Work

15 years across automotive R&D. The consistent thread: build the infrastructure that makes the problem tractable — not just solve the immediate instance of it.

2 patents · 3 simulation teams built from scratch · 10+ engineers led · 60% model dev time reduction (MBRD)

📄 Full Experience & CV →

🏆 Patents & Publications

Surfaced here because they represent the clearest external signal of original work.

• Patent: Cooling system for fuel cell vehicle/EV — Inventor’s Award, Mercedes-Benz, 2016
• Patent: Efficient power recapturing from vehicle suspension — Mercedes-Benz, 2017
• Publication: Estimating wood material properties for CFD fire modelling — Victoria University, Melbourne, 2010

🔋 Battery & Electrochemistry

The core domain — electrochemical modelling, thermal simulation, ageing, and system-level battery behaviour. Work spans cell characterisation through pack-level simulation across five companies.

• Battery Modeling: When Your Elegant Equation Meets Reality Cross-company · 2015–present · analysis ECM vs DFN vs data-driven — what each gets wrong, and why hybrids are the real answer.

• Thermal Management System Modeling Mercedes-Benz R&D · 2015–2021 · tool Building the full EV TMS from scratch — battery, inverter, DC-DC, coolant loop, HVAC — integrated into the in-house vehicle simulation framework.

• Battery Thermal Model Configurator Mercedes-Benz R&D · 2019–2021 · tool Couples CFD cooling channel results to a reduced-order thermal ROM — generates a fully-parameterised Simulink thermal model. 60% reduction in model development time.

• DC Box Thermal Modelling Mercedes-Benz R&D · 2016–2018 · analysis The component nobody thinks about until it fails. 96% experimental accuracy; design margin identified before hardware.

• Charging Time: Why 80% Is Not Half the Problem Mercedes-Benz R&D · 2017–2018 · analysis CC-CV physics, C-rate tradeoffs, and why fast charging is a thermal problem as much as an electrochemical one.

• Battery Simulation Framework Volvo Trucks R&D · 2022 · tool Standalone simulation environment with BMS-as-first-class-citizen, plus a PINN degradation model built for mobile inference.

• Virtual Cell Scaling A123 Systems · 2022–present · tool Physics-based scaling across capacity, form factor, and chemistry — for when you don’t have the cell you need.

• OpenFOAM Battery Simulator Self-initiated · open source · tool Python interface layer turning OpenFOAM CFD into a callable function — enabling parameter sweeps, optimisation, and AI integration. Full writeup →

🛠️ Engineering Tools Built

Tools that exist, are used, and reduce the cost of doing the next project. Mix of OEM-commissioned and self-initiated.

• Battery Thermal Model Configurator Mercedes-Benz R&D · 2019–2021 · tool 60% reduction in thermal model development time. Generates parameterised CFD-thermal ROM for HV battery systems.

• [Model Validation Framework] Mercedes-Benz R&D · 2018–2020 · tool Automated pipeline: fetch test data + battery model → run simulations → validate → upload report.

• Current Limits Generator A123 Systems · 2023 · tool Physics-based current envelope covering lithium plating onset, side reactions, thermal limits, and thermal runaway margin — aging-aware, OEM-deliverable.

• [Pack Cost Estimator] A123 Systems · 2023 · tool RFQ/pre-RFQ phase commercial tool — cell selection through pack concept cost in a single run.

• Front Fender Drag Optimization Hero MotoCorp · 2014 · method + tool ANN surrogate + Firefly algorithm. 12% drag reduction, 10× speedup versus CFD-in-loop. The method generalises.

⚙️ Mechanics, CFD & Dynamics

The foundation — structural analysis, contact mechanics, vibration, and fluid dynamics from the first decade of the career. The physics intuition from this work keeps appearing in battery and AI contexts.

• Tire Modelling: What a Spinning Ring Taught Me About Everything IIT Kanpur M.Tech · 2010–2011 · analysis Standing waves, critical velocity, contact mechanics. The thesis that established the pattern: rotate a structure and everything changes.

• Piston Rings: Friction, Sealing, and the Physics of Things That Touch TVS Motor Company · 2011–2013 · analysis Three simultaneous contact regimes, elastohydrodynamic lubrication, ring flutter. Where the interesting failure always lives at the boundary.

• Magnesium Alloy Wheel Design TVS Motor Company · 2012–2013 · method + analysis Topology optimisation, fatigue under realistic load spectra, thermal analysis. Material substitution is a system problem, not a materials problem.

• Engine Mounts: Designing Something to Fail Softly Hero MotoCorp · 2013–2015 · method NVH optimisation through stiffness design. Hybrid GA + Nelder-Mead, 15–20% cabin vibration reduction, verified on dynamometer.

• Radar Modeling for Autonomous Driving Mercedes-Benz R&D · 2016–2017 · analysis What sensors actually see — beam patterns, clutter, Kalman filter state estimation, and why edge cases aren’t edge cases.

• CFD Fire Modelling: The Inverse Problem Nobody Wants to Solve Victoria University, Melbourne · 2009 · method Material property estimation by running the physics model backwards. GA + Nelder-Mead, cross-validated, published.

🤖 AI & Code Intelligence

Self-initiated — built outside the day job to solve problems the existing toolchain couldn’t. Runs on local LLMs (LM Studio) for GDPR-compliant on-premise deployment — relevant for the German automotive context where sending engineering data to external APIs is not an option.

• AI Systems: Building Tools That Understand Code, Not Just Generate It Self-initiated · 2022–present · overview The design philosophy connecting these tools: structure before generation, understanding before output.

• Codebase Indexer Self-initiated · 2023–present · tool FAISS-based pre-filter navigation layer for local LLMs. Dependency graph, importance scoring, structural query layer. The difference between an agent that codes and one that understands.

• Hybrid Code Analyzer Self-initiated · 2024 · tool Static + dynamic analysis pipeline. Finds what neither alone can — runtime failures invisible to AST analysis, structural issues invisible to execution tracing.

• Alchemist - on-going Self-initiated · 2023 · tool Indexes past repositories, extracts architectural patterns, suggests new combinations. Synthesis over generation.

• Simple RAG Chatbot Self-initiated · 2022 · tool First local RAG experiment — document retrieval, context injection, local LLM inference. The seed of the current toolchain.