Nicholas Sharp
@nmwsharp.bsky.social
3D geometry researcher: graphics, vision, 3D ML, etc | Senior Research Scientist @NVIDIA | polyscope.run and geometry-central.net | running, hockey, baking, & cheesy sci fi | opinions my own | he/him
personal website: nmwsharp.com
personal website: nmwsharp.com
Just watched a coding agent waste an entire afternoon of experiments because it got the sign convention for the Laplacian backward 😅
This is a convincing geometry processing Turing test --- it's indistinguishable from a human geometer!
This is a convincing geometry processing Turing test --- it's indistinguishable from a human geometer!
September 2, 2026 at 8:15 PM
Just watched a coding agent waste an entire afternoon of experiments because it got the sign convention for the Laplacian backward 😅
This is a convincing geometry processing Turing test --- it's indistinguishable from a human geometer!
This is a convincing geometry processing Turing test --- it's indistinguishable from a human geometer!
Excited to announce: In 2027 I'll join the UW Allen School in Seattle as tenure-track faculty in Computer Science!
My group will advance core geometry processing + 3D AI for visual computing, science, & engineering. I'll be recruiting PhD students in the next cycle!
My group will advance core geometry processing + 3D AI for visual computing, science, & engineering. I'll be recruiting PhD students in the next cycle!
August 18, 2026 at 5:18 PM
Excited to announce: In 2027 I'll join the UW Allen School in Seattle as tenure-track faculty in Computer Science!
My group will advance core geometry processing + 3D AI for visual computing, science, & engineering. I'll be recruiting PhD students in the next cycle!
My group will advance core geometry processing + 3D AI for visual computing, science, & engineering. I'll be recruiting PhD students in the next cycle!
I innately distrust parameters which aren't powers of 2 or 10.
δ=0.65? lr=0.003? Come on, there's clearly some shenanigans at play here.
δ=0.65? lr=0.003? Come on, there's clearly some shenanigans at play here.
August 13, 2026 at 10:56 PM
I innately distrust parameters which aren't powers of 2 or 10.
δ=0.65? lr=0.003? Come on, there's clearly some shenanigans at play here.
δ=0.65? lr=0.003? Come on, there's clearly some shenanigans at play here.
Tomorrow I'll speak at the FPTalks series on floating point and numerical analysis, about robust geometry for neural implicit surfaces (work w/ @_AlecJacobson).
The other talks sound amazing, and I love this area! Check out this great organization.
fptalks.org/talks/fptalk...
The other talks sound amazing, and I love this area! Check out this great organization.
fptalks.org/talks/fptalk...
August 5, 2026 at 8:31 PM
Tomorrow I'll speak at the FPTalks series on floating point and numerical analysis, about robust geometry for neural implicit surfaces (work w/ @_AlecJacobson).
The other talks sound amazing, and I love this area! Check out this great organization.
fptalks.org/talks/fptalk...
The other talks sound amazing, and I love this area! Check out this great organization.
fptalks.org/talks/fptalk...
Have you dug deep into an evolving area of visual computing? Consider submitting to the 2027 EG STARs track!
STARs are survey reports providing insight into the current state of the art and future directions. They're impactful and highly-cited!
eg2027.isti.cnr.it/call-for-sta...
STARs are survey reports providing insight into the current state of the art and future directions. They're impactful and highly-cited!
eg2027.isti.cnr.it/call-for-sta...
July 30, 2026 at 9:36 PM
Have you dug deep into an evolving area of visual computing? Consider submitting to the 2027 EG STARs track!
STARs are survey reports providing insight into the current state of the art and future directions. They're impactful and highly-cited!
eg2027.isti.cnr.it/call-for-sta...
STARs are survey reports providing insight into the current state of the art and future directions. They're impactful and highly-cited!
eg2027.isti.cnr.it/call-for-sta...
Reposted by Nicholas Sharp
Next week at #SIGGRAPH 2026, we'll present "Locality-Aware Automatic Differentiation on the GPU for Mesh-Based Computations," with Rahul Goel, Jonathan Ragan-Kelley, and @justinmsolomon.bsky.social .
