Imagining a World that Works

The discipline of the marketplace has a remarkable ability to unleash creativity, but these days, it may not be enough. In our era, industrial innovations must not only make a profit, but they must also make peace with the earth. To create products and processes that are well-adapted to life, innovators are turning to a new design discipline called biomimicry. Biomimicry consults nature for inspiration, design ideas, and standards. Life has been on Earth for 3.8 billion years—the same planetary conditions in which we are trying to build our homes, grow our food, make our materials, run our businesses. Life has already done everything we want to do, but at a lot less cost to the planet. Realizing this, scientists and designers are now consciously emulating life’s genius. Explore biomimicry as both a philosophy and a practical methodology with examples of groundbreaking innovations and their role in ensuring the success of a new industrial revolution that is greener and more sustainable over the long haul. 

Dr. Dayna Baumeister, Co-founder – Biomimicry 3.8

With a devotion to applied natural history and a passion for sharing the genius of nature, Dr. Dayna Baumeister has worked in the field of biomimicry with business partner Janine Benyus since 1998, traveling the world as a biomimicry thought-leader, business consultant, and professor. Together they founded the Biomimicry Guild consulting practice, The Biomimicry Institute 501c3, and most recently, Biomimicry 3.8, a B-Corp social enterprise that helps clients find innovation inspired by nature and offers the highest level of biomimicry training to professionals worldwide.

Dayna’s foundational work has been critical to the biomimicry movement, establishing it as a fresh and innovative practice, as well as a philosophy to meet the world’s sustainability challenges. As an educator, researcher, and design consultant, Dayna has helped more than 100 companies consult the natural world for elegant and sustainable design solutions, as diverse as Nike, Interface, General Mills, Boeing, Google, Natura, Herman-Miller, Kohler, Seventh Generation and Procter & Gamble. Dayna is a natural systems thinker and brings a unique perspective to her work to help others see nature as model, measure, and mentor. She designed and teaches the world’s first MS in Biomimicry as a Professor of Practice at ASU, co-founded, and now directs The Biomimicry Center at ASU, and compiled more than 20 years of experience in the practice of biomimicry into the Biomimicry Resource Handbook: A Seed Bank of Knowledge and Best Practices (2013).

Human Plus Machine: How Sarcos is Revolutionizing the Future of Work with Industrial Robotics

With the prospect of increasing labor shortages among a wide variety of industries, combined with the significant costs of occupational injuries and the ever-increasing pressure to increase productivity, leading robotics company, Sarcos, is in a unique position to deploy industrial robotics designed to increase productivity while eliminating injuries by augmenting rather than replacing human workers.

Chris Beaufait, COO of Sarcos, will discuss the current robotics landscape, why automation is not the right solution to the problems industries are facing, how Sarcos and its product lineup–including the full body, fully powered Guardian XO exoskeleton–will play a critical role in defining the workforce of tomorrow, and his vision for the robotics industry over the next five to 10 years.  

Chris Beaufait, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer – Sarcos Robotics

Chris Beaufait serves as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Sarcos Robotics, where he is responsible for managing scale production and manufacturing of Sarcos’ products. He is also responsible for the leadership, and the successful development, launch and commercialization of the company’s exoskeleton and humanoid systems business.

Beaufait is a technology-focused business leader with deep global experience. Prior to joining Sarcos, he led the Asia Pacific & China business as a Group SVP and President for Vestas, the world’s leading wind power and services company. For a period of 16 years prior to Vestas, he worked for the General Electric Company and held a variety of senior executive roles, including President of China Commercial Aircraft Programs, President and General Manager for GE’s global avionics business, and as the Leader of Business Development (mergers, acquisitions and partnerships) for GE Corporate China, GE Aviation and GE Transportation. Prior to GE, Beaufait served for 11 years in the U.S. Navy as a Naval Officer and certified nuclear engineer. He also holds multiple Six Sigma certifications.

