Jorge Stolfi
Encyclopedia
Jorge Stolfi is a full professor of computer science
at the State University of Campinas, working in computer vision
, image processing
, spline
s and other function approximation
methods, graph theory
, computational geometry
, and several other fields. According to the ISI Web Of Science
, as of 2010 he was the most highly cited computer scientist in Brazil.
Jorge Stolfi was born in Vila Carrão
, a suburb of São Paulo. His parents had immigrated to Brazil from the Veneto
region of Italy
only two years earlier, and so he spoke Venetian
as his first language. He obtained an Engineering degree in Electronics
(1973) and M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics
(1979) from the University of São Paulo
. From 1979 to 1988 he was a student of Leo Guibas at Stanford University
, where he got a Ph.D in Computer Science. He had a CNPq grant from 1979 to 1983, then a research internship at Xerox PARC
until 1985, and also at the DEC
Systems Research Center
(SRC) until 1988. After obtaining his Ph.D. he became a Research Engineer at SRC.
In 1992 he returned to Brazil to take a position at the Computer Science Department of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), which later became the university's Institute of Computing. He was the Institute's chairman from 2004 to 2008.
. Among other results they developed the quad-edge data structure for two-dimensional maps, the kinetic framework for computational geometry. Jorge's Ph.D. dissertation on oriented projective geometry
was later published as a book.From original Stanford Ph.D. dissertation, Primitives for Computational Geometry, available as DEC SRC Research Report 36, published by HP Labs. Accessed 2010-12-28. He also drew dozens of cartoons for the DEC SRC technical reports.
In 1992 Jorge collected and widely disseminated (through the historic DEC gatekeeper ftp archives and Prime Time Freeware) a set of wordlists that later formed the basis of the ispell
resources (later myspell
, currently part of OpenOffice and Mozilla
as hunspell
).
After moving to UNICAMP, Jorge developed affine arithmetic
model for self-validated computation (which he had conceived in 1991), in collaboration with Marcus Andrade, João Comba, and Luiz Figueiredo.
At UNICAMP Jorge also worked with C. Lucchesi and T.Kowaltowski on finite state transducer
technology for spell checking and other natural language processing
tasks. With his student H. Leitão he developed an efficient algorithm for pottery fragment reassembly by multiscale outline matching, and analyzed the density of useful information contained in those outlines. He has also contributed to the study of the Voynich manuscript
.
Since 2001 Jorge has been involved in efforts to raise public and government awareness about the insecurity of Brazilian electronic voting machines, which are of the direct recording electronic (DRE) type and therefore vulnerable to massive and undetectable software-based vote-stealing.
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
at the State University of Campinas, working in computer vision
Computer vision
Computer vision is a field that includes methods for acquiring, processing, analysing, and understanding images and, in general, high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical or symbolic information, e.g., in the forms of decisions...
, image processing
Image processing
In electrical engineering and computer science, image processing is any form of signal processing for which the input is an image, such as a photograph or video frame; the output of image processing may be either an image or, a set of characteristics or parameters related to the image...
, spline
Spline
Spline can refer to:* Spline , a mating feature for rotating elements* Spline , a mathematical function used for interpolation or smoothing* Smoothing spline, a method of smoothing using a spline function...
s and other function approximation
Function approximation
The need for function approximations arises in many branches of applied mathematics, and computer science in particular. In general, a function approximation problem asks us to select a function among a well-defined class that closely matches a target function in a task-specific way.One can...
methods, graph theory
Graph theory
In mathematics and computer science, graph theory is the study of graphs, mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects from a certain collection. A "graph" in this context refers to a collection of vertices or 'nodes' and a collection of edges that connect pairs of...
, computational geometry
Computational geometry
Computational geometry is a branch of computer science devoted to the study of algorithms which can be stated in terms of geometry. Some purely geometrical problems arise out of the study of computational geometric algorithms, and such problems are also considered to be part of computational...
, and several other fields. According to the ISI Web Of Science
Institute for Scientific Information
The Institute for Scientific Information was founded by Eugene Garfield in 1960. It was acquired by Thomson Scientific & Healthcare in 1992, became known as Thomson ISI and now is part of the Healthcare & Science business of the multi-billion dollar Thomson Reuters Corporation.ISI offered...
, as of 2010 he was the most highly cited computer scientist in Brazil.
Jorge Stolfi was born in Vila Carrão
Vila Carrão, São Paulo
Vila Carrão is the historical name of a small residential borough in São Paulo, with 75,000 residents as of 2005. It belongs to the Carrão district and to the Aricanduva sub-prefecture....
