Crane He Chen

(she/her/hers)

Assistant Teaching Professor

  • Computer graphics
  • Tilting theory
  • PhD in Computer Graphics, Johns Hopkins University
  • MS in Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University
  • BS in Control Theory, Northeastern University

Crane He Chen is an assistant teaching professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University, based in Oakland and Silicon Valley.

Chen teaches computer graphics at Northeastern University. Outside of her teaching, she works at visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic (a division of Lucasfilm) as a research and development engineer. Previously, Chen completed her PhD at Johns Hopkins University, where her thesis focused on developing Total Curvature Calculator, a software tool grounded in discrete differential geometry. This tool boosts the accuracy of surface curvature measurements compared to existing geometry processing libraries and has been adopted by Nvidia as part of its mesh simplification framework to optimize computational resources.

Chen enjoys teaching students not just to solve problems, but to determine which programs to solve. She also aims to develop their critical and creative thinking skills in line with the philosophy that “knowledge has a life span, but modes of thinking are timeless.”