Sara McMains

Research Bio

Dr. McMains' research interests include Geometric DFM (Design for Manufacturing) feedback, geometric solid modeling, CAD/CAM, GPU algorithms, computer aided process planning, additive manufacturing, computer vision, visualization, computational geometry, and deep learning. She received her A.B. from Harvard University in Computer Science, and her M.S. and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in Computer Science with a minor in Mechanical Engineering.   She is the recipient of Best Paper Awards from Usenix (1995) and ASME DETC (2000), a Best Poster and a Best Paper Award from the ACM Solid and Physical Modeling Symposium (2007, 2008 -- 2nd place), an Outstanding Paper Award from NAMRC (2015), the Audi Production Award (2011), and the NSF CAREER Award (2005).

Research Expertise and Interest

geometric and solid modeling, general purpose computation on the GPU (GPGPU), CAD/CAM, computational geometry, computer graphics and visualization, tool path planning, additive manufacturing, computer vision, deep learning

Teaching

Courses taught during the three most recent terms
2026 Spring
  • Introduction to Lean Manufacturing Systems  [MECENG 101]  

  • Graduate Introduction to Lean Manufacturing Systems  [MECENG 221]  

  • Group Studies, Seminars, or Group Research  [MECENG 298]  

  • Individual Study or Research  [MECENG 299]  

2025 Fall
  • Manufacturing and Design Communication  [ENGIN 29]  

  • Group Studies, Seminars, or Group Research  [MECENG 298]  

  • Individual Study or Research  [MECENG 299]  

2025 Spring
  • Introduction to Lean Manufacturing Systems  [MECENG 101]  

  • Introduction to Lean Manufacturing Systems  [MECENG 101]  

  • Graduate Introduction to Lean Manufacturing Systems  [MECENG 221]  

  • Graduate Introduction to Lean Manufacturing Systems  [MECENG 221]  

  • Group Studies, Seminars, or Group Research  [MECENG 298]  

  • Individual Study or Research  [MECENG 299]  

  • Supervised Research: Physical Sciences  [UGIS 192D]