Afshawn Lotfi @afshawnl Twitter profile

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

Sometimes I wonder how I just picked a few textbooks up and figured this shit out on my own.

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Last Seen Profiles

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

4 months

I'm really tempted to buy over 50 acres in Colorado for practically nothing and living a life in solitude

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

11 months

@SpaceX Greatest marketing ever

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

4 months

@BeCachet yeah honestly don't even want internet, will just run Llama 3.0 locally if I need anything

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

4 months

@anammostarac honestly been looking into dumb phones recently. smart phones have kinda ruined a lot of wholesome moments in life.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

9 months

The Future of Design is Programmable and Parametric The world of design and manufacturing is rapidly changing. Technologies like programmable parametric design are enabling a paradigm shift in how products are conceived, designed and produced. This shift has the potential to

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

6 months

I love what I do

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

9 months

How to learn and execute hard things The world is full of hard tasks. At least tasks that matter. In the age of the internet you would think learning anything would be easy, but it's not. The resources are there, however, conceptualizing something as hard as rocket engines

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

9 months

Exactly this is why the barrier to entry to hardware is so high. I think the main issue with open source tools is not how capable they are but the fact that most people don't want to get down into the math and physics just to run a freakin sim. Engineers have one objective and

Joe Barnard 🚀

@joebarnard

10 months

Genuinely cheaper to fly a bunch of rockets and PID tune them like a drone than to buy some of this software

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

6 months

why do engineers insist on this visual programming nonsense. just learn to code, honestly makes life easier.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

10 months

All the open source tools I wrote in 2023 and boy do we have something amazing coming for 2024. Onwards and upwards. TurboDesigner- the open-source turbomachinery designer MeshQL - query based meshing on top of GMSH CQAsk - the

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

5 months

First day resident at the Autodesk Technology Center. Super excited to get building! This is literally an engineer's paradise!

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

4 months

It's Time to Update Open CAD File Standards For decades, the STEP file format (Standard for the Exchange of Product model data) has been the primary open standard for exchanging 3D CAD data across different software platforms. While STEP was an achievement that enabled CAD

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

10 months

Decided to make my old text-to-CAD repo open source. Merry Christmas!

Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

Finalist in the GenLab hackathon using LLM's to generate CAD. Honestly very impressed with the results!

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

8 months

Hard Tech Github Projects - February Edition XLB XLB is a fully differentiable 2D/3D Lattice Boltzmann simulator by AutoDesk. It's built on top of the JAX library and is specifically designed to solve fluid dynamics problems in a computationally

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

Finalist in the GenLab hackathon using LLM's to generate CAD. Honestly very impressed with the results!

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

4 months

Happy to release Nebula an open source auto-differentiated geometry engine. Back in November I needed something that could get the CAD sensitivities on basic CAD operations for the purposes of optimizing a jet engine compressor blade with CFD adjoint

Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

4 months

Big release tonight, stay tuned

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

11 months

time to absorb this and make something great

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

4 months

The LinkedIn folks are just finding out about it XD

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

My vision for the future of design starts with making a ground up CAD kernel with the following elements. 1. Auto differentiation built-in 2. GPU accelerated 3. NURBS based boundary representation Will take a lot of work but this will allow for parameterization of existing CAD

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

2 months

Git for CAD! So excited to release Orion CLI. Orion CLI is an open source PLM solution designed to enhance versioning, collaboration, and reference management in computer-aided design (CAD). It offers faster load performance compared to STEP and supports

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

3 months

If more people went ahead and fixed the things they complained about, there would be very little to complain about.

Boyan Slat

@BoyanSlat

3 months

During the first 8 years of The Ocean Cleanup, we collected 314,000 kg of trash. We're now collecting the same amount... every 4.5 days.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

7 months

This week was a great week for those who believe our place is among the stars.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

4 months

Find it kind of absurd that hardware standards are locked behind paywalls.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

Designing airplanes on an airplane ✈️

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

4 months

Seriously VCs that throw their money at useless LLMs wrappers, come to me and I'll do their app in a weekend and open source it. We need to focus on the big problems here, stop engaging in nonsense.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

2 months

Building a CAD UI, so far got the View Cube, will start to do more building in public

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

9 months

Andrew got me looking back at my old Nuclear Engineering code. Gosh I wish I could clone myself and work on so many cool things.

Andrew Côté

@Andercot

9 months

We must use our one-time hydrocarbon inheritance to bootstrap our way to a longer term energy sustainability - nuclear, solar, wind, etc. Otherwise industrial society collapses and there will not be a cheap energy source gushing out of the ground to restart it.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

Almost there, automatic splits for fully automated turbomachinery structured meshes. Honestly like wth this is amazing. $10k -> $0 and all it took was an overly ambitious 24 year old. Why was meshing so bad before?

