Mirela Ben-Chen
Senior Fellow 2026–2027

Mirela Ben-Chen is a professor in the Computer Science Department at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, where she is a member of the Center for Graphics and Geometric Computing. After receiving her PhD from the Technion and completing a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University, she joined the Technion faculty in 2012. She has won an ERC Starting Grant and multiple best paper awards.

Mirela is interested in modeling and understanding the geometry of shapes. She uses mathematical tools such as discrete differential geometry, numerical optimization, and harmonic analysis for applications including animation, fluid simulation on surfaces, and computational fabrication. One example of a problem in this domain is shape correspondence: given two human shapes, how can one design an algorithm that finds corresponding points on them, represents the "human shape" computationally, or identifies semantically "meaningful" feature points? Such correspondences are useful, for example, in animation, where they can help transfer motion from one shape to another. Another example is shape "realization"—that is, translating a digital design into a physical structure. In computational fabrication and architecture, this can mean taking a digital shape, such as the façade of a building, and decomposing it into smaller parts so that it can be fabricated and assembled.