Peter Brass
I am Professor of
Computer Science at the
City College of New York. My interests are problems related
to Geometry, Algorithms, Data Structures, including problems in
robotic exploration, sensor networks, pursuit games, and other things.
If you have a nice problem, you can tell me about it; if you need
a nice problem, I can tell you many. I mainly teach Algorithms classes,
undergraduate and graduate.
For my publications, you can look at
-
google scholar
-
dblp
- an old list which I stopped maintaining, but it contains also the mathematics
papers from an earlier time in my career.
I have also several books,
- The Problem Book: P. Brass, W.O.J. Moser, J. Pach:
Research Problems in Discrete Geometry, Springer-Verlag 2005,
500 pages, 528 open problems. Since then there has also been a
chinese reprint and a japanese and a russian translation of this book.
The problem book has a very long back story, and for me it was
the high point and end of my discrete geometry period.
- The Data Structures Book: Peter Brass: Advanced Data Structures,
Cambridge University Press 2008, still the only graduate-level book
on this fundamental topic of computer science. Please do not download
the pirated pdf files you find on the web; this is my work, and as author
I protest against people stealing the result of my work.
I provide
sample implementations of many of the data structures in the book.
- The History Book: Peter Brass: History of Engineering at the
City College of New York. This is still an unfinished project, but you can
look at the pdf file
here.
I hope to finish the manuscript in summer 2019, in time for the 100th
anniversary of the founding of the School of Engineering at City College.
I have also some abandoned, or at least dormant, book projects,
which might be revived if there is interest. Farthest along were
the 'Notes on Asymptotic Analysis and Recursion'. They are available as
letter-sized and
A4-sized
ps-file. There is also a book fragment on computer generation of images,
with the postscript programming language, or with a raytracer.
Here are some examples of images I made: the
octahedra packing, the
dendrites, the
random reflecting
ball packing.
I still believe in the importance of open problems to guide and shape a field;
at some time I would like to write a counterpart of the Problem Book for
Computer Science problems.
I spent in the last years much time with various governance roles;
I am in the City College
Faculty Senate, the CUNY
University Faculty Senate, and many committees. I also was for a year
the City College Ombudsperson, but I did not run for re-election; I hope
others are doing this job more successful than me. I produced a
Report
whose issues are still valid. The most frustrating of my current committees
is the executive committee of the computer science PhD program.
There are also many other sides to being a professor; here is a selection.
All these are volunteer jobs, unpaid and without release time.
- I am active as ABET
Program Evaluator for Computer Science. The Progam Evaluator receives
the self study of a program (about 200 pages), checks it against the ABET
standards, cross-checks against web pages and other materials, and finally
does a three-day site visit in the fall.
- For some years I was Deputy Editor-in-Chief of
the Journal of Student Research
of the School of Engineering. It was a good journal, until it was
discontinued for financial reasons.
- Several years I was coach of a programming contest team for the
International Collegiate Programming
Contest. In the
Greater New York Regionals of 2016,
we were the best public university team, ahead of Stony Brook.
My office is in NAC 8/216 (the inner office, the outer room does not
belong to me).
Last revision of this web page March 18, 2019
Some outdated Personal Information.
Peter Braß
(
peter@cs.ccny.cuny.edu),
City College of New York, CUNY
Department of Computer Science
Convent Avenue at 138th Street
New York, NY-10031
USA