Beaufait serves as a Board member for Heartland Water Technology, and as an Advisory Board member for Securrency. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy with a Bachelor of Science in Systems Engineering.

Breaking Design Silos with Real-Time Collaboration

This presentation outlines an approach the Navy is adopting to dramatically reduce the cycle time of delivering critical technologies to the Fleet in response to future threats.  The approach, called Systems Engineering Transformation (SET), leverages MBSE and Model-based design, but is more than that.  It dismantles the systems engineering vee in favor of a highly concurrent process with more rapid and continuous government engagement with the contractor.  Paper artifacts are replaced by a digital Single Source of Truth. Large-scale design reviews are replaced by continuous design reviews geared towards production release.  The goal (of necessity) is to cut cycle time in half.

David Cohen, Chief Engineer, Naval Air Warfare Center, Aircraft Division – NAVAIR

Mr. Cohen currently serves as the Chief Engineer, NAWCAD where he has engineering cognizance and technical authority over the 5000-plus engineers at the Warfare Center. He is responsible for agile execution of NAWCAD engineering technical authority, to include innovative technical approaches to speed program RDT&E and transition technology to the Fleet. He represents NAWCAD engineering both internally and externally and has direct involvement in all Naval Aviation Programs supported by NAWCAD engineering.

Mr. Cohen previously served as the Director of the Systems Engineering Department.  In this role, he leads a national department with a combined workforce of over 1500 military, civilian and contractor personnel across 8 major sites.  He had systems engineering cognizance for all rotary, fixed-wing, unmanned vehicles and weapons programs in NAVAIR and assigns, supervises and oversaw the Chief Engineers for each of these platforms.  He was the Executive responsible for NAVAIR’s Systems Engineering acquisition process.

In 2014 Mr. Cohen stood up and served as the first Director of the Mission Engineering & Analysis Department, a major step in moving the Navy into establishing programs, acquiring and delivering capabilities with a System of Systems, Integrated Warfighting methodology.

Mr. Cohen was selected to the Senior Executive Service in September, 2004 and has 37 years of civilian service with the Department of the Navy.

From 1999-2004 Mr. Cohen was the Chief Engineer of the V-22 Osprey.  His tenure on the Osprey began shortly before the two fatal mishaps which grounded and nearly terminated the program.  He developed and directed the V-22 Technical Recovery Program which resolved the technical issues, and helped convince DoD leadership to continue the program.

From 1988 to 1999 he was the F-14 Chief Engineer.  During his tenure in this position he directed the transformation of the F-14 from strictly a fighter platform to the Navy’s premier strike-fighter, through the integration of systems such as LANTIRN, laser-guided and GPS guided weapons, night-vision, and ground-mapping radar.

He began his career in 1982 in the Propulsion and Power Division.    As the lead project engineer for the A-4/A-6/EA-6B propulsion system he developed the J-52 Recovery Program – a $1B effort to overcome fatigue and other issues associated with the aging fleet of engines.  He then became the system program manager for the F-14B/D propulsion system where he directed the completion of development, qualification, integration and initial production of the new F110 engine.

Mr. Cohen earned his Bachelor’s of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Youngstown State University in 1982.  His professional recognition includes award of the Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Executive Service; Vice President’s Reinventing Government (Hammer) Award, multiple recipient of the Department of the Navy Meritorious Service Award and recipient of the Department’s highest civilian honor, the Distinguished Service Award.  Mr. Cohen is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi Honorary Societies and a NAVAIR Associate Fellow.

Transformative Flight Transportation: Challenges Become Opportunities

Advances in energy storage, motor efficiency, and flight control systems have us on the potential cusp of a revolution in air mobility.  This comes at a time when many traditional transportation infrastructures are saturated and new modes of mobility are desperately needed.  The presentation will provide an overview of recent developments in urban– and extended–air–mobility and discuss the hurdles that must be overcome, not only technical obstacles but also challenges in regulations, societal acceptance, and business.  The presentation will provide context with an overview of our own technical challenges and successes, from the imminent Transition® to the aspirational TF-X. 

