In 2026 I graduated with a Computer Science PhD from UT Austin, where I was supervised by Etienne Vouga. During this time I spent a lot of time thinking about applications of differential geometry to problems in computer graphics. Before that I designed and manufactured a microcontroller called the Whoa Board and developed algorithms for SLA 3D printing.

The UT Austin CS department published a nice little article about some of our research.

Please contact me if you’ve got a problem where my expertise might be useful. I am excited about lending my skills to interesting projects.

Come and stay a while, play a thought or two. Get a little lost.

Thesis

A bunny woven from straight ribbons

Integrable Symmetric Fields in Computational Design: From Stable Woven Shells to Seamless Parameterizations

Josh Vekhter

We explore foundational geometry processing problems related to the development of robust inverse design of periodic structures like stripes, weaves, and trusses, on complex geometric domains.

Theory

Feature-aligned cross-fields on geometric surfaces

Octahedral Frames for Feature-Aligned Cross-Fields

Paul Zhang, Josh Vekhter, Edward Chien, David Bommes, Etienne Vouga, Justin Solomon

ACM Trans. on Graph. (2020)

We study the design of cross fields on surfaces using spherical harmonic representations.

Preprints

Dao of the Botisattva artwork

Dao of the Botisattva

the nth fool, the archivist, the editor, and the muse

a speculative framework, an executable theology, and a first draft of an ethical blueprint for aligned, decentralized, ecologically regenerative artificial intelligence.

HyperQuery research illustration

HyperQuery: Beyond Binary Link Prediction

Sepideh Maleki, Josh Vekhter, Keshav Pingali

A simple and effective technique for hyper edge prediction and knowledge graph completion

Practice

Service

Responsible Robotics teaching module illustration

Responsible Robotics: A Socio-Ethical Addition To Robotics Courses

Joshua Vekhter, Joydeep Biswas

AAAI/EAAI (2023)

We developed a Responsible Robotics teaching module, intended to be included in upper-division and graduate level robotics courses.

Masters Admissions Committee 2020

Together with several other students, proposed an overhaul of the UT CS department Masters Admissions Criteria with the aim of making the graduate admissions pipeline more inclusive.

Graduate Student Admissions Committee 2017-2019

Helped organize the admitted students weekend