CDFAM Computational Design Symposium

Deterministic engineering analysis assigns fixed values to loading conditions, geometry, and material properties. The approach is tractable, but it forces a choice between conservative overdesign and exposure to failure modes that fall outside assumed limits. Neither outcome is satisfying.Greg Grigoriadis of Metisec describes a design toolkit that replaces fixed inputs with statistical distributions and runs Monte Carlo simulations across the resulting parameter space. The output is a probabilistic picture of performance: failure probabilities, sensitivity rankings, and the specific conditions that actually drive risk.A sensor mounting bracket for a smart wearable serves as the...

Body-in-White development sits at the intersection of structural performance, manufacturability, and schedule pressure — and traditional workflows are increasingly strained by the pace of platform proliferation and regulatory demands. This episode examines how SEAT/CUPRA is modernizing BIW development through Synera’s Multi-Agent System (MAS), connecting CAD, CAE, and manufacturing processes within a unified automation framework to accelerate iteration and improve engineering traceability.Tilman Steininger, Customer Success Manager for Agentic Engineering at Synera, and Juan De Dios Escribano Felguera, Team Lead for Body-in-White and Corrosion Development at SEAT/CUPRA, present their collaborative work digitizing structural development work...

The gap between geometric modeling and structural simulation has always been a workflow problem as much as a technical one. Every time a designer changes a shape, the mesh breaks, boundary conditions need redefining, and the simulation has to be rerun from scratch. At the scale of iterative or generative design workflows, that overhead compounds quickly.In this episode recorded at CDFAM Barcelona 2026, Johannes Mueller-Roemer presents SubSimX, a pipeline that addresses this by treating subdivision surfaces as a native simulation medium rather than a preprocessing step. Designers work on a standard Catmull-Clark control mesh. Meshing and boundary...

Topology optimization has long been constrained by the computational cost of working at meaningful scale. For architectural and civil engineering applications — where domains span tens of meters and element counts run into the millions — that constraint has made high-fidelity structural synthesis largely impractical on standard hardware.In this episode recorded at CDFAM Barcelona 2026, Raul C. Llamas-Sandin presents a GPU-accelerated solver that addresses this directly, reducing solve times for large-scale problems to minutes on a workstation. He covers the key technical features that make it relevant for the built environment: asymmetric tension-compression stress constraints, thermoelastic analysis, and geometric cons...

Most 3D generative AI has been built to produce things that look right. Hao (Richard) Zhang argues that for the built environment, that is the wrong objective. Buildings must function — and that means AI systems need to reason about spatial relationships, load paths, equipment routing, and regulatory constraints, not just geometry.In this episode recorded at CDFAM Barcelona 2026, Richard introduces Functional AI as a framework for 3D design automation and walks through Augmenta’s work applying it to real building projects. The technical scope covers agentic AI for MEP path finding, generative modeling of complex stru...

Mike Frei, of ARENA Physica, joins CDFAM Barcelona 2026 to discuss the company’s AI foundation model for electromagnetism and what it means for the future of electronic hardware design.Mike brings an unusual combination of deep physics intuition - PhD from Columbia studying geometry and electron behavior at the molecular scale - and operational experience from McKinsey and C-suite roles at Swiss aerospace and defense company RUAG. That background informs Arena’s approach to reimagining electromagnetic simulation across semiconductors, aerospace, and automotive sectors.The conversation covers how Arena is building what they call Artificial Intuition for...

Pablo Hermoso Moreno, Senior Solutions Architect at NVIDIA, joins CDFAM Barcelona 2026 to discuss how AI is reshaping Computer-Aided Engineering workflows.Pablo draws on his background in aerospace engineering, aerodynamics at Mercedes F1, and cloud-scale AI at AWS to frame where CAE bottlenecks actually live - and what NVIDIA is doing about them. The conversation covers AI physics and surrogate models for real-time simulation feedback, the role of digital twins, and how agentic AI built on the NVIDIA NeMo stack is automating end-to-end engineering workflows.He also walks through the AI-Q Blueprint, a production-ready enterprise research...

