Silvia Sellán - Curriculum Vitae

Click here to download a pdf version of this CV.

Education

University of Toronto, 2019 - 2024 (expected)
PhD in Computer Science
Supervisor: Prof. Alec Jacobson

University of Oviedo, 2015 - 2019
B.Sc. in Physics

University of Oviedo, 2015 - 2019
B.Sc. in Mathematics

Experience

Yale University, 2022
Research Consultant
Work carried out with Prof. Theodore Kim

Adobe Inc., May 2020 - December 2020
Research Intern
Mentored by Noam Aigerman and managed by Jovan Popovic

Adobe Inc., July 2019 - October 2019
Research Intern
Mentored by Noam Aigerman and managed by Jovan Popovic

Fields Institute for Research in the Mathematical Sciences, Summer 2018
Undergraduate Research Intern
Supervised by Prof. Alec Jacobson

Fields Institute for Research in the Mathematical Sciences, Summer 2017
Undergraduate Research Intern
Supervised by Prof. Alec Jacobson

Journal & Conference Publications

Stochastic Poisson Surface Reconstruction, 2022
Silvia Sellán, Alec Jacobson
ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH Asia)

Breaking Bad: A Dataset for Geometric Fracture and Reassembly, 2022
Silvia Sellán*, Yun-Chun Chen*, Ziyi Wu*, Animesh Garg, Alec Jacobson (*Joint First Authors)
Proceedings of Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)
Featured (previously known as “Oral”) paper

Breaking Good: Fracture Modes for Realtime Destruction, 2022
Silvia Sellán, Jack Luong, Letticia Mattos Da Silva,
Aravind Ramakrishnan, Yuchuan Yang, Alec Jacobson
ACM Transactions on Graphics (to be presented at SIGGRAPH Asia)

Sex and Gender in the Computer Graphics Research Literature, 2022
Ana Dodik*, Silvia Sellán*, Theodore Kim, Amanda Phillips (*Joint First Authors)
SIGGRAPH Talk

Swept Volumes via Spacetime Numerical Continuation, 2021
Silvia Sellán, Noam Aigerman, Alec Jacobson
ACM Transactions On Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH)

Opening and Closing Surfaces, 2020
Silvia Sellán, Jacob Kesten, Ang Yan Sheng, Alec Jacobson
ACM Transactions On Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH Asia)

Developability of Heightfields via Rank Minimization, 2020
Silvia Sellán, Noam Aigerman, Alec Jacobson
ACM Transactions On Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH)

Solid Geometry Processing on Deconstructed Domains, 2019
Silvia Sellán, Herng Yi Cheng, Yuming Ma, Mitchell Dembowski, Alec Jacobson
Computer Graphics Forum (presented at Eurographics SGP 2019)

Other Publications

Blender for Geometry Processing Academic Papers, 2022
Silvia Sellán
Graduate School course presented at Eurographics SGP 2022

Geometry Processing programming in MATLAB with gptoolbox, 2021
Hsueh-Ti Derek Liu*, Silvia Sellán*, Oded Stein* (*Joint First Authors)
Graduate School course presented at Eurographics SGP 2021

Efficient and Robust Swept Volumes, 2021
Silvia Sellán, Noam Aigerman, Alec Jacobson
Poster presented at the Vector Institute Research Symposium

Applications of Geometry Processing to Computer Graphics, 2019
Silvia Sellán
B.Sc. in Mathematics thesis supervised by Profs. Alec Jacobson and Carlos Fernández García

An introduction to primal inflation, 2019
Silvia Sellán
B.Sc. in Physics thesis supervised by Prof. Luigi Toffolati

Solid Geometry Processing on Deconstructed Domains, 2018
Silvia Sellán, Herng Yi Cheng, Yuming Ma, Mitchell Dembowski, Alec Jacobson
Poster presented at Eurographics SGP 2018

Solving PDEs on Overlapping Domains, 2018
Silvia Sellán, Herng Yi Cheng, Yuming Ma, Mitchell Dembowski, Alec Jacobson
Extended abstract published by Review of Undergraduate Computer Science

Patents

Swept Volume Determination Techniques, 2021
Inventors: Silvia Sellán, Noam Aigerman, Alec Jacobson
Patent filed by Adobe Inc.

