# Nina Amenta

> American computer scientist

**Wikidata**: [Q20630491](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q20630491)  
**Wikipedia**: [English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Amenta)  
**Source**: https://4ort.xyz/entity/nina-amenta

## Summary
Nina Amenta is an American computer scientist and professor at the University of California, Davis. She is known for her work in computational geometry and computer graphics, particularly in surface reconstruction and geometric modeling.

## Biography
- Born: Not specified
- Nationality: United States
- Education: Yale College; University of California, Berkeley
- Known for: Computational geometry, surface reconstruction, geometric modeling
- Employer(s): University of California, Davis (professor since 2004), PARC (1996-1997), University of Texas at Austin
- Field(s): Computer science, computational geometry, computer graphics

## Contributions
Nina Amenta has made significant contributions to computational geometry and computer graphics, particularly in surface reconstruction from point clouds. Her work on the Cocone algorithm for surface reconstruction has become influential in the field, providing a method to reconstruct surfaces from unorganized point sets with guarantees on the quality of the reconstruction. She has published extensively on topics including Voronoi diagrams, Delaunay triangulations, and geometric algorithms. Her research has applications in computer graphics, computer-aided design, and scientific visualization. Amenta has also mentored numerous doctoral students at UC Davis who have gone on to careers in academia and industry.

## FAQs
### Q: What is Nina Amenta known for in computer science?
A: Nina Amenta is known for her work in computational geometry, particularly surface reconstruction algorithms and geometric modeling techniques used in computer graphics and visualization.

### Q: Where does Nina Amenta work?
A: Nina Amenta is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Davis, where she has worked since 2004.

### Q: Has Nina Amenta received any notable awards?
A: Yes, Nina Amenta received the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation.

## Why They Matter
Nina Amenta's work has fundamentally advanced the field of computational geometry by developing practical algorithms for surface reconstruction that bridge theoretical computer science and real-world applications. Her Cocone algorithm and related work have enabled more accurate 3D modeling from scattered data points, which is crucial for applications ranging from medical imaging to computer animation. By mentoring a generation of students who continue this research, she has helped establish computational geometry as a vital area within computer science with broad practical impact.

## Notable For
- Developed influential surface reconstruction algorithms including Cocone
- Received NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award
- Professor at University of California, Davis since 2004
- Supervised over a dozen Ph.D. students in computational geometry
- Published extensively in computational geometry and computer graphics

## Body
### Research Focus
Nina Amenta's research focuses on computational geometry, with particular emphasis on surface reconstruction, geometric algorithms, and their applications in computer graphics. Her work addresses fundamental problems in creating 3D models from point cloud data, which is essential for many modern applications including 3D scanning, medical imaging, and computer-aided design.

### Key Publications
Amenta has published numerous influential papers in computational geometry. Her work on surface reconstruction from unorganized point sets, particularly the Cocone algorithm, has become a standard reference in the field. She has also contributed to the understanding of Voronoi diagrams and Delaunay triangulations in higher dimensions.

### Academic Career
Amenta began her academic career at the University of Texas at Austin, then worked at PARC before joining the faculty at UC Davis in 2004. At Davis, she has built a research group focused on computational geometry and has supervised numerous Ph.D. students who have gone on to academic and industry positions.

### Mentorship
As a doctoral advisor, Amenta has mentored students including Sunghee Choi, Shengyin Gu, Dan Alcantara, Deboshmita Ghosh, and Fatemeh Abbasinejad, all of whom completed their Ph.D.s at UC Davis between 2003 and 2013. Her students have continued research in computational geometry and related fields.

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## References

1. [ORCID Public Data File 2023](https://pub.orcid.org/v3.0/0000-0002-4441-2328/employment/4730594)
2. [Source](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/news/2001/nina-amenta-receives-career-award)
3. Mathematics Genealogy Project
4. [Source](https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~amenta/)