barr (5); Jim Blinn (5); Michael Crandall (5); Paul Debevec (5); Leo Guibas (5); Amiram Harten (5); Michael Kass (5); Shree Nayar (5); David Salesin (5); Greg Turk (5); Bram Van Leer (5); Andrew Witkin (5);
  • Alexander Chorin (4); Michael Cohen (4); Robert Cook (4); Tom Duchamp (4); Bjorn Engquist (4); Henry Fuchs (4); Paul Heckbert (4); John Hughes (4); James Kajiya (4); Jean-Michel Morel (4); Harry Shum (4); Ivan Sutherland (4); Allen Van Gelder (4); Lance Williams (4);
  • Nina Amenta (3); David Baraff (3); Michael Black (3); Chris Bregler (3); John Canny (3); Loren Carpenter (3); James Foley (3); David Forsyth (3); Donald Greenberg (3); Henrik Jensen (3); Ming Lin (3); Dinesh Manocha (3); Leonard McMillan (3); Ken Perlin (3); Jarek Rossignac (3); Szymon Rusinkiewicz (3); Steven Seitz (3); Kenneth Torrance (3); Bram van Leer (3);
  • David Adalsteinsson (2); Kurt Akeley (2); Marc Alexa (2); Norman Badler (2); Ian Buck (2); Brian Cabral (2); Ed Catmull (2); Jonathan Cohen (2); Brian Curless (2); Mathieu Desbrun (2); Alexei Efros (2); Irfan Essa (2); Nick Foster (2); Michael Garland (2); Michael Gleicher (2); Markus Gross (2); Jessica Hodgins (2); Leif Kobbelt (2); David Koller (2); Dani Lischinski (2); William Mark (2); Dimitris Metaxas (2); Mark Meyer (2); John Owens (2); Hanspeter Pfister (2); Frederic Pighin (2); Thomas Porter (2); William Reeves (2); Craig Reynolds (2); Holly Rushmeier (2); Carlo Sequin (2); Peter Schroder (2); Jonathan Shewchuk (2); John Snyder (2); Jos Stam (2); Andries van Dam (2);
  • Pierre Alliez (1); Sean Anderson (1); Julie Dorsey (1); Fredo Durand (1); Doug Enright (1); Adam Finkelstein (1); Wolfgang Heidrich (1); Aaron Hertzmann (1); Arie Kaufman (1); Bruno Levy (1); JP Lewis (1); Peter Lindstrom (1); David Luebke (1); Steve Marschner (1); Wojciech Matusik (1); Matthias Mueller-Fischer (1); P. J. Narayanan (1); James O'Brien (1); Zoran Popovic (1); Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz (1); Kari Pulli (1); Thomas Sederberg (1); Jonathan Shade (1); Peter Shirley (1); Francois Sillion (1); Claudio Silva (1); Peter-Pike Sloan (1); Mark Sussman (1); Joe Warren (1); Turner Whitted (1); Matthias Zwicker (1);

    Those with a G' number of at least two are assigned a G'' number based on the number of papers with 800 cites. Here are the G'' numbers.

  • Marc Levoy (9);
  • David Donoho (8);
  • Ingrid Daubechies (7); Pierre-Louis Lions (7); Benoit Mandelbrot (7); Jerrold Marsden (7);
  • Jitendra Malik (6);
  • Tony DeRose (5); Peter Lax (5); Stan Osher (5); James Sethian (5); Bram Van Leer (5);
  • Alexander Chorin (4); Hugues Hoppe (4); Takeo Kanade (4); Wim Sweldens (4); Carlo Tomasi (4);
  • Frederick Brooks (3); Tom Duchamp (3); Olivier Faugeras (3); Gene Golub (3); Amiram Harten (3); Demetri Terzopoulos (3); Sebastian Thrun (3);
  • Al Barr (2); Michael Black (2); John Canny (2); Loren Carpenter (2); Michael Crandall (2); Paul Debevec (2); Bjorn Engquist (2); James Foley (2); Pat Hanrahan (2); Jean-Michel Morel (2); Pietro Perona (2); John Platt (2); Guillermo Sapiro (2); Richard Szeliski (2); Kenneth Torrance (2); Andrew Witkin (2);
  • David Baraff (1); Jim Blinn (1); Ed Catmull (1); Michael Cohen (1); Robert Cook (1); Brian Curless (1); Ron Fedkiw (1); David Forsyth (1); Michael Garland (1); Steven Gortler (1); Donald Greenberg (1); Leo Guibas (1); Paul Heckbert (1); John Hughes (1); James Kajiya (1); Michael Kass (1); Ming Lin (1); Dinesh Manocha (1); Leonard McMillan (1); Shree Nayar (1); John Owens (1); Ken Perlin (1); William Reeves (1); Craig Reynolds (1); Szymon Rusinkiewicz (1); David Salesin (1); Jonathan Shewchuk (1); Jos Stam (1); Ivan Sutherland (1); Greg Turk (1); Andries van Dam (1); Allen van Gelder (1); Lance Williams (1);