Generating Developable Depth Images Using Rank Minimization, 2021
Inventors: Silvia Sellán, Noam Aigerman, Alec Jacobson
United States Patent 11080819

Software

Geometry Processing in Matlab tutorial
Author

gptoolbox - Geometry Processing Toolbox
Contributor

gpytoolbox - A Python Geometry Processing Toolbox
Author

libigl - A Simple C++ Geometry Processing Library
Contributor

Also, open-source code is available on this website for all journal publications listed above

Awards and Honours

Vanier Canada Doctoral Scholarship, 2021-2024
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
150,000 CAD award given only to 166 graduate students across all of Canada and across all academic disciplines

Beatrice “Trixie” Worsley Graduate Scholarship in Computer Science, 2023
University of Toronto Department of Computer Science
4,000 CAD award given to a student who has taken an active role in promoting the role of women in Computer Science

Connaught International Scholarship for Doctoral Students, 2022
University of Toronto Department of Computer Science
A 10,000 CAD award designed to assist graduate units in recruiting and supporting top international students

Adobe Research Fellowship, 2022
Adobe Research
10,000 USD award given only to ten graduate students worldwide.

Dean’s Doctoral Excellence Scholarship, 2021
University of Toronto Faculty of Arts & Science
25,000 CAD award given one single doctoral students across all Arts & Science disciplines

Connaught International Scholarship for Doctoral Students, 2021
University of Toronto Department of Computer Science
A 10,000 CAD award designed to assist graduate units in recruiting and supporting top international students

Beatrice “Trixie” Worsley Graduate Scholarship in Computer Science, 2021
University of Toronto Department of Computer Science
4,000 CAD award given to a student who has taken an active role in promoting the role of women in Computer Science

Adobe Research Fellowship, 2021
Adobe Research
Honorable Mention

Connaught International Scholarship for Doctoral Students, 2020
University of Toronto Department of Computer Science
A 10,000 CAD award designed to assist graduate units in recruiting and supporting top international students

50th Anniversary Graduate Scholarship, 2020
University of Toronto Department of Computer Science
2,000 CAD

Graduate Program Award, 2020
University of Toronto Department of Computer Science
5,000 CAD

Program-level Fellowship, 2020
University of Toronto Faculty of Arts & Science
1,000 CAD

Adobe Research Fellowship, 2020
Adobe Research
Honorable Mention

Connaught International Scholarship for Doctoral Students, 2019
University of Toronto Department of Computer Science
A 10,000 CAD award designed to assist graduate units in recruiting and supporting top international students

Recognition of Excellence Award, 2019
University of Toronto Department of Computer Science
5,000 CAD

Graduate Program Award, 2019
University of Toronto Department of Computer Science
5,000 CAD

Program-level Fellowship, 2019
University of Toronto Faculty of Arts & Science
1,000 CAD

Adobe Women-in-Technology Scholarship, 2019
Adobe Inc.
Honorable Mention

SenseTime Fellowship, 2019
MIT
Granted but declined

Scholarship for Academic Excellence, 2018
María Cristina Masaveu Peterson Foundation
10,000 EUR

Scholarship for Academic Excellence, 2017
María Cristina Masaveu Peterson Foundation
10,000 EUR

Scholarship for Academic Excellence, 2016
María Cristina Masaveu Peterson Foundation
10,000 EUR

Scholarship for Academic Excellence, 2015
María Cristina Masaveu Peterson Foundation
10,000 EUR

Scholarship for Academic Excellence, 2014
María Cristina Masaveu Peterson Foundation
10,000 EUR

Committee Service

CVPR Deep Learning for Geometric Computing, 2023
Organizing committee member

ACM SIGGRAPH Women in Graphics Research Community Group, 2022 - Present
Executive Comittee Member

SIGGRAPH Research Career Development Committee, 2021 - Present
Committee member (in undergraduate mentorship subcommittee)

Eurographics Symposium on Geometry Processing (SGP), 2023
International Program Committee member

