Biography:Stefan Langerman

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Short description: Belgian computer scientist and mathematician
Stefan Langerman
Stefan Langerman Bellairs 2015.jpg
Bellairs, 2015
NationalityBelgian
Education
Scientific career
Institutions
  • Université libre de Bruxelles
  • Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique
Doctoral advisorWilliam Steiger

Stefan Langerman false Swarzberg is a Belgian computer scientist and mathematician whose research topics include computational geometry, data structures, and recreational mathematics. He is professor and co-head of the algorithms research group at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) with Jean Cardinal. He is a director of research for the Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FRS–FNRS)[1][2].

Education and career

Langerman left his Belgian secondary school at age 13 and was admitted by examination to the École polytechnique of the Université libre de Bruxelles. He studied civil engineering there for two years before switching his course of study to computer science, and earning a licenciate.[3]

After working as a user interface programmer for the Center for Digital Molecular Biophysics in Gembloux,[3] he moved to the US for graduate study at Rutgers University, where he earned a master's degree and then in 2001 a PhD. His doctoral dissertation, Algorithms and Data Structures in Computational Geometry, was supervised by William Steiger.[3][4] Next, before joining ULB and FNRS, Langerman worked as a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University[3] with computational geometry researchers Luc Devroye and Godfried Toussaint.

Research

Langerman's research is primarily in computational geometry. Known for novel and often playful results such as "Wrapping the Mozartkugel"[WM] which earned him the moniker of a computational chocolatier,[5][6] Langerman has made a number of scientific advances in fields as diverse as musical similarity,[MMS] polycube unfolding,[CUP] computational archaeology,[WBT] and protein folding.[7] Langerman's work in data structures includes the co-invention of the queap[Q] and the introduction of the notion of retroactive data structures,[RDS] a generalization of the concept of a persistent data structure. He is the author or more than 240 publications,[8] and has led scientific missions with other western scientists to collaborate with colleagues in North Korea.[9]

Family

Langerman is also the founder of Langerman SPRL, a Belgian colored-diamond company based on the collection of Langerman's father Arthur Langerman, a dealer of colored diamonds who is also noted as an author and as a collector of anti-semitic posters.[10] He is the co-author with his father of a paper on Morpion solitaire, written jointly with another father-and-son pair, Martin Demaine and Erik Demaine.[MS] Both Stefan Langerman and his father are members of the Board of Trustees of the Arthur Langerman Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Berlin, which makes its founder’s unique collection of visual antisemitica available for research, educational and exhibition purposes.[11]

Selected publications

CUP. Aloupis, Greg (2011), "Common unfoldings of polyominoes and polycubes", Computational Geometry, Graphs and Applications: 9th International Conference, CUP 2010, Dalian, China, November 3-6, 2010, Revised Selected Papers, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 7033, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 44–54, doi:10.1007/978-3-642-24983-9_5, ISBN 978-3-642-24982-2 
MMS. Aloupis, Greg; Fevens, Thomas; Langerman, Stefan; Matsui, Tomomi; Mesa, Antonio; Nuñez, Yurai; Rappaport, David (September 2006), "Algorithms for computing geometric measures of melodic similarity", Computer Music Journal 30 (3): 67–76, doi:10.1162/comj.2006.30.3.67 
MS. "Morpion solitaire", Theory of Computing Systems 39 (3): 439–453, 2006, doi:10.1007/s00224-005-1240-4, http://martindemaine.org/papers/Morpion_TheoryComputSys/paper.pdf 
Q. "Queaps", Algorithmica 42 (1): 49–56, 2005, doi:10.1007/s00453-004-1139-5 
RDS. "Retroactive data structures", ACM Transactions on Algorithms 3 (2): A13:1–A13:20, 2007, doi:10.1145/1240233.1240236 
WBT. Aloupis, G.; Cardinal, J.; Collette, S. (2006), "Where to build a temple, and where to dig to find one", Proceedings of the 22nd European Workshop on Computational Geometry (EuroCG06) 
WM. "Wrapping the Mozartkugel", Abstracts of the 20th European Workshop on Computational Geometry, 2007 

References

  1. Algorithms Research Group, Université libre de Bruxelles, https://algo.ulb.be, retrieved 2018-09-04 
  2. (in fr) Chercheurs confirmés, National Fund for Scientific Research, http://www.fnrs.be/index.php/financements/mandats/chercheurs-confirmes, retrieved 2018-09-04 
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 (in fr) Researcher profile, Université libre de Bruxelles, https://www.ulb.ac.be/rech/chercheurs/chercheur_21932.html, retrieved 2018-09-07 
  4. Stefan Langerman at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  5. Cipra, Barry Arthur (5 September 2008), "Sweet inspiration", Science 321 (5894): 1282–1283, doi:10.1126/science.321.5894.1282b, PMID 18772406 
  6. Bushwick, Sophie (24 December 2016), "Here's how to wrap a spherical gift, according to scientists", Popular Science, https://www.popsci.com/what-candy-can-teach-us-about-wrapping-perfectly-round-objects 
  7. Wertheim, Margaret (15 February 2005), "Origami as the shape of things to come", The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/15/science/15origami.html 
  8. Template:Dblp
  9. Workshop on Discrete Math and Computational Geometry Given in DPRK, Korean Central News Agency, 2 October 2014, http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2014/201410/news02/20141002-19ee.html ; Int'l Symposium Promotes Cooperation, Korean Central News Agency, 27 August 2015, http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2015/201508/news27/20150827-16ee.html 
  10. About Langerman SPRL, https://www.swarzberg.com/about/, retrieved 2018-09-04 
  11. Board of Trustees, https://arthur-langerman-foundation.org/en/board-of-trustees/, retrieved 2020-11-12 

External links