Talk: Mon., July 20, 2:50 PM, Room 403-B
Paper: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
More below (1/7):
Talk: Mon., July 20, 2:50 PM, Room 403-B
Paper: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
More below (1/7):
July 14, 2026 at 3:41 PM
Next week at #SIGGRAPH 2026, we'll present "Locality-Aware Automatic Differentiation on the GPU for Mesh-Based Computations," with Rahul Goel, Jonathan Ragan-Kelley, and @justinmsolomon.bsky.social .
Talk: Mon., July 20, 2:50 PM, Room 403-B
Paper: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
More below (1/7):
Talk: Mon., July 20, 2:50 PM, Room 403-B
Paper: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
More below (1/7):
Reposted by Nicholas Sharp
📣 LOGML'26 Speaker Series
🎤 Nicholas Sharp @nmwsharp.bsky.social (NVIDIA)
Researcher in geometry processing, computer graphics/vision & 3D ML — building methods for geometric computing.
📍 Imperial College London
📅 13–17 July 2026
Website: 🔗 www.logml.ai/
#LOGML #Summerschool #MachineLearning
🎤 Nicholas Sharp @nmwsharp.bsky.social (NVIDIA)
Researcher in geometry processing, computer graphics/vision & 3D ML — building methods for geometric computing.
📍 Imperial College London
📅 13–17 July 2026
Website: 🔗 www.logml.ai/
#LOGML #Summerschool #MachineLearning
May 15, 2026 at 3:08 AM
📣 LOGML'26 Speaker Series
🎤 Nicholas Sharp @nmwsharp.bsky.social (NVIDIA)
Researcher in geometry processing, computer graphics/vision & 3D ML — building methods for geometric computing.
📍 Imperial College London
📅 13–17 July 2026
Website: 🔗 www.logml.ai/
#LOGML #Summerschool #MachineLearning
🎤 Nicholas Sharp @nmwsharp.bsky.social (NVIDIA)
Researcher in geometry processing, computer graphics/vision & 3D ML — building methods for geometric computing.
📍 Imperial College London
📅 13–17 July 2026
Website: 🔗 www.logml.ai/
#LOGML #Summerschool #MachineLearning
Check out our Lyra2.0 for generating virtual worlds!
The key is combining representations---the generative prior is a video model, but we leverage explicit 3D to scale to large scenes and support physical interaction.
Huge kudos to Tianchang+Xuanchi who led it.
research.nvidia.com/labs/sil/pro...
The key is combining representations---the generative prior is a video model, but we leverage explicit 3D to scale to large scenes and support physical interaction.
Huge kudos to Tianchang+Xuanchi who led it.
research.nvidia.com/labs/sil/pro...
April 15, 2026 at 5:15 PM
Check out our Lyra2.0 for generating virtual worlds!
The key is combining representations---the generative prior is a video model, but we leverage explicit 3D to scale to large scenes and support physical interaction.
Huge kudos to Tianchang+Xuanchi who led it.
research.nvidia.com/labs/sil/pro...
The key is combining representations---the generative prior is a video model, but we leverage explicit 3D to scale to large scenes and support physical interaction.
Huge kudos to Tianchang+Xuanchi who led it.
research.nvidia.com/labs/sil/pro...
Reposted by Nicholas Sharp
Our Rising Stars 2026 application campaign is currently open so we thought we would share some updates about our past rising stars 🌟 follow us in the next couple weeks to read more!
Learn more about the program and apply >> www.wigraph.org/events/2026-...
Learn more about the program and apply >> www.wigraph.org/events/2026-...
Call for Rising Stars Applications
The Rising Stars in Computer Graphics program is designed to bring new perspectives to computer graphics research. This is a two-year program that will be co-located with SIGGRAPH 2026 and SIGGRAPH 20...
www.wigraph.org
March 11, 2026 at 5:41 PM
Our Rising Stars 2026 application campaign is currently open so we thought we would share some updates about our past rising stars 🌟 follow us in the next couple weeks to read more!
Learn more about the program and apply >> www.wigraph.org/events/2026-...
Learn more about the program and apply >> www.wigraph.org/events/2026-...
Computing a convex decomposition of a shape is a classically-hard geometry problem, yet essential for fast physics simulators.
Yuezhi found a way to accelerate it by training a large model!
Yuezhi found a way to accelerate it by training a large model!
Excited to share our new work at CVPR 2026: Learning Convex Decomposition via Feature Fields.
We introduce the first feedforward openworld model that generates high-quality convex decompositions for any 3D shapes in seconds, enabling faster simulation.