Summer Geometry Initiative, 2023
Steering Committee member

Women in Graphics Research (WiGRAPH), 2020-2022
Executive Comittee Member

CVPR Deep Learning for Geometric Computing, 2022
Organizing committee member

ICCV Deep Learning for Geometric Computing, 2021
Program Comittee Member

Referee Service

Eurographics Symposium on Geometry Processing (SGP), 2023

ACM SIGGRAPH Technical Papers, 2023

IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 2023

The Visual Computer (TVCJ), 2023

Eurographics Technical Papers, 2022

CVPR DLGC Technical Papers, 2022

ACM SIGGRAPH Technical Papers, 2022

ACM SIGGRAPH Posters, 2022

International Symposium on Robotics Research, 2022

Computer Aided Design Journal (CAD-J), 2022

Eurographics Technical Papers, 2021

ACM Transactions on Graphics (ToG), 2021

ICCV DLGC Technical Papers, 2021

Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques (JCGT), 2021

ACM SIGGRAPH Posters, 2021

Departmental Service

Faculty of Arts and Science Graduate Diversity Working Group, 2022 Invited Member

Dean’s Advisory Search Committee - Department Chair, Computer Science, 2021 - 2022
Invited Member

DGP Working Group on Fostering a Safe and Inclusive Workplace, 2022
Member

DCS Grad program talk for Ukranian undergraduate visiting students, 2022
Panelist

Graduate Applications Triager, 2021
16 hours of paid work on processing graduate school applications

Talks Given

Uncertain Surface Reconstruction, March 2023
UCLA and CalTech’s Grundfest Memorial Lecture, invited by Profs. Achuta Kadambi and Katie Bowman
Virtual

Research in Geometry Processing, February 2023
University of Toronto Undergraduate Graphics Club
Toronto, Canada

“Geometry +": Moving fast, breaking things and putting them back together, February 2023
Vector Institute Endless Summer School: NeurIPS 2022 Highlights
Toronto, Canada

Stochastic Poisson Surface Reconstruction, December 2022
SIGGRAPH Asia Technical Papers talk
Daegu, South Korea

Breaking Good: Fracture Modes for Realtime Destruction, December 2022
SIGGRAPH Asia Technical Papers talk
Daegu, South Korea

Breaking Bad: A Dataset for Geometric Fracture Reassembly, December 2022
NeurIPS featured (oral) talk
New Orleans, U.S.

Sex and Gender in the Computer Graphics literature, November 2022
Queer in AI @ NeurIPS workshop
New Orleans, U.S.

“Geometry +": Uncertain Surface Reconstruction, November 2022
University of Montreal Computer Graphics Seminar hosted by Prof. Mikhail Bessmeltsev
Montreal, Canada

“Geometry +": Moving fast, breaking things and putting them back together, November 2022
Invited talk at Ubisoft La Forge
Montreal, Canada

“Geometry +": Moving fast, breaking things and putting them back together, November 2022
McGill University Computer Graphics Seminar hosted by Prof. Paul Kry
Montreal, Canada

Sex and Gender in the Computer Graphics literature, November 2022
UNC Chapel Hill Computer Vision seminar invited by Professor Roni Sengupta
Virtual

Virtual Bodies that Matter: A trans researcher’s career in computer graphics, November 2022
Georgewotn University’s Gender, Film and Media Studies seminar, hosted by Prof. Amanda Phillips
Washington, D.C., U.S.

“Geometry +": Uncertain Surface Reconstruction, November 2022
John Hopkins University Computer Graphics Seminar hosted by Prof. Misha Kazhdan
Baltimore, U.S.

“Geometry +": Uncertain Surface Reconstruction, November 2022
Columbia University Computer Graphics Seminar hosted by Prof. Changxi Zheng
New York City, U.S.

“Geometry +": Uncertain Surface Reconstruction, November 2022
NYU Computer Graphics Seminar hosted by Prof. Daniele Panozzo
New York City, U.S.

“Geometry +": Uncertain Surface Reconstruction, November 2022
MIT Computer Graphics Seminar hosted by Prof. Justin Solomon
Cambridge, U.S.

“Geometry +": Uncertain Surface Reconstruction, November 2022
Inaugural Yale Rising Stars seminar hosted by Prof. Theodore Kim
New Haven, U.S.

