Sign in

Silvia Sellán

@silviasellan.bsky.social
1.5K followers 1.1K following 212 posts

Assistant Professor of Computer Graphics and Geometry Processing at Columbia University www.cs.columbia.edu/~silviasellan

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Baptiste GENEST @baptiste-genest.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
As graphics researchers or geometry teachers, we speak about 3D using screenshots, and that's just sad... What if you could make SLides on top of PolyscOPE? You can using SLOPE! Slope allows you to synchronize a 3D viewer, animated meshes, shaders, live demos, equations (& more) with your slides!
23912
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
David Cooper @davidbcooper.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Starting my day making some art.
261609481
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Codetaur @vibe-coded.com · 13/09/2026
testing astra's parametric modeling capabilities by asking it to reconstruct these marble maze pieces from reference photos, and then use them in threejs to make a marble maze builder with box3d physics.
1627432
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Matt Henderson @matthen.com · 13/09/2026
Approximating the Lorenz attractor with a chaotic leaky water wheel. The orange dot is the centre of mass of the water. It traces (a projection of) the familiar attractor as the wheel spins seemingly randomly left and right.
14738151
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Alex Kanaris-Sotiriou @kanaratron.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
The job of the animator is to look deep within their soul and ask difficult questions like 'if I was a fumigator how would I vibrate?'
391223122
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Dave @sheepfilms.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
I've always wanted to do invisible person effects
11497106
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Eugene Vinitsky 🍒 @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
I am begging you, stop using LLMs to write your papers it is horrible to read and causes an instant DNF.
71349
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
I've done it. At last. A comic with an audience smaller than zero.
361183140
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Jonty Wareing @jonty.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
I updated my total eclipse webcam viewer for today's eclipse! Once totality begins you'll see a live-updating umbra, so you can race to the next webcam and see the eclipse happen over and over again. jonty.github.io/2026_eclipse...
A map showing the path of the 2026 total eclipse over Iceland and Spain, with markers showing webcams and a countdown until the eclipse begins, and it hitting the first webcam.
11483269
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Anthropic {bot} @anthropicai.xmirror.bot · 10/08/2026
We asked an unreleased research version of Claude to take a stab at the Riemann hypothesis. It didn’t solve it, but it did make strides on a related problem: it increased the lower bound for the fraction of zeros of the Riemann zeta function that satisfy the hypothesis from 41.6% to 67.2%.
anthropic.com
Learning more about Claude's mathematical capabilities
An unreleased version of Claude has made strides on a problem related to the Riemann hypothesis. It improved the lower bound for the fraction of zeros of the Riemann zeta function that satisfy the hypothesis, increasing it from 41.6% to 67.2%.
510513
Silvia Sellán @silviasellan.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
I know language evolves and we shouldn't be prescriptive and all that but.... please please please what is with people saying "else" instead of "otherwise"? We talk a lot about coding using natural language but this reverse effect of changing language to imitate code is horrifying.
240
Silvia Sellán @silviasellan.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
In case you missed it, Xiana went through the trouble of recording her talk :)
080
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Xiana Carrera @xianacarrera.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
The talk I presented at #SIGGRAPH2026 is now available on YouTube, for anyone who couldn’t attend or would like to revisit it :) youtu.be/OFJYBUArVPc?...
youtu.be
Dual Contouring of Signed Distance Data - SIGGRAPH 2026 [Technical paper presentation]
YouTube video by Xiana Carrera
27219
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Henry Yuen @henryyuen.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Some initial thoughts, and a complicated mix of feelings. Wow. I mean, Erdos problems are cool (I genuinely mean that), I didn't know about the Jacobian conjecture before it got disproved. But this newest batch from OpenAI hits home in a way the previous announcements did not.
232972
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Harry 💬 @halisavakis.com · 30/07/2026
I was asked about a small breakdown for the 3D anime ramen and realized my breakdown thread was on the cursed site from which I deleted my account 😅 So I'm gonna post a small 🧵 here
932193
Silvia Sellán @silviasellan.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Ah, this is great. I love it. I love the Tolstoy quote too. I like every part of this
061
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
This is a robot failing to grasp a ball. Almost every robot lab produces clips like this daily… and almost all of them get thrown away. This is the most abundant but underused resource in robot learning. We’re collecting all of it now as “OopsieData”, please join us at oopsie-data.com! (1/13)
17413
Silvia Sellán @silviasellan.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
One of my favorite papers this year, I am super impressed by Nicole's work!
140
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
People not in tech have been interested in what happened with the Open AI agent/Hugging Face hack. So, I "Explain it Like I'm 5"-ed it and made a cartoon in 8 panels. Apologies for some anthro-ing. 🫤 m-mitchell.com/HF-hack-cart... 1/8
An AI agent in development at OpenAI was recently tested on how well it could find and exploit code vulnerabilities.

