| CARVIEW |
I'm a researcher, artist, and EECS PhD student at MIT, advised by Erik Demaine in CSAIL and Zach Lieberman at the Media Lab. My work has been generously supported by the MIT MAD Design Fellowship, the NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship, and the MIT Stata Family Presidential Fellowship.
I develop mathematical abstractions and computational tools that facilitate new ways of designing and fabricating. I'm drawn to dialogues between computation and craft, and to creating systems that invite agency, expression, and play.
My research explores new ways of thinking and making by considering alternative representations of visual and material systems. I often synthesize ideas across domains; as a result, my work spans human–computer interaction, computer graphics, theoretical computer science, and art. A full list of my publications is available on Google Scholar. While I publish in academic venues, I am equally drawn to alternative research outcomes, and have found delightful homes for my ideas in artworks, creative tools, and educational resources.
Rebecca Lin, Michal Lukáč, Mackenzie Leake
How can we design garments for change and reuse? By reimagining garments as dynamic assemblies rather than static products, Refashion enables users to resize, restyle, and remix their garments on demand.
2025, SCF (Demo Track)
(a-b) Erik D. Demaine, Yael Kirkpatrick, Rebecca Lin
How can we thread tubes with single string to achieve the desired structure when pulling the string taut? By recasting "threadings" as constrained walks on graphs, we give efficient algorithms for computing minimum-length threadings.
2024, arXiv
2024, SCF (Demo Track)
Rebecca Lin, Craig S. Kaplan
How can we create constellations with unconventional star arrangements? By designing a translation between constellations patterns and mathematical graphs, we gain access to new vocabularies that let us revisit classical patterns and uncover new expressive forms.
My artifacts explore how simple shapes, through combination and variation, can evolve into intricate patterns, textures, and forms. Mathematics and computation serve as key languages in my practice; their vocabularies—like those of any natural language—open new ways of thinking and making. While my designs emerge from mathematical and computational abstraction, they are grounded in physical making, often in collaboration with machines such as laser cutters, and finished by hand—draped and sewn, or meticulously assembled.
I have taught extensively at MIT and UBC, with a focus on algorithm design and analysis, primarily at the advanced undergraduate level. Outside of academia, I design and teach computational art classes for middle and high school students. Through drawing with code, I hope these classes help reshape perceptions of who programmers are and what programs can do.
Be my witness to beauty.
I have begun to write—poems and prose, little life lab notes.
