Jenny Lin
About Me
MEB 3335
I'm a postdoctoral scholar working with Cem Yuksel at the University of Utah. My research is focused on computational fabrication, with a particular interest in low-level computer representations that advance our understanding of real world phenomenon. Or for a more concrete example, I did my thesis on formalizing knit object equivalence using knot theory. I received my PhD from Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Science Department, where I was advised by James McCann. Prior to that I got my B.E. in Computer Science and Molecular Biology at MIT.
In Fall of 2025, I will be starting as an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Notre Dame. I am looking for students. If you're interested in weird math and/or making physical things, please reach out by email!
Select Publications
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Semantics and Scheduling for Machine Knitting Compilers
ACM Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH '23) -
An Artin Braid Group Representation of Knitting Machine State with Applications to Validation and Optimization of Fabrication Plans
IEEE International Conference on Robatics and Automation (ICRA '21)Finalist for Best Conference Paper -
Representing Crochet with Stitch Meshes
ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication (SCF '20) -
Efficient Transfer Planning for Flat Knitting
ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication (SCF '18) -
Configurable 3D Scene Synthesis and 2D Image Rendering with Per-Pixel Ground Truth using Stochastic Grammars
In International Journal of Computer Vision (IJCV '18) -
Visuomotor Adaptation and Sensory Recalibration in Reversed Hand Movement Task
In 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci '17)
Teaching
I served as TA for CMU's Computational Photography class in Fall of 2020 and 2021. In addition to running office hours and grading assignments, I converted existing course assignments from MATLAB to Python. I've also been a guest lecturer for the Algorithm Textiles course at CMU (2019 & 2021) and the E-Textiles course at University of Washington (2021), where I taught students how to write transfer plans for machine knitting programs.
Service
In Spring 2020 I taught a class on wallpaper groups for TechNights, a CMU program aimed at introducing STEM concepts to middle school girls. Furthermore, I've co-run Knitout Office Hours (KOOH) since Fall of 2018, where the Textiles Lab provides knitting machine access and instruction to the greater CMU community. If you're interested in learning to machine knit, email me or James McCann for information about current hours.
From 2019-2022 I served as a chair on the organizing committee for SIGBOVIK, a serious conference about 100% serious computer science adjacent research where many young researchers get their first taste of academic writing (actually serious). Notably, I made SIGBOVIK 2019's website, which was voted website of the year by at least one person that was not me.