The test began in a "sandbox", an environment meant to keep everything the agent does contained, so that nothing it triggers can affect systems outside of the test.
613534
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Keenan Crane @keenancrane.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
#SIGGRAPH2026 attendees: I made a better webpage for the Technical Papers schedule. You can search, filter on keywords, and scroll through linearly (rather than opening a zillion folds) + add to calendar: keenancrane.github.io/siggraph-pap... Can also download a flat JSON & CSV of talks & times.
4314
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Ahmed Mahmoud @ahdhn.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Next week at #SIGGRAPH 2026, we'll present "Locality-Aware Automatic Differentiation on the GPU for Mesh-Based Computations," with Rahul Goel, Jonathan Ragan-Kelley, and @justinmsolomon.bsky.social . Talk: Mon., July 20, 2:50 PM, Room 403-B Paper: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/... More below (1/7):
22111
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Ningna Wang @ninnnnnglala.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Excited to share our latest work on discrete SDF reconstruction with no gradients required! Please come to Xiana's talk in LA :)
0183
Silvia Sellán @silviasellan.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Ever since I have worked in mesh reconstruction from SDFs, the general consensus was "to get sharp features, you need access to the SDF gradient (e.g., with dual contouring)". Amazingly, Xiana shows that this is not true, and one can reconstruct sharp features from SDF data alone. Crazy!
0211
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Xiana Carrera @xianacarrera.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
6/6 Huge thanks to my wonderful coauthors @ninnnnnglala.bsky.social, @topher-batty.mastodon.acm.org.ap.brid.gy , @odedstein.bsky.social, and my amazing PhD advisor @silviasellan.bsky.social. Check our paper here: gatc.cs.columbia.edu/assets/pdf/d... (Code release coming soon!)
081
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Xiana Carrera @xianacarrera.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
5/6 The results are sharper and more accurate reconstructions from sampled SDF data, especially at medium-to-high grid resolutions, with applications to narrow-band meshing and swept-volume reconstruction.
151
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Xiana Carrera @xianacarrera.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
4/6 We then incorporate these constraints into local, parallelizable quadratic optimization problems to refine mesh vertex positions, and iteratively update the intersections between edges and the isosurface, as well as their corresponding gradients, to recover sharper geometry.
121
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Xiana Carrera @xianacarrera.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
3/6 Our approach revisits the classic Dual Contouring, but removes the need for exact gradients as input. To do so, we leverage the fact that each SDF sample gives distance information in the form of a spherical constraint that the unknown surface should be tangent to.
121
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Xiana Carrera @xianacarrera.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
2/6 SDFs are widely used in modeling, simulation, manufacturing, and graphics, but many downstream tasks still need explicit surface meshes. From grid samples alone, sharp reconstruction is hard, and existing methods often smooth features or require extra information.
121
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Xiana Carrera @xianacarrera.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
1/6 Excited to share our #SIGGRAPH2026 paper, Dual Contouring of Signed Distance Data! We propose a new method for reconstructing sharp meshes from discrete samples of signed distance functions (SDFs) that does not require gradients. Project page: gatc.cs.columbia.edu/projects/dua...
410626
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Gautam Kamath @gautamkamath.com · 28/05/2026
kamathematics.wordpress.com/2026/05/27/m...
kamathematics.wordpress.com
Making a talk, without and with AI
Some of the discussion online has been about how not to use AI in making academic talks (see, e.g., this post by Jessica Hullman). A junior researcher asked my opinion on using AI to help make slid…
183
Silvia Sellán @silviasellan.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
This is a really cool paper!
1130
Silvia Sellán @silviasellan.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
What an impressive cohort!!!
0120
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
WiGRAPH @wigraph.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
We are excited to announce the 2026 cohort of Rising Stars in Computer Graphics 🌟 These 9 young researchers will participate in a workshop at Siggraph 2026, about the wide range of career trajectories in graphics. Thank you to all applicants and to our selection committee for all the hard work.
0235
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Karl Jacoby @karl-jacoby.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Proud of my students for their research, which for the first time located the descendants of those enslaved by Columbia University's founders. www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2026/05...