“Geometry +": Uncertain Surface Reconstruction, November 2022
Dartmouth Computer Graphics Seminar hosted by Prof. Wojciech Jarosz
Hanover, U.S.

Moving fast, breaking things, and putting them back together, November 2022
Engineering and Applied Science Forum
Virtual

Blender for academic papers, October 2022
Toronto Geometry and Architecture Summit
Toronto, Canada

Sex and Gender in the Computer Graphics Literature, August 2022
SIGGRAPH Talk
Vancouver, Canada

Mesh Math and Beyond: An Introduction to Shape Representations, July 2022
Day-long tutorial at the MIT-ran Summer Geometry Institute (SGI)
Virtual

Blender for Geometry Processing Papers, July 2022
Graduate School course at SGP 2021
Location TBD

Sweeping Volumes, March 2022
University of Toronto Undergraduate Graphics Club
Toronto, Canada

Uncertain Geometry Processing, December 2021
Technical presentation at TOMATOGRAPH 2021
Toronto, Canada

Swept Volumes via Spacetime Numerical Continuation, August 2021
Technical paper presentation at SIGGRAPH 2021
Virtual (originally scheduled in Los Angeles, U.S.)

Mesh Math and Beyond: An Introduction to Shape Representations, July 2021
Day-long tutorial at the MIT-ran Summer Geometry Institute (SGI)
Virtual

An Introduction to Geometry Processing Programming in MATLAB with gptoolbox, July 2021
Graduate School course at SGP 2021
Virtual (originally scheduled in Toronto, Canada)

A Deep Dive into Implicit Swept Volumes, June 2021
INRIA MFX research seminar hosted by Prof. Sylvain Lefebvre
Virtual

A Deep Dive into Implicit Swept Volumes, June 2021
MIT Vision and Graphics research seminar hosted by Prof. Justin Solomon
Virtual

Seamless Integration of Virtual and Real World, May 2021
Doctoral Consortium presentation at Eurographics 2021
Virtual (originally scheduled in Vienna, Austria)

Differential Geometry: The Building Blocks of Computer Graphics, March 2021
Research Seminar at the Lancaster University Pure Mathematics Postgraduate Forum
Virtual

Developable Surfaces: A Case Study in Discrete Differential Geometry, December 2020
Research seminar at the Technion hosted by Prof. Mirela Ben-Chen
Virtual

Efficient and Robust Swept Volumes, December 2020
Technical presentation at GRAPHQUON 2020
Virtual
Second best presentation award

Opening and Closing Surfaces, December 2020
Technical Paper presentation at SIGGRAPH Asia 2020
Virtual (originally Daegu, S. Korea)

Morphological operations as geometric flows on surfaces, November 2020
Research talk at Epic Games, Inc. hosted by Dr. Ryan Schmidt
Virtual

Developable Surfaces: A Case Study in Discrete Differential Geometry, November 2020
Research seminar at Carnegie Mellon University hosted by Prof. Keenan Crane
Virtual

Developability of Heightfields via Rank Minimization, October 2020
Opener talk for Prof. Olga Sorkine-Hornung at the Toronto Geometry Colloquium
Virtual

Developability of Heightfields via Rank Minimization, August 2020
Technical Paper presentation at SIGGRAPH 2020
Virtual (originally Washington, U.S.)

Solid Geometry Processing on Deconstructed Domains, October 2019
Research talk at Stanford University hosted by Prof. Doug James
Stanford, United States

Solid Geometry Processing on Deconstructed Domains, July 2019
Technical Paper presentation at Eurographics SGP 2019
Milan, Italy

Applications of Geometry Processing to Computer Graphics, June 2019
B.Sc. in Mathematics Thesis Defense
Oviedo, Spain

An Introduction to Primal Inflation, June 2019
B.Sc. in Physics Thesis Defense
Oviedo, Spain

Morphological Operations as Geometric Flows on Surfaces, August 2018
Fields Institute Undergraduate Summer Research Program
Toronto, Canada

Morphological Operations as Geometric Flows on Surfaces, July 2018
Department of Computer Science Undergraduate Summer Research Program
Toronto, Canada

Solving PDEs on Overlapping Domains, December 2017
Toronto-Montreal Area Graphics Workshop
Toronto, Canada

Solving PDEs on Overlapping Domains, August 2017
Fields Institute Undergraduate Summer Research Program
Toronto, Canada

Solving PDEs on Overlapping Domains, July 2017
Department of Computer Science Undergraduate Summer Research Program
Toronto, Canada

In the news

Computer graphics researcher Silvia Sellán is awarded two prestigious scholarships, July 2021
A&S News, written by Chris Sasaki. Archived version.

