Rana Hanocka
Founder & CEO at Thrixel
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolRana Hanocka is a founder, researcher, and engineer who builds at the intersection of 3D graphics and deep learning, currently scaling Thrixel’s stealth intelligent 3D workspace while serving as Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago. With nine years of experience spanning industry research roles at Intel and BAE to a PhD from Tel Aviv University, she advances core foundations in 3D learning and generation through her 3DL lab. Her hands-on open-source work includes contributions to MeshCNN—improving mesh preprocessing, augmentation, and compatibility with modern NumPy—reflecting a rare blend of practical ML engineering and academic rigor. She has repeatedly translated complex perceptual problems (registration, localization, synthesis) into deployable systems, drawing on a background in electrical engineering and control systems. Colleagues benefit from her dual perspective as a product-focused founder and deep-researcher who partners closely with studios and enterprise design teams. An understated strength is her ability to turn low-level mesh and data-pipeline fixes into outsized improvements in model reliability and usability.
9 years of coding experience
3 years of employment as a software developer
UdacityDoctor of Philosophy - PhD Computer Science, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD Computer Science at Tel Aviv UniversityTechnical University of DenmarkBachelors of Science Electrical Engineering, Bachelors of Science Electrical Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic InstituteBrien McMahon High School
English, Hebrew, Danish, French
Github Skills (10)
mesh-processing10
pytorch10
machine-learning10
convolutional-neural-networks10
python10
numpy10
3d10
computer-graphics9
data-augmentation9
testing8
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
ranahanocka/MeshCNN
May 2019 - Feb 2022
Convolutional Neural Network for 3D meshes in PyTorch
Role in this project:
ML Engineer
ML EngineerContributions:34 commits, 3 PRs, 30 pushes in 2 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Rana primarily contributed to the project by modifying core mesh processing and deep learning components within the `meshcnn` repository. They fixed issues related to the latest NumPy version, updated the blender simplification script, and added options for data augmentation. The user's changes indicate a focus on refining data preprocessing, model training, and testing procedures specific to the project's 3D mesh convolutional neural network.
pytorchmeshgeometric-deep-learningcomputer-graphicscomputer-vision
ranahanocka/ALIGNet
Aug 2018 - Jul 2019
code to train a neural network to align pairs of shapes without needing ground truth warps for supervision
Contributions:21 commits, 2 PRs, 17 pushes in 11 months
aligntruthdeep-learningtorchcomputer-vision
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