Bruno Levy's home page

Latest news

08/11-16/2024: BIRS Workshop Optimal Transport and Dynamics (Oaxaca)
04/15/2024: Congratulation to Charles Dapogny for his habilitation defense ! Happy to be on the committee.
04/12/2024: Our article on Monge-Ampère gravity with Yann Brenier and Roya Mohayaee is out on arXiv
04/12/2024: Je participe au Printemps des Mathématiques , Lycéee Rosa-Parks, Thionville. Le livret d'activités, avec entre autres ma petite histoire pour apprendre a penser en 4D!
03/22/2024: Mon article dans Binaire (blog du journal "Le Monde") s'il te plait, dessine moi la puce du futur pour l'IA , sur les FPGAs
03/18/2024: Our new article on Displacement Field Analysis via Optimal Transport available on arXiv.
02/20/2024: Invited talk on Fluids and Galaxies IRMA PDE seminar, Strasbourg
02/09/2024: My paper on Risc-V in Blog Binaire (Le Monde)
02/08/2024: Happy and proud to be the scientific Director of the new Inria Quadrant program, that accompanies disruptive and dissident research projects
02/01/2024: Invited talk on Lagrangian free-surface fluid simulation Demi-journée du pole calcul du LIS
01/19/2024: Participation aux Nuits de la lecture, Et si on lisait des mathématiques ? Organisé par Les Maths en Scène
12/14/2023: invited talk. Cycle Sciences et Société: La cosmologie, au carrefour de la physique, des mathématiques et de la physique.
12/12/2023: café LoOPS: a chacun son processeur maison (adventures with FPGAs), IJCLab
~~11/6-10/2023: invited talk at CAMS/PIMS mini-school on optimal transport.~~ (postponed)
10/9-11/2023: invited talk at Tetrahedron VII.
10/5/2023: New article accepted by Physical Review D preprint
10/5/2023: Working at Institut d'Astrophysiques de Paris with R. Mohayaee, H. Orland, P. Koehl, J. Fedy
10/2-5/2023: MATHIAS Days (applied maths and AI)
10/01/2023: Joining the ParMA project-team, INRIA Saclay and Laboratoire de Mathématiques d'Orsay
09/15/2023: Nominated member of the Inria Evaluation Committee
09/12-15/2023: RING meeting , presenting two articles (one on flow simulation, and one on mesh intersection with my friends Wan-Chiu Li and Cedric Borgese from the Tessael company).
08/06/2023: SIGGRAPH 2023 , celebrating 50 years of SIGGRAPH, list of seminal graphics papers volume II (1998-2023), our article Least Squares Conformal Maps (2002) is in the list ! Articles on Inria website about this story: [English] [French]
older news archive

Short Bio

I was born the 14th of May 1972. I defended my Ph.D. in 1999 on computational topology, combinatorics and embedding, directed by Jean-Laurent Mallet. I was awarded the SPECIF prize (now known as Gilles Kahn / Acad. Sci. prize) of the best French Ph.D. thesis in CS, then I did a post-doc in Stanford in 2000. I was hired by Inria in 2000 as a junior researcher. In 2004, I created the ALICE team (it became an Inria project in 2006) [Archives ALICE 2006-2018]. I obtained an ERC Starting Grant (GOODSHAPE) in 2008, and an ERC Proof of Concept Grant (VORPALINE) in 2013. I was promoted research director in 2008, 1st class research director (DR1) in 2012 and exceptional class (DR0) in 2021. I was awarded the Inria Young Researcher Award in 2011. In 2019, two new Inria teams stemmed from my previous team ALICE: MFX on compter aided fabrication, and PIXEL on geometry processing.
From Nov. 2018 to Dec. 2022, I was the director of the Inria Nancy Grand-Est research center (450 people, 20 teams, 17 in Nancy, 3 in Strasbourg).

Research

My initial topic is Geometry Processing. From 1998 to 2006, I focused on the problem of mesh parameterization, and invented several algorithms (one of them, LSCM, was selected in Seminal Graphics Papers: pushing the boundaries, the book published for the 50 years of the ACM SIGGRAPH conference). Then I contributed to two start-up creations, for transferring my results in 3d gridding (Paradigm/Earth Decision Sciences) and visualization (Scalable Graphics)

From 2006 to 2019, I focused on some numerical problems in Scientific Computing. I contributed to lay spectral geometry processing fundamentals and made it practical with the first algorithm that computes a Fourier-like basis for surface meshes (manifold harmonics). I also established the regularity of Lloyd's energy and proposed a Newton solver for quantization, generalized it to propose the first automatic algorithm for hex-dominant meshing (Lp-CVT) and finally the first solver for 3D semi-discrete optimal transport. Most of my research results are available in my GEOGRAM and GRAPHITE Open-Source softwares. The main results of my two ERC projects on meshing and sampling are transferred to Tessael, a start-up we have created.