Project: research.nvidia.com/labs/sil/pro...
We introduce the first feedforward openworld model that generates high-quality convex decompositions for any 3D shapes in seconds, enabling faster simulation.
Project: research.nvidia.com/labs/sil/pro...
March 11, 2026 at 3:41 AM
Computing a convex decomposition of a shape is a classically-hard geometry problem, yet essential for fast physics simulators.
Yuezhi found a way to accelerate it by training a large model!
Yuezhi found a way to accelerate it by training a large model!
Reposted by Nicholas Sharp
My PhD student Abhishek Madan is getting ready to graduate and he’s looking for a postdoc or industry position. Checkout his website www.dgp.toronto.edu/~amadan/
He’s been an amazing student , basically does all his research by himself. Fantastic math and implementation acumen.
He’s been an amazing student , basically does all his research by himself. Fantastic math and implementation acumen.
Abhishek Madan
www.dgp.toronto.edu
January 29, 2026 at 3:33 PM
My PhD student Abhishek Madan is getting ready to graduate and he’s looking for a postdoc or industry position. Checkout his website www.dgp.toronto.edu/~amadan/
He’s been an amazing student , basically does all his research by himself. Fantastic math and implementation acumen.
He’s been an amazing student , basically does all his research by himself. Fantastic math and implementation acumen.
Reposted by Nicholas Sharp
📢want to create realistic dynamic 3D worlds (>100 splats)?
my NVIDIA internship project, VoMP, is the first feed-forward approach turning surface geometry into volumetric sim-ready assets with real-world materials.
🌐Project: research.nvidia.com/labs/sil/pro...
📜Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2510.22975
my NVIDIA internship project, VoMP, is the first feed-forward approach turning surface geometry into volumetric sim-ready assets with real-world materials.
🌐Project: research.nvidia.com/labs/sil/pro...
📜Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2510.22975
October 30, 2025 at 4:23 PM
📢want to create realistic dynamic 3D worlds (>100 splats)?
my NVIDIA internship project, VoMP, is the first feed-forward approach turning surface geometry into volumetric sim-ready assets with real-world materials.
🌐Project: research.nvidia.com/labs/sil/pro...
📜Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2510.22975
my NVIDIA internship project, VoMP, is the first feed-forward approach turning surface geometry into volumetric sim-ready assets with real-world materials.
🌐Project: research.nvidia.com/labs/sil/pro...
📜Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2510.22975
The Spatial Intelligence Lab at NVIDIA (research.nvidia.com/labs/sil/) is looking for 2026 research interns! We do all kinds of cool work across graphics/vision, geometry, physics, & ML. Now is the time to apply & reach out!
nvidia.eightfold.ai/careers/job/... (not limited to Canada-only)
nvidia.eightfold.ai/careers/job/... (not limited to Canada-only)
NVIDIA Spatial Intelligence Lab (SIL)
Advancing foundational technologies enabling AI systems to perceive, model, and interact with the physical world.
research.nvidia.com
October 15, 2025 at 3:49 PM
The Spatial Intelligence Lab at NVIDIA (research.nvidia.com/labs/sil/) is looking for 2026 research interns! We do all kinds of cool work across graphics/vision, geometry, physics, & ML. Now is the time to apply & reach out!
nvidia.eightfold.ai/careers/job/... (not limited to Canada-only)
nvidia.eightfold.ai/careers/job/... (not limited to Canada-only)
Reposted by Nicholas Sharp
Code is now out! Try it for yourself here: github.com/abhimadan/st...
July 30, 2025 at 9:42 PM
Code is now out! Try it for yourself here: github.com/abhimadan/st...
Also: this paper was recognized with a best paper award at SGP! Huge thanks to the organizers & congrats to the other awardees.
I was super lucky to work with Yousuf on this one, he's truly the mastermind behind it all!
I was super lucky to work with Yousuf on this one, he's truly the mastermind behind it all!
Logarithmic maps are incredibly useful for algorithms on surfaces--they're local 2D coordinates centered at a given source.
Yousuf Soliman and I found a better way to compute log maps w/ fast short-time heat flow in "The Affine Heat Method" presented @ SGP2025 today! 🧵
Yousuf Soliman and I found a better way to compute log maps w/ fast short-time heat flow in "The Affine Heat Method" presented @ SGP2025 today! 🧵
July 4, 2025 at 3:52 PM
Also: this paper was recognized with a best paper award at SGP! Huge thanks to the organizers & congrats to the other awardees.
