e-mail: taohou at uoregon dot edu

Announcement

About

I am an Assistant Professor in the CS department at the University of Oregon. My research interest is computational topology/geometry and topological data analysis (TDA). I am also broadly interested in applications of TDA to different domains.

Prior to joining UO, I was an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing at DePaul University from 2022 to 2024. I graduated from the CS department at Purdue University with a doctoral degree in May 2022. The title of my PhD thesis is 'Homological Representatives in Topological Persistence'. Before doing my PhD, I received an M.E. degree in Software Engineering from Tsinghua University and a B.E. degree in Software Engineering from Beijing Institute of Technology, both in China.

Software

[FastZigzag] · [MinimumPersistentCycle] · [UpdatingZigzag]

To Perspective Students

The core of my research is a combination of computer science with mathematics, and I am open to working with students who have a strong interest in either, or both. Students with CS or Math background are welcomed to contact me. Meanwhile, I am also broadly interested in applications of my research to different domains. I am seeking more extensive interplay of TDA with areas such as machine learning, geometry processing, visualizations, etc. (To know more, see the presentation I gave sharing my research interest and experience to CS students at UO.)

As a student of mine, you will pursue a research effort in any one or combination of the following directions:

Students Advised

Publications

A Fast Algorithm for Computing Zigzag Representatives
Tamal K. Dey*, Tao Hou*, and Dmitriy Morozov*
ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA) 2025, to appear
Volume-optimal persistence homological scaffolds of hemodynamic networks covary with MEG theta-alpha aperiodic dynamics
Nghi Nguyen, Tao Hou, Enrico Amico, Jingyi Zheng, Huajun Huang, Alan D. Kaplan, Giovanni Petri, Joaquin Goni, Yize Zhao, Duy Duong-Tran, and Li Shen
International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) 2024, to appear
Computing Zigzag Vineyard Efficiently Including Expansions and Contractions
Tamal K. Dey* and Tao Hou*
International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG) 2024
Revisiting Graph Persistence for Updates and Efficiency
Tamal K. Dey*, Tao Hou*, and Salman Parsa*
Algorithms and Data Structures Symposium (WADS) 2023,
[talk@WADS]
Updating Barcodes and Representatives for Zigzag Persistence
Tamal K. Dey* and Tao Hou*
arXiv preprint arXiv: 2112.02352 (2022)
[github]
Fast Computation of Zigzag Persistence
Tamal K. Dey* and Tao Hou*
European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA) 2022
[github] [talk@ESA]
* A previous version on arXiv targeting a slightly different topic:
On Association between Absolute and Relative Zigzag Persistence
Computing Optimal Persistent Cycles for Levelset Zigzag on Manifold-like Complexes
Tamal K. Dey* and Tao Hou*
arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.00518 (2021)
Topological Filtering for 3D Microstructure Segmentation
Anand V. Patel, Tao Hou, Juan D. Beltran Rodriguez, Tamal K. Dey, and Dunbar P. Birnie III
Computational Materials Science, 202:110920, 2022
Computing Zigzag Persistence on Graphs in Near-Linear Time
Tamal K. Dey* and Tao Hou*
International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG) 2021
[talk@SoCG]
Computing Minimal Persistent Cycles: Polynomial and Hard Cases
Tamal K. Dey*, Tao Hou*, and Sayan Mandal*
ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA) 2020
[github] [talk@SODA]
Persistent 1-Cycles: Definition, Computation, and Its Application
Tamal K. Dey*, Tao Hou*, and Sayan Mandal*
Computational Topology in Image Context, International Workshop, 2019
[webpage] [talk@Ohio TDA Day]
On-the-fly simplification of large iso-surfaces with per-cube vertex modifiability detection
Tao Hou and Li Chen
Journal of Visualization 19.4 (2016): 715-726
(Names ending with * means that authors are ordered alphabetically.)

Miscellaneous

Invited Talks / Conference Presentations

Can zigzag persistence be computed as efficiently as the standard version?
Geometry/Topology Seminars, Oregon State Univ. Oct 2024. Corvallis, OR

Can zigzag persistence be computed as efficiently as the standard version?
Computational Persistence Workshop 2024 (online). Sep 2024. TU Graz, Austria

Revisiting Graph Persistence for Updates and Efficiency
WADS. Jul 2023. Montreal, QC

Revisiting computation of zigzag persistence for new results
Joint Math/CS Seminar, DePaul Univ. Feb 2023. Chicago, IL

Revisiting computation of zigzag persistence for new results
TDA Seminar, Michigan State Univ. Dec 2022. East Lansing, MI

Fast Computation of Zigzag Persistence
Computational Persistence Workshop. Nov 2022. Purdue University (online)

Fast Computation of Zigzag Persistence
ESA. Sep 2022. Potsdam, Germany (online)

Topological Signatures for Data Analysis Aided by Homological Generators
Seminar, DePaul University. Mar 2022. Chicago, IL

Topological Signatures for Data Analysis Aided by Homological Generators
Seminar, North Carolina State University. Mar 2022. Raleigh, NC

Computing zigzag persistence on graphs in near-linear time
Computational Persistence Workshop. Nov 2021. Purdue University (online)

Computing zigzag persistence on graphs in near-linear time
SoCG. Jun 2021. Buffalo, New York (online)

Computing minimal persistent cycles: polynomial and hard cases
Seminar, Topology and Geometry for Data Analysis, Purdue University. Feb 2021. Online

Computing minimal persistent cycles: polynomial and hard cases
Seminar, Applied Algebraic Topology Research Network. May 2020. Online

Computing minimal persistent cycles: polynomial and hard cases
SODA. Jan 2020. Salt Lake City, Utah

Persistent 1-cycles: definition, computation, and some applications
Ohio TDA Day. July 2019. Dayton, Ohio

Teaching

CS 621: Algorithms and Complexity
Projects in Topological Data Analysis (Collaborated): 2024, 2023
CSC 301: Data Structures II
CSC 421: Applied Algorithms and Structures