Recorded at CDFAM Computational Design Symposium, NYC, October 29-30, 2025https://cdfam.com/nyc-2025/Organization:MITPresenter:Alfonso Parra RubioCrease, Fold, Transform. Presentation AbstractFolding is a fundamental process found throughout nature on multiple scales. Rather than altering the material itself, folding transforms its shape, offering a powerful means of engineering without compromising integrity.This presentation explores, from an engineering and design perspective, the unique potential of folding and discrete assembly as a design and manufacturing tool across multiple scales in engineering.From millimeter-scale bulk cellular materials to meter-scale structural corrugations and actuated robotic systems, and ultimately to...

Recorded at CDFAM Computational Design Symposium, NYC, October 29-30, 2025https://cdfam.com/nyc-2025/OrganizationPrinceton UniversityPresenter:Tuo ZhaoSuper-Modular Chiral Origami MetamaterialsPresentation AbstractMetamaterials with multimodal deformation mechanisms resemble machines, especially when endowed with autonomous functionality. A representative architected assembly, with tunable chirality, converts linear motion into rotation (1). These chiral metamaterials with a machine-like dual modality have potential use in areas such as wave manipulation, optical activity related to circular polarization and chiral active fluids. However, the dual motions are essentially coupled and cannot be independently controlled. Moreover, they are restricted to small deformation, that is, strain ≤2%, which li...

Recorded at CDFAM Computational Design Symposium, NYC, October 29-30, 2025https://cdfam.com/nyc-2025/Organization: STILFOLDhttps://www.stilfold.com/Presenter:Julia HannuGreener by Every Fold. Strength in Every Curve. Presentation AbstractThis talk introduces STILFOLD’s innovative origami-inspired manufacturing process, where metal sheets are folded into form. The process uses both straight and curved crease folding, expanding the possibilities of how sheets can be transformed into products. This, to make curved crease folding accessible to a wider community of designers and engineers – moving it from a niche research technique into a scalable indu...

Recorded at CDFAM Computational Design Symposium, NYC, October 29-30, 2025https://cdfam.com/nyc-2025/OrganizationTetmethttps://www.tetmet.net/Presenter:Rachel AzulayConformal Lattice Design Made Easy: A CAD-Integrated ApproachPresentation AbstractTETMET has developed an innovative process to produce large-scale lattice structures in an automated way, enabling applications across multiple industries.However, existing lattice design software has significant limitations, particularly when it comes to creating efficient, manufacturable conformal lattice structures. Most available tools were developed with general 3D printing in mind, offering only basic latticing capabilities that fail to meet the demands of more...

Recorded at CDFAM Computational Design Symposium, NYC, October 29-30, 2025https://cdfam.com/nyc-2025/OrganizationScawo3DPresenter:Philip Schneider + Timo ZollnerComputational Design for Assembly: Automating Design Workflows for 3D Concrete Printed Freeform StaircasesPresentation AbstractBuilding large freeform reinforced concrete staircases has always been a challenge. Traditional methods rely on labor-intensive wooden or EPS formwork, making many designs too expensive. This can be changed with Selective Paste Intrusion, a new 3D concrete printing technique by Scawo3D using a large particle bed, with no constraints related to print overhangs or angles.While fabrication now allows full geometric freedom, the design process...

Recorded at CDFAM Computational Design Symposium, NYC, October 29-30, 2025https://cdfam.com/nyc-2025/nTopBradley RothenbergFrom 3 Configurations to 300: Rapid Trades for Advanced Aircraft DesignPresentation AbstractAircraft development timelines have collapsed from 7 years to 18 months, but design tools still assume you have years to iterate. The result: teams freeze architecture in week 2, before they understand the design space, and spend the rest of the program managing the consequences.The core problem is going from requirements-to-design is just too slow. Serial design evaluations, manual CAD updates that fail to parametrize correctly, and expensive simulation cycles create weeks-long iteration loops.nTop solves this through...

