Maxine Perroni-Scharf
Hello! I'm Maxine, a PhD student in EECS at MIT, advised by Professor Stefanie Mueller. I work in computer graphics and computer vision: modeling how physical objects look and behave, and optimizing their geometry and materials so that they can be fabricated. My research combines appearance modeling, physics-based simulation, inverse design and machine learning, and I build interactive design tools that bring these methods to fabrication. My PhD is supported by the Amazon AI PhD Fellowship.
Before MIT, I did a research master's at Princeton University with Professor Szymon Rusinkiewicz, where I worked on 3D printing objects with view-dependent appearance. I went to undergrad at Dartmouth College, where I was advised by Professor Devin Balkcom and also worked with Professor Xia Zhou at the DartNets lab. I have spent summers as a student researcher at Google and as an intern at Adobe Research with Yannick Hold-Geoffroy, Kalyan Sunkavalli and J Eisenmann. In my free time, I love to make art!
Selected publications
All publications ↓Live demos
News
- PaperMorphoChrome will be presented as a full paper at UIST 2026.
- TalkInvited talk at the Dynamic Graphics Project, University of Toronto.
- FellowshipStarted the Amazon AI PhD Fellowship (2026–27).
- AwardNamed a WiGRAPH Rising Star in Computer Graphics at SIGGRAPH 2026.
- WorkshopTicha Sethapakdi and I ran Form and Function, a hands-on workshop on designing and fabricating barrier-grid animations, at SIGGRAPH Frontiers 2026.
- AwardReceived the PEO International Scholarship.
- AwardMentees won awards: Cole Paulin took 2nd place in the David Adler MEng Thesis Award (SustainaPrint), and Raul Hernandez received a Morais ’86 and Rosenblum ’86 UROP Award (MMetaMix).
- PaperVisiPrint and Y-zipper at CHI 2026, plus a late-breaking paper on strength vs. sustainability in 3D printing.
- TalkTalk on SustainaPrint at the University of Maryland HCIE Speaker Series.
- AwardSelected by MIT as one of three institution-wide (cross-departmental) nominees for the Apple Scholars in AI/ML PhD Fellowship.
- FellowshipReceived the MathWorks Fellowship for 2025–26.
- PaperTPMS metamaterial discovery at SIGGRAPH 2025.
- PaperNeurosymbolic World Models at ICML 2025.
- IndustryStarted a summer as a student researcher at Google Beam.
- Joined the MIT Morningside Academy for Design student advisory board.
- AwardXStrings received a Best Paper Honorable Mention at CHI 2025, where we also presented TactStyle.
- TalkSpoke about 3D printing with machine learning at MIT Museum After Dark.
- FellowshipNamed a MIT Morningside Academy for Design Fellow for 2024–25.
- PatentUS patent granted for the material swapping work done at Adobe Research (US20230141395A1).
- FellowshipStarted my PhD at MIT EECS as an Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Fellow.
- PaperConstructing Printable Surfaces with View-Dependent Appearance at SIGGRAPH 2023.
- Finished my master’s at Princeton with Szymon Rusinkiewicz.
- AwardSunflower won the Grand Prize at the Dartmouth Innovation and Technology Festival.
- TalkTalks on fabricating view-dependent appearance at Samsung AI Center Montreal and McGill University.
- Started a research master’s in computer science at Princeton University.
- Research internship at Adobe Research with Yannick Hold-Geoffroy, Kalyan Sunkavalli and J Eisenmann.
- AwardGraduated from Dartmouth summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with High Honors in Computer Science.
- AwardReceived the Adobe Research Women in Technology Scholarship.
Publications
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MorphoChrome: Interactive, Handheld Fabrication of Programmable Structural ColorUIST, 2026project page/paper/video/UIST demo/press: MIT News, The Register, Tech Xplore, Hackster, Fabbaloo, MaterialDistrict, Engineers Ireland
A handheld tool that programs structural color onto objects in real time.
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FilaTwin: A Rotating Digital Preview for Multi-Material 3D PrintingUIST Posters, 2026
A print preview that uses photos of your past prints as filament references and renders a rotatable preview of how a multi-material print will look.
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VisiPrint: Previewing 3D-Print Appearances from Real Material SamplesLive appCHI, 2026project page/live app/interactive walkthrough/paper/code/UIST demo/press: MIT News, Digital Trends, 3D Printing Industry, VoxelMatters, Hackster, Fabbaloo, Engineers Ireland
Previewing what a 3D print will look like from a slicer screenshot and a photo of a real material sample, before fabrication.