, a suburb of São Paulo. His parents had immigrated to Brazil from the Veneto
Veneto
Veneto is one of the 20 regions of Italy. Its population is about 5 million, ranking 5th in Italy.Veneto had been for more than a millennium an independent state, the Republic of Venice, until it was eventually annexed by Italy in 1866 after brief Austrian and French rule...
region of Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
only two years earlier, and so he spoke Venetian
Venetian language
Venetian or Venetan is a Romance language spoken as a native language by over two million people, mostly in the Veneto region of Italy, where of five million inhabitants almost all can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto, in Trentino, Friuli, Venezia...
as his first language. He obtained an Engineering degree in Electronics
Electronics
Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...
(1973) and M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics
Applied mathematics
Applied mathematics is a branch of mathematics that concerns itself with mathematical methods that are typically used in science, engineering, business, and industry. Thus, "applied mathematics" is a mathematical science with specialized knowledge...
(1979) from the University of São Paulo
University of São Paulo
Universidade de São Paulo is a public university in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. It is the largest Brazilian university and one of the country's most prestigious...
. From 1979 to 1988 he was a student of Leo Guibas at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, where he got a Ph.D in Computer Science. He had a CNPq grant from 1979 to 1983, then a research internship at Xerox PARC
Xerox PARC
PARC , formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and co-development company in Palo Alto, California, with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information technology and hardware systems....
until 1985, and also at the DEC
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
Systems Research Center
DEC Systems Research Center
The Systems Research Center was a research laboratory created by Digital Equipment Corporation in 1984, in Palo Alto, California....
(SRC) until 1988. After obtaining his Ph.D. he became a Research Engineer at SRC.
In 1992 he returned to Brazil to take a position at the Computer Science Department of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), which later became the university's Institute of Computing. He was the Institute's chairman from 2004 to 2008.
Research
While at Stanford, Leo Guibas and Jorge worked on the then-new field of computational geometryComputational geometry
Computational geometry is a branch of computer science devoted to the study of algorithms which can be stated in terms of geometry. Some purely geometrical problems arise out of the study of computational geometric algorithms, and such problems are also considered to be part of computational...
. Among other results they developed the quad-edge data structure for two-dimensional maps, the kinetic framework for computational geometry. Jorge's Ph.D. dissertation on oriented projective geometry
Oriented projective geometry
Oriented projective geometry is an oriented version of real projective geometry.Whereas the real projective plane describes the set of all unoriented lines through the origin in R3, the oriented projective plane describes lines with a given orientation...
was later published as a book.From original Stanford Ph.D. dissertation, Primitives for Computational Geometry, available as DEC SRC Research Report 36, published by HP Labs. Accessed 2010-12-28. He also drew dozens of cartoons for the DEC SRC technical reports.
In 1992 Jorge collected and widely disseminated (through the historic DEC gatekeeper ftp archives and Prime Time Freeware) a set of wordlists that later formed the basis of the ispell
Ispell
Ispell is a spelling checker for Unix that supports most Western languages. It offers several interfaces, including a programmatic interface for use by editors such as emacs...
resources (later myspell
MySpell
MySpell was the former spell checker included with OOo Writer of the free OpenOffice.org office suite.Since version 2.0.2 OpenOffice.org has replaced MySpell with Hunspell.-Background:...
, currently part of OpenOffice and Mozilla
Mozilla
Mozilla is a term used in a number of ways in relation to the Mozilla.org project and the Mozilla Foundation, their defunct commercial predecessor Netscape Communications Corporation, and their related application software....
as hunspell
Hunspell
Hunspell is a spell checker and morphological analyzer designed for languages with rich morphology and complex word compounding and character encoding, originally designed for the Hungarian language....
).
After moving to UNICAMP, Jorge developed affine arithmetic
Affine arithmetic
Affine arithmetic is a model for self-validated numerical analysis. In AA, the quantities of interest are represented as affine combinations of certain primitive variables, which stand for sources of uncertainty in the data or approximations made during the computation.Affine arithmetic is meant...
model for self-validated computation (which he had conceived in 1991), in collaboration with Marcus Andrade, João Comba, and Luiz Figueiredo.
At UNICAMP Jorge also worked with C. Lucchesi and T.Kowaltowski on finite state transducer
Finite state transducer
A finite state transducer is a finite state machine with two tapes: an input tape and an output tape. This contrasts with an ordinary finite state automaton , which has a single tape.-Overview:...
technology for spell checking and other natural language processing
Natural language processing
Natural language processing is a field of computer science and linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human languages; it began as a branch of artificial intelligence....
tasks. With his student H. Leitão he developed an efficient algorithm for pottery fragment reassembly by multiscale outline matching, and analyzed the density of useful information contained in those outlines. He has also contributed to the study of the Voynich manuscript
Voynich manuscript
The Voynich manuscript, described as "the world's most mysterious manuscript", is a work which dates to the early 15th century, possibly from northern Italy. It is named after the book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who purchased it in 1912....
.
Since 2001 Jorge has been involved in efforts to raise public and government awareness about the insecurity of Brazilian electronic voting machines, which are of the direct recording electronic (DRE) type and therefore vulnerable to massive and undetectable software-based vote-stealing.