Rate My Professor Marc Alexa

Prof. Dr. Marc Alexa is Professor of Computer Science and Chair of Computer Graphics in the Faculty IV – Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Technische Universität Berlin. He received his MSc in Computer Science with honors in 1997 and his PhD summa cum laude in 2002 from Technische Universität Darmstadt, where his doctoral thesis focused on Shape Spaces from Morphing under the supervision of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr. h.c. Dr. E.h. J.L. Encarnação, with co-advisor Prof. Dr. Markus Gross from ETH Zürich. After his PhD, Alexa served as Assistant Professor at TU Darmstadt from 2002 to 2005, leading research in Discrete Geometric Modeling, and briefly as group leader in 3D graphics computing in 2001–2002. He joined TU Berlin in 2005 as Associate Professor of Computer Science, becoming Full Professor in 2010. Since 2021, he also holds a courtesy appointment as Professor of Mathematics in Faculty II – Mathematics and Natural Sciences at TU Berlin. His visiting positions include faculty roles at the University of Toronto (2011–2012), ETH Zürich (2009–2010), and Rhode Island School of Design (1999–2001).

Alexa's research centers on geometry processing, shape modeling, computer graphics, digital manufacturing, differentiable rendering, mesh parameterization, and Laplacian operators. His influential publications include As-Rigid-As-Possible Shape Interpolation (SIGGRAPH 2000), Differential Coordinates for Interactive Mesh Editing (The Visual Computer 2003), Sketch-Based Shape Retrieval (ACM Transactions on Graphics 2012), Optimal Discrete Slicing (ACM Transactions on Graphics 2017), Harmonic Triangulations (ACM Transactions on Graphics 2019), and Conforming Weighted Delaunay Triangulations (ACM Transactions on Graphics 2020). He has earned major awards such as ACM Fellow (2024), SIGGRAPH Academy (2022), ERC Advanced Grant (2022), Eurographics Fellow (2018), Eurographics Outstanding Technical Contributions Award (2014), Engineering Sciences Prize of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (2012), and Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize (2003). Alexa served as Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Graphics (2018–2021), chaired SIGGRAPH Technical Papers (2013), and delivered keynotes at conferences including Pacific Graphics (2008) and Eurographics Symposium on Geometry Processing (2005). He contributes to editorial boards of journals like Computational Visual Media and Computer Aided Geometric Design.