Dr. Sara McMains is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include Geometric DFM (Design for Manufacturing) feedback, geometric solid modeling, CAD/CAM, GPU algorithms, computer aided process planning, layered manufacturing, computer graphics, visualization, virtual prototyping, and virtual reality. Her current research focuses on new techniques for accessibility analysis and collision detection, with applications in haptic design environments, design for manufacturing for injection molding, design for cleanability, layered manufacturing, and machining.
McMains 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), and the NSF CAREER Award (2005).