Digital twins: A personalized future of computing for complex systems | Karen Willcox | TEDxUTAustin

Digital twins have the potential to enable safer and more efficient engineering systems, a greater understanding of the natural world around us, and better medical outcomes for all of us as individuals. Director of UT Austin's Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, Karen Willcox, outlines the key role played by predictive models and data assimilation in creating digital twins, and how this technology can continue to change our world for the better.

Karen E. Willcox is Director of the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, Associate Vice President for Research, and Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds the W. A. “Tex” Moncrief, Jr. Chair in Simulation-Based Engineering and Sciences and the Peter O'Donnell, Jr. Centennial Chair in Computing Systems. Prior to joining the Oden Institute in 2018, she spent 17 years as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she served as Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the founding Co-Director of the MIT Center for Computational Engineering, and the Associate Head of the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. She is also an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

Willcox holds a Bachelor of Engineering Degree from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and masters and PhD degrees from MIT. Prior to becoming a professor at MIT, she worked at Boeing Phantom Works with the Blended-Wing-Body aircraft design group. She is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and in 2017 was appointed Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) for services to aerospace engineering and education. In 2022 she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

[RobTiffany]

Great presentation! It's nice to start seeing others talk about our little niche world of digital twins. I always use the Apollo 13 example in my presentations as well.

[zuznzww]

thank you because I decided today was the day I should finally learn what is a digital twin. I am sort of pleasantly surprised that the concept is as simple and accessible as this, and that there are all sorts of examples of digital twins already. I once studied and worked in aerospace, and these days I keep my distance, I started to feel like muddling my brain in that work kept me from the reality of how short, unpredictable, and really un-controllable life really is, and also, how very much we need to focus on protecting this planet. But! A talk like this gives me hope that bright, physics minded people care about human individuals by modelling things like tumors and hearts. It's a lot of energy (computing power is not really free) and maybe it will save lives and keep our planet livable for seven generations down the road.

Also, she is a great speaker, the presentation was engaging.

[daviddevlogger]

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[nicolecodbrajoe]

My dad would have loved this topic. ❤️

[rimjhimmajumdar]

Very nice talk. We should encourage others by sharing the same.

[jeffsternstein]

Really fantastic. It seems in many cases personalized digital twins are a long way off, but it is nice to be reminded by my Apple watch how much I am moving compared to yesterday.

Most near-term use cases like the weather example seem more like model refinement, using data for updating.

[TheHexTechGal]

Wonderful breakdown of a Digital Twin!

[garimatrivedi]

Digital Twin can make controlling machines excitings possible.. Awesome talk

[nmkone]

The future is all about science, our very existence depends on it and how we use it

[VanzRao]

Reminds me of some games:
Digital Twin of a city = Sim City
Digital Twin of a theme park = Roller Coaster Tycoon
Digital Twin of a plane = Flight Simulator
Digital Twin of a race car = GranTursimo
Digital Twin of a farm = Farming Simulator

[barronwiles]

Karen Willcox: imagine a digital earth!

Mark Zuccerburg: money

[MrProudindian]

Ctrl c Ctrl v, viola we have a digital twin. Tweak margins, pwd and Id viola we have a twin with diff biometrics

[BWMS]

Wow! thanks for your awareness of the techno human tracking and personal exposure/s, , 🧐🤔

[whattheydoexactly]

How do you think is digital twin will affect manufacturing sector ?

[frq_mk]

AI and QC will probably be perfect for creating digital twins of any scale.

[Lizzieverse]

As incredible as all of this sounds, I can't help but think of the monumental risks associated with it 🤔

[kenlane]

So you have an identity, and a digital identity. So if your digital identity, is determined to be unexceptionable. Then you may be having your digital identity deleted. Or dismissed, for being unacceptable.

[peachmango]

Who said "digital twin" first?

[andborna]

"Digital Twin = a personalized dynamically evolving model of a physical system"

[jonbikaku]

Considering how many times the word 'data' was used, this seemed more like a startup pitch than a TED talk 😅