In this episode of Inspiring Computing, I chat with Filip Rak, the team leader at the Czech Aerospace Research Center. Filip tells me about his journey from engineering to leading the development of attitude and orbit control systems for satellites. We talk about the technical challenges and triumphs, like launching satellites and using MATLAB and MicroPython. Filip also shares how they took a selfie from space at their facility and how this achievement inspired future projects. He also talks about the complexity of late attitude control, using cube sats with limited resources, and their agile risk tolerance approach. The conversation highlights how advanced computing is used in aerospace and emphasizes the importance of balancing innovation with practical constraints.

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In this episode, we go deep into the tram manufacturing business with Robert Grepl more specifically, what does it take to be able to create a tram that does not crash into any infrastructure in an existing city? Have you ever wondered why there's only a couple of centimeters between the tram and the infrastructure? How do tram manufacturers and cities, figure out which obstacles to avoid, and what infrastructure needs to be built or avoided when a tram has put you into a city

Robert explains from the beginning where trams manufacturers in cities make decisions what the common tools they use and how his company, which created a simulation engine called TRAMotion helps solve this problem.

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In this episode of inspiring computing, Max shares, how he created Callr.ai an AI caller agent called Julia, and how Julia can be integrated into phone agents, transforming people's businesses, around a practical use case of AI. Not only does Julia schedule appointments and potentially replace that first line of phone calls but could be also integrated into CRMs and completely transform the way that cells and or internal requests services, HR processes are done.

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In this episode, I have a wonderful conversation with Ralf Gommers, a director of Quansight Labs, and he's a key contributor to NumPy. He shares his journey of how he started working on and contributing to several open source projects. But more importantly, the journey that he took inside NumPy.

NumPy is a project that most scientific computing projects rely on heavily. Ralf shares the thought behind its governance model, the importance of having community funding models, and how to maintain long term open-source projects.

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In this episode, we explore the journey of Juan Luis an aerospace engineer turned data scientist who now works at QuantumBlack, part of McKinsey. Starting with a background in aerospace engineering, he transitioned from using proprietary software like Mathematica to open-source tools, ultimately becoming an influential figure in the Python community. As a co-founder of PyData Spain and organizer of PyCon Spain, he has made significant contributions to the open-source ecosystem. Currently, he’s working on Kedro, an open-source data science and engineering library. The episode delves into his thoughts on the role of generative AI in the industry, Kedro’s approach to modularity, and the importance of community and open-source collaboration.

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In this episode, I speak with Wolf Vollprecht Co-founder of Prefix.dev and to key player in the condo forge ecosystem. We discuss the critical role of open source infrastructure, like PyPi aAnd the monthly cost associated with it emphasizing the importance of sustained investment for infrastructure.

Wolf shares his journey from studying mechanical engineering and falling in love with open source to contributing, to Conda forge and creating Mamba and pixi, a fast package manager. We dive into the capabilities of pixie a Rust based package management tool designed to be faster and more efficient than Conda. Pixie integrates well with both conda forge and PyPi environments and addresses the dependency and reproducibility issues, and supports cross-platform package management. Wolf also talks about the open-core business model supported by VC funding and grants, aiming to build a sustainable and enhanced packaging management ecosystem.

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This episode describes an interview with Teddy, the creator of the YouTube channel Branch Education. Which focuses on deep diving into engineering and technology topics using animation. Teddy started the channel in 2018, after working in the semiconductor industry, particularly on iron implanters. This episode outlines, how he makes his videos, including the extensive research and 3D modeling and blender and discusses the future of brunch education, hoping to create a high school. Engineering curriculum.

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In this podcast, Abel discusses his transition from academia and Brazil to becoming a research software engineer in the Netherlands. He emphasizes his reasons for choosing Julia such as its package ecosystem and speed. Abel details, his involvement with the Netherlands eScience Center, where he collaborates with researchers to develop software solutions. He also covers his background in applied mathematics and his early adoption and advocacy of Julia. The conversation touches on Julia Smooth Optimizers its utility and optimizing non-linear problems. And the importance of benchmarking for development. Abel shares insights into maintaining multiple interdependent packages in the Julia. And underscores the role of automation in testing and documentation. You also mentioned his contributions to the Juliet community through YouTube. And expresses openness to collaborating and supporting both academic and industrial projects involving Julia.

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