Jeff Erickson

For More Information

• Jeff's web site

Education

• Ph.D., Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley, July 1996
• M.S., Information and Computer Science, University of California, Irvine, June 1992
• B.A., Computer Science and Mathematical Sciences (double major), Rice University, May 1987

Biography

I have been a faculty member at Illinois since 1998 and a full professor since 2010; I was named a Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Professor in 2020. I have published over 100 technical papers in computational geometry, computational topology, graph algorithms, and related topics at the intersection of computer science and mathematics. Among many other conference committee memberships, I was the chair of the community-elected steering committee for the International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SOCG) from 2013 to 2016, and I am currently a SafeTOC (anti-harassment) advocate for SOCG and for the ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA). Most of my more recent research efforts focus on computer science education.

I primarily teach large algorithms classes; I am the author of a popular free Algorithms textbook. I have been an Education Innovation Fellow in the Grainger College of Engineering's Academy of Excellence in Engineering Education. More than half of my former PhD students have tenure, almost half have won NSF CAREER awards, and my grand-students outnumber my students. My own awards include a Sloan Research Fellowship, an NSF CAREER award, and numerous teaching and research awards from the University of Illinois.

At various times in my professional life I have been an associate department head, the chair of the faculty advisory committee, the manager of a multi-year software development project, a parent, a therapy patient, an Apple II assembly-language programmer, a disk jockey, a pizza cook, and a knot-tying instructor at a Boy Scout camp. My current favorite brands of espresso are Unicorn Blood by Dark Matter, Redacted by Blue Copper, and Unfinished Business by Ghost Coffee Collab. Please see http://jeffe.cs.illinois.edu/cv.pdf for a detailed curriculum vitae.

Academic Positions

• Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2020-present
• Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2010-present
• Associate Professor (tenured), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2004-2010
• Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1998-2004

Teaching Statement

I primarily teach courses in algorithms. My free algorithms textbook, along with an extensive archive of related course materials, is available at http://jeffe.cs.illinois.edu/teaching/algorithms/. Please send me bug reports!

Research Statement

For a complete overview of my research activities, please see my publication archive at http://jeffe.cs.illinois.edu/pubs/.

Research Interests

• Algorithms, data structures, and lower bounds
• Computational and discrete geometry and topology
• Computer science education

Books Authored or Co-Authored (Original Editions)

• Jeff Erickson. Algorithms. 1st edition, xiv+454 pages, June 2019. A self-published open-access textbook.

Selected Articles in Journals

• Jeff Erickson and Patrick Lin. Planar and toroidal morphing made easier. Journal of Graph Algorithms and Applications 27(2):95–118, 2023. special issue of invited papers from the 29th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization.
• Jeff Erickson, Gabriel Nivasch, and Junyan Xu, Fusible numbers and Peano arithmetic. Logical Methods in Computer Science 18(3:6), 2022, special issue of invited papers from the 36th Annual ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science.
• Mikkel Abrahamsen, Jeff Erickson, Irina Kostitsyna, Maarten Löffler, Tillman Miltzow, Jérôme Urhausen, Jordi Vermeulen, and Giovanni Viglietta. Chasing puppies: Mobile beacon routing on closed curves. Journal of Computational Geometry 13(2):115–150, 2022, special issue of invited papers from the 37th International Symposium on Computational Geometry.
• Jeff Erickson, Ivor van der Hoog, and Tillmann Miltzow. Smoothing the gap between NP and ∃ℝ.SIAM Journal on Computing, 53(6):102--138, 2024, special section of invited papers from the 61st Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science.
• Hsien-Chih Chang and Jeff Erickson. Untangling planar curves. Discrete & Computational Geometry 58(4):889--920, 2017, special issue of invited papers from the 32nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry.

Articles in Conference Proceedings

• Jeff Erickson, Kyle Fox, and Luvsandondov Lkhamsuren. Holiest minimum-cost paths and flows in surface graphs. Proceedings of the 50th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, 1319–1332, 2018
• Hsien-Chih-Chang, Jeff Erickson, and Chao Xu. Detecting weakly simple polygons. Proceedings of the 26th ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, 1655–1670, 2015
• Jeff Erickson and Kim Whittlesey. Transforming curves on surfaces redux. Proc. 24th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, 1646--1655, 2013.
• Jeff Erickson. Maximum flows and parametric shortest paths in planar graphs. Proc. 21st Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, 794–804, 2010
• Jeff Erickson and Kim Whittlesey. Greedy optimal homotopy and homology generators. Proc. 16th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, 1038--1046, 2005.

Teaching Honors

• Campus Award For Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, May 2007
• Everitt Award for Teaching Excellence, College of Engineering, April 2001
• List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students: Spring 1999, Fall 2000, Spring 2001 (outstanding rating), Fall 2001, Fall 2005, Fall 2006, Spring 2007, Spring 2008, Spring 2010, Fall 2010, Spring 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Spring 2015 (outstanding rating), Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017 (outstanding rating), Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020 (outstanding rating), Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Fall 2022 (outstanding rating), Spring 2024, and Fall 2024.

Research Honors

• NSF Career Award (CCR-0093348), 2001-2006
• Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, 1999-2001