columbiaspectator.com
Student researchers identify living descendant of person enslaved by Columbia founder
For the first time since the Columbia University and Slavery seminar began in 2014, students have identified a living descendant of someone enslaved by a Columbia affiliate.
517458
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Claudio @chinarider.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
May 3, 1968 the #GratefulDead got smuggled past student barricades into the quad at Columbia University in NYC to play a stealth concert for the students who were protesting youtu.be/WFtQr_W3opM?... 📷 Rosie McGee
0265
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
I am continually asked if VFMs "understand" classical mechanics and my benchmark for this is the venerable newton's cradle. Let's take a look at progress over the last year using Google's Veo models -- a 🧵
273
Silvia Sellán @silviasellan.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
I never understand what I'm supposed to write here
Openreview review form field saying "Give your review a short title"
4150
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Emilie Yu @emxtyu.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
At #CHI2026 we are also presenting "StepDance: A Toolkit for Redesigning CNC Machines Using Physical Metaphors" Curious how a machine-building novice like me can make a sketch-to-print machine? checkout the talk on Friday >> programs.sigchi.org/chi/2026/pro... or see thread...
1111
Silvia Sellán @silviasellan.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
This is not what "opt in" means...
1111
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Amir Vaxman @amirvaxman-dgp.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
Short and to the pointless,
2101
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Theodore Kim @theodore-kim.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
Technical Reading, Week 7: "Comment on Computer Rendering of Fractal Stochastic Models", Mandelbrot's angry letter to future Pixar folks about the crapola Genesis Sequence in Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan. (His views, not mine.) dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
dl.acm.org
Technical correspondence: comment on computer rendering of fractal stochastic models: Communications of the ACM: Vol 25, No 8
141
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Reilly Wood @reillywood.com · 21/02/2026
www.achewood.com/assets/img/0...
071
Silvia Sellán @silviasellan.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
If someone refers an undergraduate student to a known sex offender for a job, and includes a comment about how good-looking the student is in their recommendation letter, that someone should never be allowed to teach undergraduate students ever again.
2121
Silvia Sellán @silviasellan.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
The CVPR review period is *Dec 18 to Jan 12*? Damn....
080
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Dr. Casey Fiesler @cfiesler.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
The ACM Digital Library, where a LOT of computing-related research is published (I'd say at least 75% of my own publications), is now not only providing (without consent of the authors and without opt-in by readers) AI-generated summaries of papers, but they appear as the *default* over abstracts.
Screenshot of a paper entry:
Fictional Failures and Real-World Lessons: Ethical Speculation Through Design Fiction on Emotional Support Conversational AI
Authors: Faye Kollig, Jessica Pater, Fayika Farhat Nova, Casey Fiesler
(There are tabs with "abstract" and "summary" and "summary" is selected.)
31651334
Silvia Sellán @silviasellan.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
This is really, really bad!
1131
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Alexa Schor @bsky.alexaschor.com · 25/11/2025
Writing code on a bumpy train and tried stabilizing the display image to my head -- it does (surprisingly) make things a bit easier to read but overall feels too weird to actually use.
1245
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
David Coeurjolly @dcoeurjo.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
The Graphics Replicability Stamp Initiative (GRSI, www.replicabilitystamp.org), a community-driven initiative to promote replicability in Graphics research, is seeking volunteers. More details in the 'Volunteering' section of the home page.
replicabilitystamp.org
Graphics Replicability Stamp Initiative
11611
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Chelsea Parlett @chelseaparlett.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
“it’s October 3rd” Happy K-Mean Girls Day to those who celebrate
A drawing of two clusters one cluster has a blonde girl with a ponytail in it, and the other cluster has a redhead a blonde and a brunette. This represents the scene and mean girls where Gretchen tells Regina George “you can’t sit with us!”
0457
Reposted by Silvia Sellán
Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
cvoelcker.de/blog/2025/re... I finally gave in and made a nice blog post about my most recent paper. This was a surprising amount of work, so please be nice and go read it!
media.tenor.com
a close up of a sad cat with the words pleeeaasse written below it
ALT: a close up of a sad cat with the words pleeeaasse written below it
0297