I was super lucky to work with Yousuf on this one, he's truly the mastermind behind it all!
I was super lucky to work with Yousuf on this one, he's truly the mastermind behind it all!
Logarithmic maps are incredibly useful for algorithms on surfaces--they're local 2D coordinates centered at a given source.
Yousuf Soliman and I found a better way to compute log maps w/ fast short-time heat flow in "The Affine Heat Method" presented @ SGP2025 today! 🧵
Yousuf Soliman and I found a better way to compute log maps w/ fast short-time heat flow in "The Affine Heat Method" presented @ SGP2025 today! 🧵
July 2, 2025 at 6:23 AM
Logarithmic maps are incredibly useful for algorithms on surfaces--they're local 2D coordinates centered at a given source.
Yousuf Soliman and I found a better way to compute log maps w/ fast short-time heat flow in "The Affine Heat Method" presented @ SGP2025 today! 🧵
Yousuf Soliman and I found a better way to compute log maps w/ fast short-time heat flow in "The Affine Heat Method" presented @ SGP2025 today! 🧵
Reposted by Nicholas Sharp
Holding SIGGRAPH Asia 2026 in Malaysia is a slap in the face to the rights of LGBTQ+ people. Especially now, when underrepresented people need as much support as we can possibly give them ! Angry like me ? Sign this open letter to let them know. 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Open Letter to the SIGGRAPH Leadership
RE: Call for SIGGRAPH Asia to relocate from Malaysia and commit to a venue selection process that safeguards LGBTQ+ and other at-risk communities. To the SIGGRAPH Leadership: SIGGRAPH Executive Commit...
docs.google.com
June 18, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Holding SIGGRAPH Asia 2026 in Malaysia is a slap in the face to the rights of LGBTQ+ people. Especially now, when underrepresented people need as much support as we can possibly give them ! Angry like me ? Sign this open letter to let them know. 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Sampling points on an implicit surface is surprisingly tricky, but we know how to cast rays against implicit surfaces! There's a classic relationship between line-intersections and surface-sampling, which turns out to be quite useful for geometry processing.
Our #SGP25 work studies a simple and effective way to uniformly sample implicit surfaces by casting rays. (1/9)
“Uniform Sampling of Surfaces by Casting Rays” w/ @abhishekmadan.bsky.social @nmwsharp.bsky.social and Alec Jacobson
“Uniform Sampling of Surfaces by Casting Rays” w/ @abhishekmadan.bsky.social @nmwsharp.bsky.social and Alec Jacobson
June 10, 2025 at 6:01 PM
Sampling points on an implicit surface is surprisingly tricky, but we know how to cast rays against implicit surfaces! There's a classic relationship between line-intersections and surface-sampling, which turns out to be quite useful for geometry processing.
Reposted by Nicholas Sharp
My child’s doll and tools I captured as 3D Gaussians, turned digital with collisions and dynamics. We are getting closer to bridging the gap between the world we can touch and digital 3D. Experience the bleeding edge at #NVIDIA Kaolin hands-on lab, #CVPR2025! Wed, 8-noon. tinyurl.com/nv-kaolin-cv...
June 6, 2025 at 3:05 PM
My child’s doll and tools I captured as 3D Gaussians, turned digital with collisions and dynamics. We are getting closer to bridging the gap between the world we can touch and digital 3D. Experience the bleeding edge at #NVIDIA Kaolin hands-on lab, #CVPR2025! Wed, 8-noon. tinyurl.com/nv-kaolin-cv...
Check out Abhishek's research!
I was honestly surprised by this result: classic Barnes-Hut already builds a good spatial hierarchy for approximating kernel summations, but you can do even better by adding some stochastic sampling, for significant speedups on the GPU @ matching average error.
I was honestly surprised by this result: classic Barnes-Hut already builds a good spatial hierarchy for approximating kernel summations, but you can do even better by adding some stochastic sampling, for significant speedups on the GPU @ matching average error.
At SIGGRAPH 2025, we’ll be presenting the paper “Stochastic Barnes-Hut Approximation for Fast Summation on the GPU”. By injecting a bit of randomization into the classic yet deterministic Barnes-Hut approximation for fast kernel summation, we can achieve nearly 10x speedups on the GPU!
