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Sara McMains is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests encompass Geometric Design for Manufacturing (DFM) feedback, geometric solid modeling, computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM), GPU algorithms, and computer graphics. Additionally, she focuses on computer-aided process planning, layered manufacturing, virtual prototyping, and virtual reality. Her current work explores new techniques in collision detection and applications for haptic design environments. McMains has made significant contributions to the design and manufacturing processes, including injection molding and considerations for cleanability in design. She earned her A.B. in Computer Science from Harvard University and both her M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, with a minor in Mechanical Engineering. McMains has received numerous accolades for her research, including the Usenix Paper Awards in 1995, the ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences (DETC) award in 2000, and multiple Poster Paper Awards at the ACM Solid Physical Modeling Symposium in 2007 and 2008. She was also honored with the NSF CAREER Award in 2005.
The Mathematics Subject GRE is required for the Fall 2026 admissions cycle. General GRE is optional.