Now (2020,...) I am mainly working on computational methods for cosmology (Physical Review Letters, 2022 and 2023) and fluid dynamics (Journal of Computational Physics, 2022). I'm also interested in novel hardware architectures.

Selected Publications

Physics and Optimal transport

Monge-Ampère gravity: from the large deviation principle to cosmological simulations through optimal transport, Bruno Lévy, Yann Brenier, Roya Mohayaee, 04/2024
Displacement Field Analysis via Optimal Transport: Multi-Tracer Approach to Cosmological Reconstruction , Farnik Nikakhtar, Ravi K. Sheth, Nikhil Padmanabhan, Bruno Lévy, Roya Mohayaee, 03/2024
Optimal Transport Reconstruction of Biased Tracers in Redshift Space , Farnik Nikakhtar, Nikhil Padmanabhan, Bruno Lévy, Ravi K. Sheth, Roya Mohayaee, 09/2023, Physical Review D
Optimal Transport Reconstruction of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations, Farnik Nikakhtar, Ravi K. Sheth, Bruno Lévy and Roya Mohayaee, 2022, Physical Review Letters
Accurate Baryon Acoustic Oscillations reconstruction via semi-discrete optimal transport, Sebastian von Hausegger, B. Lévy and Roya Mohayaee, 2022, Physical Review Letters
Partial Optimal Transport for a Constant-Volume Lagrangian Mesh with Free Boundaries, B. Lévy, 2022, Journal of Computational Physics. [Videos]
A fast semi-discrete optimal transport algorithm for a unique reconstruction of the early Universe , B. Lévy, Roya Mohayaee and Sebastian von Hausegger, 2021, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomy Society [arXiv] ,
Notions of optimal transport theory and how to implement them on a computer, B. Lévy and E. Schwindt, 2018, Computer and Graphics J.
Centroidal Power Diagrams, S. Xin, B. Lévy, Z. Chen, L. Chu, Y. Yue, W. Wang , 2016, ACM Trans. on Graphics (SIGGRAPH ASIA)
A numerical algorithm for L2 optimal transport, B. Lévy, 2015, ESAIM Math. Modeling and Analysis (previous version on arXiv)

Sampling and meshing

Restricted Power Diagrams on the GPU , J. Basselin, L. Alonso, N. Ray, D. Sokolov, S. Lefebvre and B. Lévy, 2021, Computer Graphics Forum (Eurographics conf. proc.)
Meshless Voronoi on the GPU, N. Ray, D. Sokolov, S. Lefebvre and B. Lévy, 2018, ACM Transactions on Graphics (SIGASIA conf. proc.)
Computing a high-dimensional euclidean embedding , Z. Zhong, W. Wang, Bruno Lévy, J. Hua, X. Guo, 2018, ACM Trans. on Graphics (SIGGRAPH)
Surface reconstruction by computing restricted Voronoi cells in parallel, D. Boltcheva and B. Lévy, 2017, Computer-Aided design
Anisotropic and feature sensitive triangular remeshing, V. Nivoliers, B. Lévy and C. Geuzaine, 2015, J. of Computational and Applied Math
Revisiting Optimal Delaunay Triangulation, Z. Chen, W. Wang, B. Lévy, L. Liu and F. Sun, 2014, SIAM J. on Sci. Computing
Particle-Based Anisotropic Surface Meshing, Z. Zhong, X. Guo, W. Wang, B. Lévy, F. Sun, Y. Liu and W. Mao, 2013, ACM Trans. on Graphics (SIGGRAPH)
On Centroidal Voronoi Diagrams Y. Liu, W. Wang, B. Lévy, F. Sun, D.-M. Yan, L. Lu and C. Yang, 2009, ACM Trans. on Graphics
Voronoi Parallel Linear Enumeration, B. Lévy and N. Bonneel, 2012, Int. Meshing Roundatble

Hexahedral meshing

Hex-dominant meshing: mind the gap, N. Ray, D. Sokolov, M. Reberol, F. Ledoux, B. Lévy, 2018, Computer-Aided Design
Hexahedral-dominant meshing, D. Sokolov, N. Ray, L. Untereiner, B. Lévy, 2016, ACM Trans. on Graphics
Practical Frame Field Generation, D. Sokolov, N. Ray, B. Lévy, 2016, ACM Trans. on Graphics (SIGGRAPH ASIA)
Dihedral Angle Maps, G.-P. Paillé, N. Ray, P. Poulin, A. Sheffer and B. Lévy, 2015, ACM Trans. on Graphics (SIGGRAPH)
Voronoi Squared Distance Minimization, V. Nivoliers, D.-M. Yan and B. Lévy, 2011, Intl. Meshing Roundtable
Lp centroidal Voronoi Tessellation, B. Lévy and Y. Liu, 2010, ACM Trans. on Graphics (SIGGRAPH) [Recorded talk]
Geometry-aware direction field processing, N. Ray, B. Vallet, L. Alonso and B. Lévy, 2009, ACM Trans. on Graphics
N-Symmetry Direction Field Design, 2008, N. Ray, B. Vallet, W.-C. Liu and B. Lévy, 2008, ACM Trans. on Graphics