June 5, 2025 at 9:58 PM
Check out Abhishek's research!
I was honestly surprised by this result: classic Barnes-Hut already builds a good spatial hierarchy for approximating kernel summations, but you can do even better by adding some stochastic sampling, for significant speedups on the GPU @ matching average error.
I was honestly surprised by this result: classic Barnes-Hut already builds a good spatial hierarchy for approximating kernel summations, but you can do even better by adding some stochastic sampling, for significant speedups on the GPU @ matching average error.
Selena's #Siggraph25 work found a simple, nearly one-line change that greatly eases neural field optimization for a wide variety of existing representations.
“Stochastic Preconditioning for Neural Field Optimization” by Selena Ling, Merlin Nimier-David, Alec Jacobson, & me.
“Stochastic Preconditioning for Neural Field Optimization” by Selena Ling, Merlin Nimier-David, Alec Jacobson, & me.
June 3, 2025 at 12:43 AM
Selena's #Siggraph25 work found a simple, nearly one-line change that greatly eases neural field optimization for a wide variety of existing representations.
“Stochastic Preconditioning for Neural Field Optimization” by Selena Ling, Merlin Nimier-David, Alec Jacobson, & me.
“Stochastic Preconditioning for Neural Field Optimization” by Selena Ling, Merlin Nimier-David, Alec Jacobson, & me.
Reposted by Nicholas Sharp
Fun new paper at #SIGGRAPH2025:
What if instead of two 6-sided dice, you could roll a single "funky-shaped" die that gives the same statistics (e.g, 7 is twice as likely as 4 or 10).
Or make fair dice in any shape—e.g., dragons rather than cubes?
That's exactly what we do! 1/n
What if instead of two 6-sided dice, you could roll a single "funky-shaped" die that gives the same statistics (e.g, 7 is twice as likely as 4 or 10).
Or make fair dice in any shape—e.g., dragons rather than cubes?
That's exactly what we do! 1/n
May 21, 2025 at 4:29 PM
Fun new paper at #SIGGRAPH2025:
What if instead of two 6-sided dice, you could roll a single "funky-shaped" die that gives the same statistics (e.g, 7 is twice as likely as 4 or 10).
Or make fair dice in any shape—e.g., dragons rather than cubes?
That's exactly what we do! 1/n
What if instead of two 6-sided dice, you could roll a single "funky-shaped" die that gives the same statistics (e.g, 7 is twice as likely as 4 or 10).
Or make fair dice in any shape—e.g., dragons rather than cubes?
That's exactly what we do! 1/n
The Symposium on Geometry Processing is an amazing venue for geometry research: meshes, point clouds, neural fields, 3D ML, etc. Reviews are quick and high-quality.
The deadline is in ~10 days. Consider submitting your work, I'm planning to submit!
sgp2025.my.canva.site/submit-page-...
The deadline is in ~10 days. Consider submitting your work, I'm planning to submit!
sgp2025.my.canva.site/submit-page-...
SGP 2025 - Submit page
sgp2025.my.canva.site
April 1, 2025 at 6:42 PM
The Symposium on Geometry Processing is an amazing venue for geometry research: meshes, point clouds, neural fields, 3D ML, etc. Reviews are quick and high-quality.
The deadline is in ~10 days. Consider submitting your work, I'm planning to submit!
sgp2025.my.canva.site/submit-page-...
The deadline is in ~10 days. Consider submitting your work, I'm planning to submit!
sgp2025.my.canva.site/submit-page-...
Hi BlueSky! I'm trying to get back to a "write" relationship with social media after hiding from it for a while.
I like geometry research, useful code, pierogies [sic], triangles, outdoorsy life, etc. I mainly post about research/software, but glad to chat about anything.
I like geometry research, useful code, pierogies [sic], triangles, outdoorsy life, etc. I mainly post about research/software, but glad to chat about anything.
March 19, 2025 at 11:35 PM
Hi BlueSky! I'm trying to get back to a "write" relationship with social media after hiding from it for a while.
I like geometry research, useful code, pierogies [sic], triangles, outdoorsy life, etc. I mainly post about research/software, but glad to chat about anything.
I like geometry research, useful code, pierogies [sic], triangles, outdoorsy life, etc. I mainly post about research/software, but glad to chat about anything.