Dr. Jan Vandenbrande

Dr. Jan Vandenbrande joined DARPA as a program manager in July 2015. He is interested in developing math and computational tools to radically improve the design of mechanical products. Topics of specific interest to Dr. Vandenbrande include: exploiting new design possibilities enabled by new materials and fabrication processes (3-D printing, composite fibers, micro truss structures) and enhancing design discovery.

Before joining DARPA, Dr. Vandenbrande was a technical fellow and senior manager of the Applied Math Geometry and Optimization group at Boeing. He leveraged his knowledge in geometric reasoning, production automation and design processes to create several advanced geometry processing systems to change how products are designed and made. Boeing uses these tools to conduct design trade and optimization studies, to enable proprietary composite layup fabrication processes, and to visualize metal machinability issues. Dr. Vandenbrande authored several parametric air and spacecraft models for design trade studies such as the hypersonic X-43C and the Orbital Space Plane study.

At Unigraphics, now Siemens NX, Dr. Vandenbrande worked on the architecture of the next-generation Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) system, improving tool path generation performance and revamping the CAM user interface. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rochester for his work on machinable feature recognition.