Josh Elvander, Vice President of Global Engineering – Terragugia

Josh Elvander is the Vice President of Global Engineering at Terrafugia. He has over 20 years of experience developing advanced technologies at diverse aerospace and robotics companies.  Prior to joining Terrafugia he was the lead mechanical engineer at Piaggio Fast Forward. Josh started his career working on hypersonic propulsion at Rocketdyne Propulsion and Power and spent several years at Bluefin Robotics. He has an MS degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Washington and a BS degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland.

Altair and Oracle: At the Forefront of Engineering Simulation in the Cloud

Altair and Oracle bring users the best in on-demand engineering simulation in the cloud. Leveraging the best in expertise and infrastructure, our combined solution provides ease of use, high availability and a robust, highly elastic computing environment. Oracle provides a secure, enterprise-grade cloud with compute infrastructure suitable for high-performance computing workloads, specifically those used for engineering simulations. In this presentation, we will see how Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) facilitates Altair Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and HyperWorks Unlimited virtual appliances as a differentiated offering for customers.

Tejas Karmarkar, Senior Principal Product Manager – Oracle

Tejas Karmarkar is a Senior Principal Product Manager for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in OCI HQ. in Seattle WA USA. He and his team are responsible for engineering and business strategy for Industry verticals such as Automotive, Manufacturing, Oil & Gas and Financial Services worldwide.  Before Oracle Tejas worked at Microsoft for 12 years in various roles specifically in Microsoft Azure Compute Engineering where he was responsible for HPC/Big Compute.  Prior to joining Microsoft, Tejas worked at Altair Engineering Inc for more than 8 years and has extensive experience in the automotive industry. Altogether, he has more than 21 years of experience in the manufacturing, cloud and software industry. Tejas has a Bachelor and master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, as well as an MBA from Michigan State University.

Identifying and Capturing Business Growth Opportunities with Machine Learning 

With a culture of innovation firmly entrenched in its corporate DNA, Maxion Wheels relentlessly pursues ways to continuously improve its products and business. 

As an example, in 2005, the company was an early adopter of Altair’s topology optimization technology, OptiStruct, which today is an important precursor in influencing their design process prior to CAD definition. The results have led to faster time to market and improved performance by addressing design requirements from the very beginning. 

Aspiring to extract business value from the large volume of data generated throughout the company, last year Maxion Wheels kicked-off an internal study on business areas where machine learning could have a beneficial impact. As a result, the wheel manufacturing process was identified as a high-value target of significance.   While Maxion’s industry leading wheel production operations are almost fully automated to achieve their high–volume production run rates, there are certain process and material parameters that require a deeper understanding of acceptable ranges in order to improve production rates.

With this diagnostic on hand, the advanced engineering department began a collaborative research project with universities and startups which ultimately led to collaboration with Altair and its Knowledge Works platform.  This presentation describes how machine learning is creating another disruptive methodology for the Maxion as well as the returns the company is already realizing with this new approach in terms of quality, reliability and profitability. 

Carlos Lopes, Global Director, Advanced Engineering – Maxion Wheels

Carlos Eduardo Lopes earned his BS from UNIFEI Univ Federal de Itajuba (Brazil) 1989, MS in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan State University (USA) and MBA from Fundação Don Cabral (Brazil).  His engineering career started in 1990 with Maxion Wheels’ Special Projects department as designer engineer, in Cruzeiro/Sao Paulo/Brazil.  In 2002, he joined the Commercial vehicle Steel Wheels Product Engineering,  as a Manager, with the responsibilities of Product Optimization, CAE& CAD, Data Acquisition, Testing and Validation.  In 2013, he became the Global Engineering Director for CV Steel Wheels in Germany and finally, in 2015 became the Advanced Engineering Global Director.  Recently in 2017 start working with Machine Learning at Advanced Engineering department applied on manufacture process within Maxion Wheels.

