Dianne Carol Hansford (born 1964) is an American computer scientist known for her research on Coons patches in

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great de ...

and for her textbooks on

computer-aided geometric design Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve c ...

linear algebra Linear algebra is the branch of mathematics concerning linear equations such as: :a_1x_1+\cdots +a_nx_n=b, linear maps such as: :(x_1, \ldots, x_n) \mapsto a_1x_1+\cdots +a_nx_n, and their representations in vector spaces and through matrices ...

, and the mathematics behind

scientific visualization Scientific visualization ( also spelled scientific visualisation) is an interdisciplinary branch of science concerned with the visualization of scientific phenomena. Michael Friendly (2008)"Milestones in the history of thematic cartography, s ...

. She is a lecturer at Arizona State University in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, and the cofounder of a startup based on her research, 3D Compression Technologies.

Education and career

Hansford is a 1986 graduate of the

University of Utah The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...

. She went to Arizona State University for graduate study, earning a master's degree in 1988 and completing her Ph.D. in 1991. Her dissertation, ''Boundary Curves with Quadric Precision for a Tangent, Continuous Scattered Data Interpolant'', was supervised by Robert E. Barnhill. She became a Fulbright Scholar in German, doing postdoctoral research at the Technical University Darmstadt, and then worked in the computing industry for several years, including co-founding 3D Compression Technologies in 2000, before returning to Arizona State as a research scientist in 2004. She became an associate research professor in 2006 and a lecturer in computing in 2016.

Selected publications

Hansford's books, coauthored with Arizona State University professor Gerald Farin, include: *''The Geometry Toolbox for Graphics and Modeling'' (A K Peters, 1998); revised as ''Practical Linear Algebra: A Geometry Toolbox'' (A K Peters, 2005; 4th ed., CRC Press, 2021) *''The Essentials of CAGD'' (CRC Press, 2000) *''Mathematical Principles for Scientific Computing and Visualization'' (A K Peters, 2008) She is also the author of a highly cited paper on Coons patches: *

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Hansford, Dianne 1964 births Living people American computer scientists American women computer scientists University of Utah alumni Arizona State University alumni Arizona State University faculty