3-D bridge now opened!

The 3D printed bridge I had mentioned in a previous blog was installed and officially opened over an Amsterdam canal, last month. Besides the company printing this steel bridge, over six months, researchers from the Turing Institute, including my friend Mark Girolami, developed a virtual version of the bridge using embedded sensors to monitor the behaviour and evolution of the real bridge over time and usage. Next time I am in the city, I’ll make sure to run bridge sampling!

would you walk this bridge with Mark?!

Read this article on Mark Girolami (Warwick), now  Lloyd’s Register Foundation / Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair in Data Centric Engineering, who is starting a new project on the monitoring of the first 3D-printed bridge, soon to be installed in Amsterdam, by creating a virtual twin, fed by sensors from the real bridge, in order to check for safety and integrity. I like this notion of data-centric engineering! (Which sounds like the revenge of the statistician, at least in the ancient era of French engineering schools, when statistics was not considered a part of engineering.)

at the brain institute

For a rather convoluted reason, I happened to visit the Brain and Spine Institute (ICM, Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle Épinière) yesterday, in Paris, within the Pitié-Salpétrière Hospital. And saw this row of brains, printed by 3D printers, rather than standing in jars. (Like Abe Normal’s.) Which produced brain shadows, not commonly seen otherwise!