Our Work
A selection of client engagements across private industry and the public sector.
Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development
Public Sector — Emergency Management / Land Use Planning
High-performance geospatial risk analysis for statewide natural hazards planning. NWM delivered a parallel implementation of the PROMETHEE multi-criteria decision method at census-block scale across all of Oregon, along with the technical communication that helped a complex project succeed organizationally.
“NWM did a great job of creating a tool that we needed to accomplish an important objective in our project. They were effective at working with us to customize the tool to fit our exact needs and provided good documentation.”
— Fletcher O’Brien, Geospatial Analyst, Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries
Methods: Multi-criteria decision analysis, parallel computing, geospatial indexing, numerical optimization
Read the case study →
E4D Technologies / Planmeca
Private Sector — Medical Devices / Dental Technology
Real-time 3D scanning algorithm development for a handheld dental imaging system. NWM reverse-engineered a legacy codebase that had become a black box, restored the team’s understanding of their own system, and delivered a new parallelized SLAM implementation and novel meshing algorithm.
“Zach’s professionalism and desire to help us meet our goals was great. His understanding of complex mathematics was even better.”
— Brett Chladny, Director of Software Engineering, E4D Technologies
Methods: SLAM, parallel computing, computational geometry, 3D point cloud processing, meshing algorithms
Read the case study →NuScale Power
Private Sector — Nuclear Energy
NuScale Power is a global leader in nuclear energy specializing in the development and commercialization of small modular reactor technology. During a sustained engagement with NuScale, Northwest Mathematics carried out original research on complex two-phase flow phenomena in thermohydraulic systems, delivering technical reports and computational modeling tools as part of NuScale’s ongoing technical innovation in the field.
Methods: Dynamical systems, numerical simulation
Medema Labs
Private Sector — Defense / Manufacturing
As part of a US Navy SBIR Phase 1 project focused on geometry simplification software for CNC machining of topology-optimized parts, Northwest Mathematics helped develop software that takes a topology-optimized part model and outputs an approximating model with simplified geometry.
“We hired Northwest Mathematics to help us with a governmental research grant. Zach stepped into the team quickly and took on tasks and delivered results in a professional and timely fashion. The complex geometric tasks were more than we could handle, so it was great to have a capable individual join the team on short notice and help us get the results we needed.”
— Matt Campbell, PhD, CEO, Medema Labs
Methods: Topology optimization, computational geometry, 3D mesh processing
Complex Systems
As part of a DARPA funded research program aimed at modeling complex systems that are “social-like,” involving many interacting individuals, we developed new multiscale geometric techniques of analysis and prediction for such systems. We produced peer reviewed research by applying our new methods to large scale human population movement patterns using cellular phone data.
Ecology
Working with the City of Salem, Oregon, we built a machine learning system to better understand and forecast harmful algal blooms (HABs) in the municipal water supply. Whether or not a HAB occurs depends on the state of complex aquatic ecosystems, and gathering data through measurement can be costly and challenging. Many common ‘big data’ approaches do not apply in this regime, but certain geometric and topological approaches can yield actionable intelligence in such limited data situations.
Manufacturing
Working with a manufacturing software startup, we developed data management and analysis software for CNC programming workflows, organizing and analyzing part models, CNC code, tools, and machines across multiple shops. We also built a graphical user interface to help programmers efficiently map out their design approach informed by shop-wide data.
Statistical Simulation
Applying probabilistic modeling, we created simulation software used in the development and marketing of large scale casino gaming systems. We also helped design scoring and data management systems for use in online video game tournaments.
