Mark Overmars

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Dutch computer scientist (born 1958)

title: "Mark Overmars" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1958-births", "living-people", "researchers-in-geometric-algorithms", "dutch-computer-scientists", "dutch-computer-programmers", "roboticists", "people-from-zeist", "utrecht-university-alumni", "academic-staff-of-utrecht-university", "dutch-software-engineers"] description: "Dutch computer scientist (born 1958)" topic_path: "technology/algorithms" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Overmars" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Dutch computer scientist (born 1958) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox scientist"]

Field	Value
name	Mark Overmars
birth_date
birth_place	Zeist, Netherlands
nationality	Dutch
fields	Computational geometry
Robotics
workplaces	Utrecht University
alma_mater	Utrecht University
doctoral_advisor	Jan van Leeuwen
thesis_title	The Design of Dynamic Data Structures
thesis_year	1983
doctoral_students	Marc van Kreveld
known_for	Probabilistic Roadmap Method, GameMaker
signature
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Markus Hendrik "Mark" Overmars (; born 29 September 1958) is a Dutch computer scientist and teacher of game programming known for his game development application GameMaker. GameMaker allows users to create computer games using a drag-and-drop interface. He is the former head of the Center for Geometry, Imaging, and Virtual Environments at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. This research center focuses on computational geometry and its applications in areas such as computer graphics, robotics, geographic information systems, imaging, multimedia, virtual environments, and games.

Overmars received his Ph.D. in 1983 from Utrecht University under the supervision of Jan van Leeuwen, and remained a faculty member at the same university until September 2013. Overmars has published over 100 journal papers, largely on computational geometry, and is a co-author of several widely used textbooks on the subject.

Overmars has also worked in robotics. He was the first to develop the probabilistic roadmap method in 1992, which was later independently discovered by Kavraki and Latombe in 1994. Their joint paper, Probabilistic roadmaps for path planning in high-dimensional configuration spaces,{{Cite journal | doi = 10.1109/70.508439 | last1 = Kavraki | first1 = L.E. | author1-link = Lydia Kavraki | last2 = Svestka | first2 = P. | last3 = Latombe | first3 = J.C. | author3-link = Jean-Claude Latombe | last4 = Overmars | first4 = M.H. | year = 1996 | title = Probabilistic roadmaps for path planning in high-dimensional configuration spaces | journal = IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation | volume = 12 | issue = 4 | pages = 566–580 | hdl = 1874/17328 | hdl-access = free

In 2011, Overmars and game designer Jochem Schut developed a snake video game called Super Snake HD as a mobile app, which was published by YoYo Games.App stores for Super Snake HD:

Overmars founded and served as the CTO of Tingly Games from 2012 until its acquisition by CoolGames in 2016. Tingly focused on HTML5 games and e-cards/casual games, the latter of which are also known as "greeting games."

He founded Quarterfall in June 2020 together with Arjan Egges. Quarterfall is a teaching product that helps teachers use formative assessment to improve the learning processes their students, compared to just assessing their performance.

He is also the original author of the XForms toolkit.

Books

2nd ed., 2000; 3rd ed., 2008.{{citation | last = Masum | first = Hassan | date = December 2000 | doi = 10.1145/369836.571192 | issue = 4 | journal = SIGACT News | location = New York, NY, USA | pages = 10–12 | publisher = ACM | title = Review of Computational Geometry: Algorithms and Applications (2nd ed.) by Mark De Berg, Marc Van Kreveld, Mark Overmars, and Otfried Schwarzkopf | volume = 31| s2cid = 26715500 | doi-access = free

References

[https://web.archive.org/web/20111002054918/http://people.cs.uu.nl/markov/curric.pdf Curriculum vitae], archived [http://people.cs.uu.nl/markov/curric.pdf from the Utrecht University web site] on October 2, 2011.
[http://www.cs.uu.nl/staff/old/IDX/mho.html Former colleagues], GIVE Center, retrieved 2014-01-16.
{{mathgenealogy
(2011). "Sampling-based algorithms for optimal motion planning". International Journal of Robotics Research.
[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=17258006345944552504&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en Citations to ''probabilistic roadmaps''], Google Scholar, retrieved 2014-01-17.
(4 July 2011). "Hoogleraar maakt game voor iPhone, iPad en Android".
(17 June 2011). "[Uit Nu!] De eerste commerciële game van Mark Overmars: Super Snake HD".
scottishgames. (23 June 2011). "Out Now – Super Snake HD From YoYo Games".
(4 Feb 2020). "BoosterMedia becomes CoolGames and joins forces with Tingly Games".
(6 March 2015). "Exclusive Interview With The Creator Of GameMaker -".
(4 Jan 2020). "Smart Learning for Higher ICT Education".
Review of ''The design of dynamic data structures'' by [[Der-Tsai Lee. D. T. Lee]] (1985), {{MR. 0710832.
Review of ''Computational Geometry'' by Hans-Dietrich Hecker (1998), {{MR. 1470713. For the 2nd and 3rd eds., see {{MR. 1763734 and {{MR. 2723879.

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