Jonathan Shewchuk

Jonathan Richard Shewchuk is a Professor in Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

He obtained his B.S. in Physics and Computing Science from Simon Fraser University in 1990, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, the latter in 1997.

He conducts research in scientific computing, computational geometry (especially mesh generation, numerical robustness, and surface reconstruction), numerical methods, and physically based animation.

He is also the author of Three Sins of Authors In Computer Science And Math.

In 2003 he was awarded J. H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software for writing the Triangle software package which computes high-quality unstructured triangular meshes.

He appears in online course videos of CS 61B: Data Structures class in University of California, Berkeley.

Controversies
In March 2024, Shewchuk came under criticism for making comments in response to a post made by a student on EdStem, an educational communication platform, asking for advice about his struggles dating, that was reported to the University by some who thought the comment was misogynistic. He stated "If you want a girlfriend, get out of the Bay Area. Almost everywhere else on the planet is better for that. I'm not kidding at all. You’ll be shocked by the stark differences in behavior of women in places where women are plentiful versus their behavior within artillery distance of San Jose and San Francisco."

This statement was met with widespread condemnation by UC Berkeley faculty. Berkeley spokesperson Roqua Montez stated that comments was threatening and hurtful to students, especially women, and went against UC Berkeley's values. EECS Chair Claire Tomlin issued an apology on behalf of her department. Shewchuk issued an apology on the same platform, stating that he did not intend to disrespect women and only intended to help a student.