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

8 months

OH SHIT!! I SUCCESSFULLY TOOK THE JACOBIAN OF CAD!!!!!

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

8 months

If cold intros don’t work, start your own thing, decimate the thing you were trying to join. They always reply back.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

4 months

We are beginning the process of creating a unified data format for parametric CAD. This ecosystem has been very segmented with different dialects and languages and as a result we are spearheading an effort to create an open standard across all of formats to maintain intent and

Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

4 months

It's Time to Update Open CAD File Standards For decades, the STEP file format (Standard for the Exchange of Product model data) has been the primary open standard for exchanging 3D CAD data across different software platforms. While STEP was an achievement that enabled CAD

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

6 months

Interesting read. The world needs more Geometry Engineers!

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

7 months

Running some preliminary simulation optimizations and there is something deeply meaningful and at the core of existence watching sand use the laws of nature to design, "a way for the universe to know itself"

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

Absolutely surreal experience at @neuralink HQ. Can't even begin to process the level of innovation I witnessed. Mind is completely blown!

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

5 months

I'm going to make this an open-forum on what makes hard tech hard. Please refrain from general low hanging fruit like "manufacturing is hard." What actually makes it hard, be specific (toolpath generation, material properties, CAD features) and what is the current state of the

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

9 months

Woah, browsing CQ Discord and found this. TLDR: Like a package manager for parts

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

8 months

If you are a superstar at CFD, CAD/Geometry, ML (specifically simulation modeling but also generalist) DM me. Building out an early team and boy are there some exciting things in the works.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 month

Imagine the level of ridiculousness of this statement. CS and Software built modern graphics and many of the algorithms that enabled CAD. It's literally called Computer Aided Design.

István Csanády

@istvan_csanady

1 month

@elianarose66 Not comparable. Software engineers love to say stuff like this, and the only thing this means is they have no idea about the complexity of building geometry tools.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

6 months

Open source will always win in the end. Happy to see the trend in hardware towards this direction. Also patents are dumb.

Matt Freed

@_mattfreed

6 months

Open source CAD model here:

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

2 months

Amazing day for a flight :)

Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

2 months

Going flying today, super excited! ✈️

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

11 months

I've accomplished automatic differentiation of BSpline surfaces in Nebula! This sets the foundation for obtaining gradients throughout the entire design process, enabling CAD-level optimizations to occur in a fraction of the time.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

Engineering firms should really consider and push for a new role. Design Automation Engineers. In a world of fast paced design iteration some form of programming should be essential in EVERY university engineering program and beyond your mediocre Matlab course. Tools like ML and

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

10 months

Thanks for the shoutout, Andrew. I can confidently assert that the algorithms necessary for Iron Man-level design are available today, and we're working tirelessly everyday not only to bring this to fruition but make all the methods openly available.

Andrew Côté

@Andercot

10 months

The Reason Hardware is Hard is Time, and Money. It takes longer to design and build; it costs more to prototype and fabricate. This will change for two reasons: - Revolution in CAD - fully-parametric, AI-boosted - Evolution in Additive Manufacturing The revolution to hardware

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

2 months

living in marina district 0-6 month timelapse

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

9 months

Differentiable Physics: Optimizing Neural Models of Complex Systems Fluid flow on a 2D staggered grid (Source: @Google 's jax-cfd) Machine learning has proven remarkably effective on many pattern recognition tasks, from image classification to speech recognition. However,

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

11 months

Read the paper. Makes sense. Now to implement.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

And we are live:

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

10 months

Coding environment, holiday edition

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

Very cool, someone did a wrapper of OpenCascade completely in the browser and it’s completely open source. Love this new open source CAD tools movement. Traditional proprietary CAD companies did us wrong for far too long.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

11 months

One thing we are planning with Nebula is to use a more modern Spline standard. Have seen some pretty promising things with T-Splines, which was actually created within this millennia. Seems to have a lot more control of geometry with a lot less control points.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

A lot of people were interested in my hackathon project that generated CAD from LLMs. Here is a demo. I don't think the current state of something like this is mature enough to productize but an interesting proof of concept nonetheless.

Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

Finalist in the GenLab hackathon using LLM's to generate CAD. Honestly very impressed with the results!

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

6 months

The dopamine rush by getting something immensely challenging working after multiple weeks of learning, fiddling, and hacking is one of greatest human experiences ever. My body is literally tingling.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

2 months

I don't get all this idolization of big people in tech. Just build cool things and they'll come to you. True story.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

8 months

casual morning run. the gundo mind could never understand :)

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

2 months

Trying to solve this one commit at a time and make as accessible as possible

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

@spacefintech Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics of Turbomachinery - SL Dixon Axial-flow Compressors: A Strategy for Aerodynamic Design and Analysis - Ronald H. Aungier

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

2 months

it's late, the whole world is silent. what are you building anon?

