2016.09.28(Wed) ‘Tilings and unfoldings’ – Stefan Langerman(University of Liver de Bruxelles)

2016-08-19
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-TitileTilings and unfoldings

-Biograpy : Stefan Langerman obtained his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 2001.

In 2002 he joined the Computer Science Department at the Université

Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Belgium where he is currently Associate

Professor and Research Director for the F.R.S.-FNRS. His main research

interests are in Discrete and Computational Geometry, Algorithms and

Data Structures.


-Abstract:A tiling is a covering of the plane with copies of a geometric shape

(tiles) without gaps or overlaps.

An unfolding is obtained by cutting along the surface of a polyhedron

through all its vertices, and opening all the dihedral angles between adjacent

faces to obtain a single flat non-overlapping geometric shape.

In this hands-on talk, I will explore connections between these two

fascinating concepts, in an attempt to shed some light on the following

still unsolved algorithmic problem:

How easy (or hard) is it to determine if a given geometric shape can

tile the plane?

and the following more artistic and no less fundamental problem:

How to create beautiful (or even ugly) tilings?

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