Silvia Sellán on Virtual Colloquium Planning, June 2021
Q & A with WiGRAPH, written by Kate Salesin. Archived version.

Organizing

ACM SIGGRAPH Women in Graphics Research Community group, 2022 - Present
Event Coordinator: Symposium on Geometry Processing.
Remote

Toronto Geometry Colloquium, 2020 - Present
Founder, organizer and art director for a series of talks on Geometry Processing.
Toronto, Canada

SIGGRAPH Graduate Applications Mentorship Program, 2022
Founder and organizer.
Remote

Summer Geometry Institute, 2022
Admissions committee member and session planning.
Remote

CVPR Deep Learning for Geometric Computing, 2022
Organizing committee member

Women in Graphics Research, 2020 - 2022
Event Coordinator: Symposium on Geometry Processing.
Remote

SIGGRAPH Graduate Applications Mentorship Program, 2021
Founder and organizer.
Remote

Summer Geometry Institute, 2021
Admissions committee member and session planning.
Remote

Symposium on Geometry Processing (SGP), 2021
Student volunteer working on tech support full time during the conference and in Spanish-language outreach
Remote

Toronto-Montreal-Waterloo Graphics Workshop (TomatoGRAPH), 2021
Student volunteer
Toronto, Canada

Teaching

Summer Geometry Institute, Summer 2022
Instructor of a full-day tutorial including lectures, coding demos and exercises.
Under the supervision of Professor Justin Solomon, MIT

Symposium on Geometry Processing (SGP), Summer 2022
Lecturer of the SGP graduate school course Blender for Academic Papers

Summer Geometry Institute, Summer 2021
Instructor of a full-day tutorial including lectures, coding demos and exercises.
Under the supervision of Professor Justin Solomon, MIT

Symposium on Geometry Processing (SGP), Summer 2021
Co-lecturer of the SGP graduate school course An introduction to geometry processing programming in MATLAB with gptoolbox

CSC165: Mathematical Expression and Reasoning for Computer Science, Winter 2020
Teaching Assistant (120 hours)
Professor David Liu

Individual High School Tutoring, 2015-2018
Weekly paid mathematics and physics tutoring

Anonymous teaching feedback

Summer Geometry Institute
During the summer of 2021, I planned, prepared and conducted a 6-hour long tutorial session on the topic of shape representations for undergraduate students of underrepresented communities, as part of MIT’s Summer Geometry Institute (SGI). A representative sample of the anonymous feedback collected by professor Justin Solomon is reproduced below, each paragraph corresponding to different student:

Silvia Sellán’s presentation was idyllic, it gave the feeling of being a duck in a pond being fed delicious crumbs of bread, the students being the duck and Silvia the feeder throwing in one after another the information that we like the ducks devoured. The presentation itself was amazing to go beyond analogy it was clear and concise towards learning the topic, the information did not feel too overwhelming, nor too brief. The exercises as well as giving focus upon them and breaking them apart into which to do at what times, they felt like the perfect amount of material in order to have us learn and test our knowledge of the topics.

I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed Silvia’s programme. Cutting out all the formulas definitely made her material really accessible and easy to follow without worrying about the precise details of what is going on. I think leaving these details for us to figure out by doing the exercises is really good for developing understanding, rather than having a perhaps more technical talk which is harder to follow and then not quite knowing how to approach the exercises.

Silvia’s lecture was the easiest to follow and the most approachable.

Silvia’s tutorial: Lively and engaging, I liked how a narrative that tied in everything together neatly was presented.