    Those with a G'' number of at least two are assigned a G''' number based on the number of papers with 1600 cites. Yes, this gets exponentially hard, and thus I'm not worried about the awkward notation with repeated primes.

  • Ingrid Daubechies (6);
  • David Donoho (4); Jitendra Malik (4); Benoit Mandelbrot (4);
  • Frederick Brooks (3); Takeo Kanade (3); James Sethian (3);
  • Michael Crandall (2); James Foley (2); Hugues Hoppe (2); Marc Levoy (2); Pierre-Louis Lions (2); Stan Osher (2); Carlo Tomasi (2);
  • John Canny (1); Alexander Chorin (5); Tony DeRose (1); Tom Duchamp (1); Olivier Faugeras (1); Gene Golub (1); Pat Hanrahan (1); Amiram Harten (1); Peter Lax (1); Jerrold Marsden (1); Pietro Perona (1); Guillermo Sapiro (1); Wim Sweldens (1); Richard Szeliski (1); Demetri Terzopoulos (1); Bram Van Leer (1); Andrew Witkin (1);

    And those with a G''' number of at least two get a G'''' number based on the number of papers with 3200 cites.

  • Jitendra Malik (3);
  • Ingrid Daubechies (2); Benoit Mandelbrot (2);
  • David Donoho (1); James Foley (1); Takeo Kanade (1); Stan Osher (1); James Sethian (1);

    And those with a G'''' number of at least two gets a G''''' number based on the number of papers with 6400 cites.

  • Ingrid Daubechies (1); Jitendra Malik (1); Benoit Mandelbrot (1);

    And there it ends. No one is eligible for another prime.

    The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has an awards database that one can search for Sci-Tech awards. So I looked for some of the people with G-numbers there:
  • Academy Award of Merit (Statuette) - Rob Cook, Loren Carpenter and Ed Catmull 2000;
  • Scientific and Engineering Award (Plaque) - Loren Carpenter, Rob Cook, Ed Catmull, Thomas Porter, Pat Hanarahan, Darwyn Peachey (et al.) 1992; Alvy Ray Smith, Ed Catmull, Thomas Porter and Tom Duff 1995; William Reeves 1996; William Reeves, Tom Duff (et al.) 1997; Craig Reynolds 1997; Alvy Ray Smith, Thomas Porter (et al.) 1997; David Baraff, Michael Kass and Andrew Witkin 2005; Ron Fedkiw (et al.) 2007;
  • Technical Achievement Award (Certificate) - James Kajiya and Timothy Kay 1996; Ken Perlin 1996; Thaddeus Beier 1998; Nick Foster 1998; Cary Phillips 1998; George Borshukov (et al.) 2000; Venkat Krishnamurthy 2000; John Anderson, Cary Phillips (et al.) 2001; Lance Williams 2001; Henrik Jensen, Steve Marschner and Pat Hanarahan 2003; Ed Catmull, Tony DeRose and Jos Stam 2005; John Platt and Demetri Terzopoulos 2005; Peter Litwinowicz (et al.) 2006; Jonathan Cohen (et al.) 2007; Jos Stam (et al.) 2007;


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