(Posted April 2022) Dr. Victor Pinks, II ’72, IT Director, Science Chair and Founder/Director of the CPARC Engineering Center at Marmion, was recently named 2022 Simulia Champion. Simulia Champions are active users of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and the SIMULIA portfolio. They specialize in structures, electromagnetics, multibody dynamics, and fluid dynamics. He is one of only 83 champions globally and is recognized for his passion and innovation in his field, specifically his work in the CPARC Engineering Center at Marmion. Dr. Pinks, a 1972 alumnus of Marmion, has a Doctorate in Chemical Physics which he obtained by writing Molecular Dynamic (MD) solvers for simulations. Upon graduation Dr. Pinks decided he would focus on commercializing his MD solver, and try to “build a future” that way. This path exposed him to the business world where he learned a great deal about raising funds, venture capitalist, intellectual property, and much more. Dr. Pinks came to Marmion in 2000 to teach chemistry and was excited about the flexibility given to him to incorporate technology with science. This also allowed him to continue moving his MD solvers forward. After the death of his first wife in 2007 he did a “deep dive” into artificial intelligence and connecting molecular solvers with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). That is where the idea for the CPARC Engineering program came to him. The CPARC Engineering program was created with the mission to provide an experiential learning environment for Computer Assisted Engineering (CAE) that benefits both businesses and high school students. Marmion’s CPARC Engineering program will only accept projects that businesses are working on and that students can learn what is necessary to contribute to the solution. In creating CPARC, Dr. Pinks understood that this created a new learning context in which to teach science. It is a new type of experiential learning, but he believed high school students could maneuver through the computer world “if adults would stop telling them what they could and couldn’t learn – adults needed simply to get out of the way.” Since the inception of the CPARC Engineering program, Marmion students have worked on various projects, most notably a hypersonic aerospace design optimization for Velontra, a deep-sea ROV umbilical cable, and a large federal project (that we cannot divulge). Also, it has a been the experience of the students that they cannot get enough processing speed, so Dr. Pinks and his Marmion students are working with XSEDE (a software program) to test XFlow (software program, pictured right) on high-performance computing assets using a 1000 GPU supercomputer. Because of this Marmion students will be rewriting the Xflow tutorials! In its ninth year, Marmion students have assisted major companies throughout the country in improving and solving engineering problems for their clients. Often the student are offered internships and even positions within the companies that they worked with in high school. Harrison Kearby ’16 who was part of the CPARC Engineering program wrote upon reading about Dr. Pinks Champion designation: “As an alum of the program, I’m excited and grateful for Dassault Systems continuous support. I’m still utilizing both the technical and professional skills I learned in CPARC on a daily basis. There’s nothing like learning at 16 the truth behind ‘no model is right, some models are useful.’ Keep up the great work Dr. Victor Pinks, II and company!”
This article is a summation of a blog by Katie Cory for Dassault Systems, published 2/4/22. To read the blog in its entirety, please click here.
Two Marmion CPARC students check a simulation they designed for the flow of a molten alloy casting of disk brakes. CPARC is the “Computational Prototyping And Research Center” located at Marmion Academy. Marmion CPARC is an engineering program for business/education collaboration opportunities.