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[Acquired by PTC] Key innovator and CTO driving the shift from traditional CAD to functional generative design. Architecting and implementing the inaugural releases of our core tech. Crafting a unique combination of geometry kernel and FEA techniques to deliver additive manufacturing-ready optimized geometry for aerospace, automotive, energy and other lightweighting focused industries. Ultimate goal of enabling engineers to design by desired function & manufacturing method, not by shape. [Cadalyst, 3D Systems, 3DPI]
Crafted custom slicing software and toolchain for Laika Studios to enable thousands of 3D files from animators to be additive manufactured in full color and high resolution for the stop motion film "Kubo and the Two Strings". In particular, the animated fur of Monkey and other physical aspects of several key characters were not previously possible. [US News, Co.Create]
Invented, proposed, designed, and saw to production the MOSS kinematic robotic building kit over 4 years at Modular Robotics. Originally an NSF-funded post-doc research appointment, quickly evolved into Modular Robotics' second flagship product line. MOSS is distinctly unique and one of the first consumer products to provide a progression from engaging screenless robotics play to smartphone remote control to desktop programming. [Engadget, Gizmodo, Tech Crunch, Popular Science, USA Today, Popular Mechanics, etc...]
Almost 5 years full time at Modular Robotics included many hats (often worn at the same time): Director of Engineering, Mechanical Design Lead, Product Manager, R&D Lead, Factory Automation Engineer, Studio Photographer, and occasional toilet cleaner. Direct contributions (in addition to the MOSS platform) included architecting the distributed asynchronous OS4 embedded operating system for Cubelets, several new Cubelet blocks, and an inexpensive modular factory automation kit. [Wall Street Journal 1 2, Denver Post]
Author and maintainer of open source VoxCAD and the underlying voxel physics engine (Voxelyze). VoxCAD encourages casual intuitive play while being scientifically useful for quantitative simulation of multi-material soft structures. Used at NASA, Cornell University, and Columbia University for designing and simulating soft robots, multi-material composites modeling, and bio-inspired architectural design.
Collaborated and consulted with Objet (now Stratasys) on several academic and commercial projects. Direct contributions in areas of functional multi-material microstructure design and physical simulation, 4D printing, and full CMYWK color management. Wrote a software pipeline from scratch to digest 3D files with color, bump map, and microstructure information and output the blueprint for Polyjet's placement of millions of microscopic droplets of varied materials in 3D.
Completed my Ph.D. in Hod Lipson's Creative Machines Lab at Cornell University in 2011. Projects included a few of those listed below (AMF file format, rapid assemblers, soft bots) as well as a few others including microbricks, freeform design automation, tunable multi-material composites, and vacuubes.
Computing, music, telecommunications, printing. These technologies and more have transitioned from analog to digital and never looked back. The physical world is ripe for a digital revolution as well-by building 3D objects out of physical bits. The first steps in programmed rapidly assembly and understanding bulk material properties of such structures has been completed. [Ph.D Thesis]
Why should robots be inflexible, rigid in their movement through the world, and fail when only a single component fails? Biological organisms (in general) do better than this. Soft robots promise to bring extreme robustness to the robotic world but designing optimized freeform soft robots is neither easy nor intuitive. Using genetic algorithms, the blueprint for locomotion-optimized robots can be generated automatically.
Co-author of the original international F2915 ASTM "Standard Specification for Additive Manufacturing File Format." The future of Additive Manufacturing depends on a standard interchange file format (AMF) that supports the features of modern hardware from all vendors. Primary programmer on the open source implementation of the spec,
Senior undergrad project that took a life of its own. Can a carbon fiber acoustic guitar be engineered to sound like its wooden brethren? By making extensive use of vibration testing, finite element analysis (FEA), and educated guesses, all the design work was done and two guitars built. The verdict? A unique guitar sound, but one that pleases.
Other Research: Vicarious satellite calibration, microfluidics, ultrasonic motors, and atmospheric quality.
Other miscellaneous projects: Electric guitar(s) built from scratch, other Instruments projects, and a stint as a gearhead.