Geometry and Computers

I am a Research Professor of Computer Science at New York University Abu Dhabi, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. I am also a Research Affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. During the 2010-11 academic year I was a Research Scholar at Harvard Universit y in the Department of Music, doing research on computational music cognition, and a Visiting Scholar and Lecturer at Tufts University in the Department of Computer Science. During the 2009-2010 academic year I was the Emeline Bigelow Conland Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University working on a research project on the phylogenetic analysis of the musical rhythms of the world. I joined the School of Computer Science at McGill University in 1972, and since 2005 I have been a researcher in the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CRMMT) in the Schulich School of Music, at McGill. My primary research interests include: (1) the design and analysis of algorithms for solving geometric problems that arise in pattern recognition, music information retrieval, computational music theory, computer vision, visualization, computer graphics, computer-aided design, automated manufacturing, knot theory, polymer physics, and computational biology, (2) comparative musicology, with special emphasis on the mathematical and computational aspects of rhythm, and (3) the application of geometry to art in general, and pattern design in particular. I am also interested in the history of computing, especially about that famous Greek computer from antiquity: the straight edge and compass.