Maplesoft Blogger Profile: Tom Lee

My wife will tell you that I am horrible at remembering important things like birthdays and sending Christmas cards on time … or at all. As we approach the end of another remarkable year, it’s always rewarding to reflect on the events of the year and take the time to thank all those who made the year so remarkable. So, in no particular order

Warning: this blog post contains strong language. Reader discretion is advised. Actually, it’s the posting in the Facebook group “Every time I walk into math class a little part of me dies” that contains the strong language. This group pulls almost 12,000 young students (mostly high school age) who share a common interest – the fear, loathing, and ultimately hatred of math.

Being inept at math is almost a badge of honor for many today. In a social gathering, even an adult one, it won’t be long until someone (typically articulate and educated) blurts out “I’m a complete zero when it comes to math” with some pride. Funny though … you don’t hear many shouting “I can’t read a single word!” with the same enthusiasm.

For the first time, Cybernet decided to coordinate two more major meetings with the TechnoForum – essentially creating a 2-day multiconference. In contrast to the Maplesoft-centric sessions of the Maple Techno Forum on Day 1, the second day was focused on industry problems and the technological and scientific solutions emerging from various sources.

A while back I posted an article on Maplesoft activities in Japan. As planned, last week, some colleagues and I made the trip to Japan and once again, came back with a bag full of stories and insights – technical, business, social, political – you can never spend a week in Japan and not be suitably impressed and surprised by the latest happenings.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been flying around the world on a press tour … sounds glamorous doesn’t it? Images of Brad Pitt or Prince William come to mind? Well, any similarities between a Brad Pitt press tour and one that I’m involved in is purely coincidental (if not miraculous). So what does one do on a Maplesoft press tour?

 Well, as it turns out, there actually is a fairly active community of journalists from far and wide who have a particular interest in recent developments in engineering and mathematical computing. And every year or so, we like to meet the press face to face to keep the lines of communication open between the company and these influential people of letters. This year, my tour took me through key regions in the US, UK, and Germany.

This weekend was reunion weekend for me. On Saturday I made the return journey to my alma mater, the University of Waterloo (i.e. I walked 10 minutes to the campus from my house), for the 20^th reunion of my Engineering Class of 1988. Among the various events and activities, I had the pleasure of having a sitdown chat with Professor Peter H. O’N. Roe, retired professor of Systems Design Engineering (my undergrad department) at the University.

The modern engineering achievements of Japanese industry are the stuff of legends. And for an engineering nerd like myself, Japanese industry quite often equates with the many qualities that drew us into engineering –precision, vision, and technological ambition.  So it’s no surprise that each time I visit Japan, I feel like a kid again, eagerly waiting to discover yet another technological marvel -- whether it’s something very important like automotive powertrains that consume ridiculously small amounts of fuel or something that’s just plain fun (like this), I’m generally in a constant state of amazement if not giddiness during my visits.

Yesterday I watched a demonstration of Maple being applied to the modeling and simulation of the internal deformations of human bones. The researcher was a mathematician working primarily in the biomedical modeling fields. The actual technique was to utilize the symbolic mathematical power of Maple to formulate the necessary equation pieces for a finite element model (FEM) of the internals of the bone. The equations are then fed into the legendary FEM solver ABAQUS.

Due to the notoriously non-linear qualities of human flesh and bone, traditional formulation methods developed for modeling beams and metals simply do not work. So as in the case of so many impressive engineering applications, the power of Maple is being deployed in the formulation or the pre-solution phase of modeling and in doing so, previously infeasible models now become feasible.

One of the greatest pleasures of my job is meeting users and learning first hand of their achievements (hopefully with our products). Last week was a particularly eventful week and a distinct highlight was a visit our friends at the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) in Montréal.

Two very significant things happened last week. First, my son Eric turned 13. Second, I got a new car. These two milestones merged into a singularly great long weekend as Eric and did our very first father-son roadtrip to the great city of Cleveland. The car was the first new car my family had bought in about eight years, and as hard as I tried to maintain meaningful conversation with Eric through the many hours, I have to admit that my attention was frequently diverted to the car … thoughts of “hey … that’s a nice ride”, “so that’s what sport suspension feels like”, or “Yes Eric, that’s a very good question on the American election but … I wonder what that button does”.

As Maplesoft’s Chief Evangelist, I get countless opportunities to present the joys of Maple and our other products to people. Often, I’m the model corporate citizen and make sure I stay true to all of the key messaging that our Marketing folks force us to repeat … but if you actually experience one of my live presentations, you’ll notice that I often sneak in a whole slew of personal commentary and anecdotes on my 20 or so years with this technology … often stories that never make it to our official scripts. So as my inaugural blog post, I thought I’d start with what turns my crank when I have to present our products to the world. Here’s my Top 10 list of things that still impresses me to no end …