I really liked Silvia Sellan’s tutorial day because for the presentations she gave us a story illustrating the motivation behind the concepts and theory and the actual coding assignments were very accessible and did not require a lot of background material.

I think a very good example of this was Silvia Sellan’s tutorial day. She approached the advanced topics from a big picture perspective and all of the coding exercises needed “basic” MATLAB and knowledge of calculus and a small amount of linear algebra.

I thoroughly enjoyed Silvia’s talk and the associated exercises.

I also found Silvia’s talk very valuable, not only for the geometry processing material offered (which was undoubtedly great, well-structured and very accessible), but also for increasing our awareness about potential nefarious uses of geometry processing. Also the brief digressions on true diversity when talking about fonts/letters were in my opinion very welcome – I (unfortunately) tend to think in a very ““westernized”” way, and it’s always good to bring awareness to things outside of our intellectual comfort zone.

I really liked Silvia Sellán’s day of the tutorial week. I think she did a really good job of creating presentations and exercises that met me where I am as a student without a formal experience in geometry processing. The mathematics and computer science that she talked as well as exercises she designed were accessible to me as someone who has undergraduate majors in mathematics and computer science as well as had participated in larger projects with programming computer graphics components. I also think she did a really good job of telling and motivating a story, which was really important to staying engaged throughout the day. I also really appreciate that she spoke about ethics in computing and the need to think critically about academic work. It’s definitely something that is not spoken enough about and that needs to be spoken about more.

YOU GUYS ARE WONDERFUL! Not gonna lie, I started looking at PhD opportunities to pursue this field after attending this program.

Mentoring

Graduate School Applications, 2020 - Present
Volunteer mentoring of dozens of prospective Computer Graphics students from underrepresented groups with their graduate school application package and decisions. Successful applicant destinations include MIT, UCSD, University of Toronto, UBC and others.
Remote

Canada-Wide Science Fair, Spring 2022
Mentored two grade 11 students with their Science Fair project as part of UofT’s Pursue STEM
Toronto, Canada

Canadian Black Scientists Network Youth Science Fair, Winter 2022
Mentored two grade 11 students with their Science Fair project as part of UofT’s Pursue STEM
Toronto, Canada

University of Toronto DCS Graduate Applications Mentorship Program, Fall 2021
Mentor for several prospective graduate students.
Toronto, Canada

SIGGRAPH Graduate Applications Mentorship Program, Fall 2021
Mentor for several prospective graduate students
Virtual

Fields Undergraduate Summer Research Program, Summer 2021
Graduate research mentor for a group of four undergraduate researchers.
Toronto, Canada

Creating a better summer experience: A DEI workshop, Spring 2021
Certified participation in DEI workshop for mentors of undergraduate students organized by the Center for Minorities in the Mathematical Sciences.
Virtual

Fields Undergraduate Summer Research Program 2020 - 2021
Graduate research mentor for a group of four undergraduate researchers.
Toronto, Canada

Anonymous mentoring feedback

Summer Geometry Institute
During the summer of 2021, I worked as a volunteer mentor for undergraduate students of underrepresented communities, as part of MIT’s Summer Geometry Institute. A representative sample of the anonymous feedback about my mentoring collected by professor Justin Solomon is reproduced below, each quotation corresponding to different student:

I still have no idea what Silvia’s role was, but she went above and beyond to help out with everything. She made us all feel welcome in the Slack channel before SGI even started and continued to dole out advice and support throughout the whole of SGI. She also patiently answered my millions of questions almost as quickly as I could ask them.

Silvia ensured we all felt welcome right from the beginning of the Slack channel. When we introduced ourselves, I noticed she found something nice to say to each of us, and it felt very welcoming to have that display of friendliness right from the get-go.

Silvia Sellán, I would like to thank you specifically for the SGP & Siggraph 2021 wiggraph event, sharing your thoughts in grad school event and being accessible.

Non-academic Volunteering

Reading Partners August 2020
Translation of documents into Spanish for literacy non-profit
United States

General election worker April 2019
Day-long volunteer helping citizens vote on the day of the Spanish General Elections.
Spain

General election worker June 2016
Day-long volunteer helping citizens vote on the day of the Spanish General Elections.
Spain