Dr. Jake Koester has over seventeen years of experience in running, researching, and developing computational mechanics codes. He spent over ten years at Sandia National Laboratories, where he began as an analyst specializing in transient-dynamic structural analysis. Jake's dedication to improving the design-to-analysis workflow grew from his painstaking work meshing complex parts. He earned a Ph.D. in Structural Engineering from the University of California, San Diego, where he developed mesh-free methods for enabling accelerated simulation development. Jake furthered his research as the principal investigator for the Conforming Reproducing Kernel Method (CRK). Prior to Sandia, he contributed to thermomechanical finite element analysis of laser-heated structures at Ball Aerospace for the Air Force Research Laboratory. Following his time at Sandia, Jake continued his research at PTC and Coreform, focusing on immersed and isogeometric simulation techniques.