Recorded at CDFAM Computational Design Symposium, NYC, October 29-30, 2025https://cdfam.com/nyc-2025/Organization:Pasteur LabsPresenter:Alexander LavinThe Unreasonable Effectiveness of Simulation IntelligencePresentation AbstractScientific rigor & engineering reliability have always been important yet contentious topics in the AI field. Recent AI trends crank up model sizes, but at what costs? Transparency and verifiability, amongst others that are core to industrial R&D—not to mention the massive spending. These costs are perhaps felt the most in physics simulation and digital engineering. Enter si...

Recorded at CDFAM Computational Design Symposium, NYC, October 29-30, 2025https://cdfam.com/nyc-2025/Organization:ARENA-AIPresenter:Pratap RanadeArtificial Intuition: Building an AI Mind for Electromagnetic DesignPresentation AbstractMost advances in computational design focus on mechanical structure — domains we can visualize and have evolved an intuition for. But as modern hardware becomes increasingly software defined, the unseen and unintuitive world of electromagnetism is taking center stage. Conventional solvers can simulate fields, yet they cannot imagine new ones. In this talk, I’ll share how we’r...

Recorded at CDFAM Computational Design Symposium, NYC, October 29-30, 2025https://cdfam.com/nyc-2025/Organization:University of Southern CaliforniaPresenter:David GerberDigital Twining a Living LabPresentation AbstractThe Living Lab Project is an innovative Viterbi initiative designed to enhance academic research and provide practical learning experiences through real-time monitoring and analysis of the new Ginsburg Hall building. Leveraging sensors embedded in the building’s systems and integrating cutting-edge digital twin technology, this project captures and analyzes data on energy usage, water consumption, building health an...

Recorded at CDFAM Computational Design Symposium, NYC, October 29-30, 2025https://cdfam.com/nyc-2025/Organization:CORE studio | Thornton TomasettiPresenter:Sergey PigachEngineering Intelligence: Practical Applications of AI in Structural Engineering PracticePresentation AbstractArtificial Intelligence is no longer a distant future. It is actively shaping how structural engineers work, collaborate, and innovate. This session offers a practical look into how Thornton Tomasetti’s CORE studio is advancing AI integration within the firm, with a focus on real-world tools and workflows that enhance engineering practice. Attendees wi...

Recorded at CDFAM Computational Design Symposium, NYC, October 29-30, 2025https://cdfam.com/nyc-2025/Organization:NVIDIAPresenter:Ian PeglerKeynote Presentation: How NVIDIA Is Accelerating Product DevelopmentPresentation AbstractComputational simulation and design have transformed product development by significantly reducing time and costs. However, designing complex products remains a challenging and resource-intensive process.In this presentation, we will explore key industry challenges and demonstrate how NVIDIA is leveraging innovative solutions to address them. Specifically, we will highlight the use of accelerated computing to enable...

Recorded at CDFAM Computational Design Symposium, NYC, October 29-30, 2025https://cdfam.com/nyc-2025/OrganizationDavid Burpee DesignPresenter:David BurpeeComputational Morphogenesis: Leveraging Proceduralism to Unlock Temporal DesignPresentation AbstractCurrent paradigms of design and engineering operate on the premise that realized designs are static – that is once they are designed and manufactured they exist in their final state. Likewise even flexible computational systems tend to not incorporate the dimension of time as a design tool. Despite dozens or hundreds of sl...

Organization:Harman InternationalPresenter:Austin MitchellAcoustic-Driven Computational Design: Premium Branded Audio In The Automotive IndustryPresentation AbstractIn the evolving landscape of automotive experiences, premium audio has become a defining element of in-cabin experiences and brand identity. At Harman International, we sit at the intersection of acoustic engineering, branded storytelling, and advanced manufacturing—designing audio systems globally for over fifty automotive manufacturers. This presentation explores how computational design is central to our industrial design strategy, enabling our team to generate highly manufacturable, acoustically-performative designs that are bo...