Theses

Topologie algorithmique: combinatoire et plongement, B. Lévy, Ph.D. thesis, Oct. 1999, INPL, SPECIF national prize
Géométrie numérique, B. Lévy, Feb. 2008, HdR (habilitation thesis), INPL [English version]

Numerics

A one point integration rule over star convex polytopes, A. Francis, S. Natarajan, E. Atroshchenko, B. Lévy, S. Bordas,
Computers and Structures J, 215, pp 43-64, 2019
Computing the Distance between Two Finite Element Solutions, M. Reberol and B. Lévy, 2018, SIAM J. Sci Computing
The Predicate Construction Kit, B. Lévy, 2015, Computer Aided Design J. (invited talk at IMR 2014)
Spectral Geometry Processing with Manifold Harmonics , B. Vallet and B. Lévy, 2007, Eurographics
Laplace-Beltrami Eigenfunctions, towards an algorithm that "understands" geometry, 2006, Shape Modeling Intl. (invited talk)

Mesh Parameterization (1998-2006)

Periodic Global Parameterization, N. Ray, W.-C. Li, B. Lévy, A. Sheffer and P. Alliez, 2006, ACM Trans. on Graphics
Fast Angle Based Flattening, A. Sheffer, B. Lévy, M. Mogilnitsky and A. Bogomyakov, 2004, ACM Trans. on Graphics
Anisotropic Polygonal Remeshing, P. Alliez, D. Cohen-Steiner, O. Devillers, B. Lévy and M. Desbrun, 2003, (SIGGRAPH)
Dual Domain Extrapolation, B. Lévy, 2003, ACM Trans. on Graphics (SIGGRAPH)
Least Squares Conformal Maps, B. Lévy, S. Petitjean, N. Ray and J. Maillot, 2002, ACM Trans. on Graphics (SIGGRAPH)
Constrained Texture Mapping, B. Lévy, 2001, ACM Trans. on Graphics (SIGGRAPH)
Non-distorted Texture Mapping, B. Lévy and J.-L. Mallet, 1998, ACM SIGGRAPH

My publications on [ORCID] [Inspire HEP] [google scholar] [DBLP]

Alumni

Pierre Boldrini
Sebastian
von Hausegger

Boards of Trustees, Committees

Inria evaluation committee
Jury Prix Inria-Académie des Sciences 2023
Jury d'admission DR Inria 2023
Jury IUF Junior 2023
Jury IUF Senior 2022
Jury IUF Junior 2021
Jury Eurographics Ph.D. award 2022
Jury IGRV Ph.D. award 2022, 2023

Software

GEOGRAM, a library of geometric algorithms.
in-browser demos (using WASM/Emscripten)
GRAPHITE, a 3D modeler (uses GEOGRAM)
OpenNL, sparse linear solver.
CGAL packages: [Parameterization] [Solvers]

Selected Recorded Talks and Slides

SGP 2023 course on geo. processing [Slides]
fête de la science 2020 - Big-bang numéque
SGP 2018 course on optimal transport [Slides]
Mai 2018 - JT France 3 Lorraine
Eurographics 2017 keynote [Slides]
Decembre 2015 - Science et société [Slides]
Juin 2015 - JT France 3 Lorraine
BIRS workshop 2015
Institut Fourier 2015 [Slides]

Images and Animations

Fluid simulation gallery
Taylor-Rayleigh instability [3D] [on sphere]

Editorial activities and conferences

2014-18 The Visual Computer, Associate Editor
2014-18 GMOD, Associate Editor
2014-18 ACM Transactions on Graphics, Associate Editor
program co-chair of Computer Graphics Intl 2018
conference co-chair of WSOM 2017
conference co-chair of GMP 2016
2010-15: IEEE TVCG - Associate Editor
program co-chair of Eurographics 2014
conference co-chair of CAD Graph. 2013
program co-chair of Pacific Graph. 2013
program co-chair of ACM/EG SGP 2010
program co-chair of ACM SPM 2008
program co-chair of ACM SPM 2007

Program Commitees 2010-2017

2017: EG
2016: SGP, PG, SMI
2015: SIGGRAPH, SGP, GDSPM, CAD Graph.
2014: SGP
2013: SIGGRAPH, EG, SGP, DGCI, CGI
2012: SIGGRAPH, EG, SPM, SMI, SGP, PG, GMP, DGCI
2011: GPM, SMI, NORDIA, PG, SIBGRAPI
2010: SMI, SPM, GMP, NORDIA

Bruno Lévy's homepage