A Personal Perspective on the New Era of Engineering
January 27, 2026
I recently had a fascinating conversation with a colleague who worked on Romania’s first nuclear reactor. She told me they managed complex CFD and design work without the availablity of computing power we have today. It was a striking reminder that engineering brilliance has always been about the elegance of the method.
In my career, I’ve seen how the world’s best companies—the ones leading R&D and high-end consulting—have their own "secret sauce." They don’t just rely on the commercial software we’re all taught in school. They have these internal, proprietary tools—their true superpowers—that can pull off equivalent of high-fidelity simulations on a standard laptop. They prioritize physics-based results backed by testing over brute-force computing.
Now, we are entering a period of even faster change. With AI and Machine Learning, I’m seeing an incredible surge in how we build these tools. What’s most exciting to me isn’t just the tech itself, but the people: I’m seeing a fusion of energy of both young engineers and the deep, battle-tested wisdom of our senior experts.
We’re also seeing the walls of the "black box" come down. Through open-source collaboration, engineers and academics are now automating the "grunt work"—everything from meshing to generative design and digital twins.
To me, this represents a massive shift. We are moving toward a world where we can solve the most complex problems with more intelligence with the kind of open tools/ capabilities available to us today. It’s an exciting time to be an engineer.
[Cover image generate by Google gemini]