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Y-zipper: 3D Printing Flexible–Rigid Transition Mechanism for Rapid and Reversible AssemblyCHI, 2026project page/paper/video/press: MIT News, MIT Technology Review, Tom's Hardware, New Atlas, Hackaday, TechRadar, designboom, BGR
A 3D-printed three-sided zipper that turns flexible strips into rigid beams and back.
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Form and Function: A Hands-On Workshop on Computationally Designing and Fabricating Barrier-Grid AnimationsSIGGRAPH Frontiers, 2026
A hands-on workshop where participants design and make their own barrier-grid animations.
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Exploring the Trade-offs Between Strength and Sustainability for 3D PrintingCHI Extended Abstracts, 2026
A prototype tool for exploring trade-offs between material usage and mechanical strength in 3D printing.
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SustainaPrint: Making the Most of Eco-Friendly FilamentsLive appUIST, 2025project page & walkthrough/live app/paper/video/UIST demo/press: MIT News, Interesting Engineering, Tech Xplore, 3D Printing Industry, Hackster, Fabbaloo, MaterialDistrict, Notebookcheck, The Next Byte (podcast)
A simulation and geometry based method to use up sustainable 3D-printing filaments without compromising the strength of the final print.
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FabObscura: Computational Design and Fabrication for Interactive Barrier-Grid AnimationsLive appUIST, 2025project page/live app/paper/video/press: MIT News, Hackaday, Hackster, 3DPrint.com, Tech Xplore, TechEBlog
A system for making dynamic physical media based on the classic barrier-grid animation technique.
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Data-Efficient Discovery of Hyperelastic TPMS Metamaterials with Extreme Energy DissipationSIGGRAPH, 2025
A Bayesian-optimization based method for discovering hyperelastic micro-scale TPMS metamaterials with high energy dissipation.
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Neurosymbolic World Models for Sequential Decision MakingICML, 2025
Unsupervised learning of neurosymbolic finite state machines that capture environment structure for policy optimization.
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MMetaMix: A Multiclass Metamaterial Mixed Encoding for Interpolation and Geometry GenerationSCF Adjunct Proceedings, 2025
An encoding that spans several classes of metamaterials, so new geometries can be generated by interpolating between them.
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XStrings: 3D Printing Cable-Driven Mechanism for Actuation, Deformation, and ManipulationCHI, 2025 🏆 Best Paper Honorable Mentionpaper/demo paper/video/press: MIT News, 3DPI, 3DPrint.com, VoxelMatters, 3DPrinting.com, 3DShoes, 3Printr, ElectronicsForU
A 3D printing method for fabricating cable-driven mechanisms by embedding actuation strings during printing.
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TactStyle: Enhancing 3D Model Stylization with Realistic Texture Generation for Digital FabricationCHI, 2025project page/paper/demo paper/video/press: MIT News, MIT EECS, MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, 3DPrint.com, Tech Xplore, Engineers Ireland
Generating realistic tactile textures for 3D models from images, so that printed objects feel like the material they show.
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Constructing Printable Surfaces with View-Dependent AppearanceLive appSIGGRAPH, 2023
Optimizing and 3D printing surfaces that show different images from different viewing directions.
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Material Swapping for 3D Scenes Using a Learnt Material Similarity MeasureCVPR WiCV, 2022
Augmenting synthetic 3D data by replacing PBR materials with procedural materials.
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Soft Lattice Modules That Behave Independently and CollectivelyRA-L and RoboSoft, 2022
Modular soft robots that can manipulate objects and locomote individually and together.
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Sunflower: Locating Underwater Robots From the AirACM MobiSys, 2022 🏆 Grand Prize, Dartmouth Innovation and Technology Festivalpaper/video/press: Dartmouth, The Dartmouth, Dartmouth CS, Innovation and Tech Festival, Concord Monitor
Wireless laser-based 3D localization across the air-water interface.
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Computer Animation Body Surface Analysis of Total Skin Electron Radiation Therapy Dose Homogeneity via Cherenkov ImagingJournal of Medical Imaging, 2020
A 3D-modeling based method for displaying total skin electron therapy dosage on patients.
Other projects
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First Steps Towards Novel View Synthesis on SketchesPrinceton Advanced Computer Graphics course project, 2022
Using a GAN and an autoencoder for novel view synthesis on graphite sketches of chairs.
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Exploring the Effects of Identity Prompting on GPT-3Princeton Large Language Models final project, 2022
Using identity-based prompts to uncover toxicity and biases in GPT-3.
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Object Manipulation with Modular Planar Tensegrity RobotsDartmouth College undergraduate thesis, 2021
A planar robot system that can manipulate a puck across a surface.
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