Over 2,000 years ago, Euclid, the Greek mathematician, laid the foundation of geometry and altered our perception of shapes. Justin Solomon, inspired by Euclid’s work, applies modern geometric techniques to resolve challenging problems that may not appear related to shapes. As an associate professor at the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), he focuses on using geometry to understand data, exploiting geometric traits such as distance, similarity, curvature, and shape.
Solomon leads the Geometric Data Processing Group. Half of his team focuses on processing two- and three-dimensional geometric data, like aligning 3D scans for medical imaging and optimizing autonomous vehicles to recognize pedestrians using spatial LiDAR sensor data. The remainder of his group conducts high-dimensional statistical research using geometric tools, such as designing better generative AI models. Solomon asserts that these geometric strategies are integral for computer animation, generative AI, and relevant probability tasks.
Solomon’s initial interest in computer graphics led him down his career path. During his high school years, Solomon, who was talented in mathematics, interned at a research lab outside Washington, developing algorithms for 3D facial recognition. This experience inspired him to major in mathematics and computer science at Stanford University. Solomon spent every summer of his college years and part of his graduate school years interning at Pixar Animation Studios, improving the realism of their animated films.
While pursuing his PhD in computer science at Stanford, Solomon focused on the problem of optimal transport, which involves efficiently shifting a distribution from one form to another. This line of research fueled the creation of his research group at MIT. Solomon was attracted by the brilliance of MIT’s students, postdocs, and colleagues and the opportunity to work on challenging, practical problems that can impact many fields.
Solomon is keen on making geometric research accessible to underprivileged students who usually don’t get opportunities in high school or college. He founded the Summer Geometry Initiative, a paid six-week research program primarily for undergraduates from underrepresented backgrounds. Since its inception, the program has witnessed a change in the composition of incoming classes of PhD students, not only at MIT but also at other institutions.
Solomon is excited about the potential of geometry in addressing complex problems in machine learning and statistics. He is interested in applying geometric tools to enhance unsupervised machine learning models that can decode complex, unlabeled 3D scenes.
Outside his professional work, Solomon is a classical music enthusiast who plays piano and cello. He participates in the local symphony whenever he moves to a new city, and presently, he is associated with the New Philharmonia Orchestra in Newton, Massachusetts. For Solomon, music is analytical and is closely related to his research field – computer graphics, which have strong correlations with artistic practice. Thus, he finds both interests mutually beneficial.