Mobilizing Humanity in a New Way

Transportation is a multibillion-dollar industry that has yet to meaningfully innovate against issues of gridlock, pollution and traveler discomfort. Current systems rely heavily on government subsidies, an expensive and unreliable paradigm. The rise in metropolitan populations brings the need for satellite urban settlements with fast connection to city centers.  

In a world of constant innovation, why did transportation get a pass? We know there’s a better way of getting from A to B. Future generations need greener and more efficient transportation system. 

Rob Miller, Chief Marketing Officer, will discuss how Hyperloop Transportation Technologies and its partners are building a transportation system that moves people and goods at unprecedented speeds safely, efficiently, and sustainably. Through the use of unique, patented technology and an advanced business model of lean collaboration, open innovation, and integrated partnership, HyperloopTT is creating and licensing technologies.  

Founded in 2013, HyperloopTT is a global team comprised of more than 800 engineers, creatives and technologists in 52 multidisciplinary teams, with 40 corporate and university partners. Headquartered in Los Angeles, CA, HyperloopTT has offices in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, UAE; Bratislava, Slovakia; Toulouse, France; São Paulo, Brazil; and Barcelona, Spain. HyperloopTT has built a full-scale prototype in Toulouse, France and has signed agreements in the United States, UAE, France, India, China, Korea, Indonesia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Ukraine. 

Rob Miller, Chief Marketing Officer – HyperloopTT

A neuroscientist with more than 20 years of international experience in global marketing and operations, Rob Miller is dedicated to innovating in the space where art and technology meet. He joined Hyperloop Transportation Technologies in 2016 as Chief Marketing Officer where he now leads a world-class team working on the next breakthrough in mobility.

Prior to joining HyperloopTT, Rob spent more than a decade in Asia. As CMO and head of Asia operations for Cotton USA, he led a team that spanned 17 offices in over 40 countries, repositioning and relaunching the brand to a modern, digitally-minded, always-connected consumer.

Rob speaks fluent Japanese. He currently resides in Los Angeles.

Empathetic Engineering

Andiamo started with the belief that having a happy family is a basic human right. What happens when you build a company that is totally focused on the outcome of a happier family? What happens when you embed empathy into the engineering process?

Naveed R. Parvez, Chief Executive Officer – Andiamo

Naveed has worked almost exclusively in startups both in the public and private sectors. His background in tech, operations, and project management combined with his experience as a parent of a severely disabled child led to Andiamo. An AI and 3D printing platform founded with his wife Samiya, Andiamo has a mission to deliver 10 million positive healthcare outcomes by 2030 starting with delivering precision medical wearables to children with long term conditions and disabilities.

Rapid Exploration and Development of Intelligent & Efficient Vehicle Architectures

Altair’s C123 process to create Simplified Loadpath Models (SLMs) for advanced body in white (BIW) design concepts provide a highly flexible and rapid platform to explore body structure loadpath alternatives and performance: weight optimization. The C2/SLM modelling process combines higher-order Beam and Bush finite elements with coarsened Shell-meshed panels to represent the body structure. FCA US LLC has understood and validated the C2 process for a BIW, and correlated key structural performance metrics to higher-order, detailed Finite Element (FE) models. While the benefits of loadpath optimization through Beam element parameter variation is well-documented and applied extensively for these types of models, so this paper covers another valuable benefit of the SLMs; to provide a better understanding of the sensitivities and influence of joint stiffnesses on key body structure attributes to promote more intelligent and efficient body structure joint designs. 

James Truskin, Technical Fellow, FCA US LLC

James Truskin has worked extensively in advanced body design and platform development for almost 20 years, including the product engineering and integration of lightweight materials for car body systems. At FCA US LLC he is the Technical Fellow for Body – Advanced Architecture. In this role, he is responsible for the identification and development of new Body strategies, technologies, processes and tools that are used for structural design and optimization throughout the product development process.

Mr. Truskin holds a Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, where he majored in structures and composite materials.