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

It is with great excitement I share the result from yesterday's axial compressor optimization experiment. Used AI and sims to optimize from 83% to 86% efficiency, where the theoretic limit for this design is 90%. Right now I am only tuning thickness but can try more variables!

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

11 months

Starting to partner with some major contributors in the open source CAD tooling space. If this is you and you'd like to be apart of the next epoch of design let's get in touch.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

After working with low-level CAD tools for the last month just now I just had a “holy-shit” idea. I’m on to something, can’t wait to see this actualized!!

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

5 months

Automatic mesh cleaning and reconstruction finally working. In other words, removes useless entities like windows and doors that complicate your mesh and makes sure your faces are valid before meshing.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

5 months

An idea just hit me. HARD. I'm staying up late tonight!!!! BUUIIILLLLDD!!!!

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

Literally took a whole week to parametrically generate this axial compressor geometry that is something I'm remotely proud of. We'll see how the simulations workout.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

Cracked getting this supersonic jet engine axial compressor simulation setup and refuse to go to bed until I do!

Beff – e/acc

@BasedBeffJezos

1 year

It's Friday night, anon. Time to get cracked on Diet Coke and inhale some arXiv papers.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

Someone is already using MeshQL to simulate Wind Turbines. So refreshing to see our tools being used already in alpha for something so cool!

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

5 months

you wouldn't last an hour in the asylum they raised me

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

2 months

Okay we are getting somewhere. Just need to add more layers and refine a little further but looks like automated meshing for snappyHexMesh is coming soon to MeshQL :)

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

Beyond excited to release MeshQL an open source query based meshing tool on top of GMSH. Open source meshing for CFD has been an absolute pain, let's change that. Open to feedback in the comments and DM's. Let's make CFD more accessible to everyone!

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

5 months

@radshaan

Dr Richard Kirby

@PlanktonPundit

2 years

Only by using a microscope is the scale revealed of our microplastic rubbish that litters my plankton samples and the once pristine sea surface from where it now enters the marine food chain. @zeiss_micro

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

In February, when I first embarked on this journey since leaving Tesla, I had virtually no connections in San Francisco, let alone VCs or tech. Over the past six months, I've had the privilege of crossing paths with so many remarkable individuals. It cannot be overstated how

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

6 months

This is probably the best engineering design breakdown of SR-71 I've seen yet

How the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird Works

An intensive and thrilling look inside the SR-71 Blackbird, one of aviation's absolute greatest legends.Special thanks to Air Zoo Aerospace & Science Museum ...

www.youtube.com

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

Alright I’m sold, sorry SF 🙃 Also super cheap. Literally got a whole sandwich and cappuccino for 8€ and like a 8€ Margarita pizza. Feel like I could 3x my runway 😂.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

15 days

Long day of talking to some pretty cracked aero grads about joining our mission. Honestly pretty flattered on just how many people were excited about what we are working on. More to come :)

Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

16 days

I'll be representing @OpenOrionOrg at the @GeorgiaTech Aerospace Career Fair tomorrow. See you there if you are a Jacket.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

6 months

Robust simulation meshing has been achieved internally with completely open source tools.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

11 months

So just a little progress update here. I ended up writing a script to generate a dependency graph of the entire CAD kernel and inject an auto-differentiable "double." which is then written to a new generated library output. Doing this by hand began to get too tedious.

Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

11 months

Auto-differentiating the OpenCascade CAD kernel. This will provide CAD sensitivities for so many simulation optimization and machine learning applications. Super tedious but will be worth it.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

2 weeks and a ton of caffeine later I actually understand how simulators like @ANSYS work at an intricate level. I'm going to attempt to write my own from scratch in @PyTorch . Stay tuned for the dev stream on Twitch this week.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

Guess how many lines of code it took to generate this structured mesh with the new ezmesh? I'll give you a hint, it's not a lot. Making structured transfinite meshes is the struggle of CFD engineer's no more! Hopeful alpha release by Friday.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

3 months

Hey all, been a sec since I've been on here. Just updating we have some very useful tools in the works that should make their way out one after the other in the coming weeks. Proprietary engineering software companies have held us back for too long!

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 month

We need to start celebrating our achievements again—not just behind the doors of conferences, but in full view of the public. Shall we fail, excellence will be undermined by the loudest voices of cynicism and mediocrity.

Mo Mahmood

@MoMonuments

1 month

As of 2024, there has not been a World's Fair in the United States since the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition.

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Afshawn Lotfi

@afshawnl

1 year

This CFD was generated by a Deep Learning Model I made of 200k airfoil simulation samples. So excited to see where this goes. Goal is in the future 3D sims can be approximated in seconds rather than hours. Stay Tuned!

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