Spotlight
MESH CONSULTANTS
Daniel Hambleton and Elissa Ross
Elissa Ross and Daniel Hambleton, the two person team behind MESH Consultants, may have never met if it wasn’ t for the Fields Institute.
Ross was a postdoctoral fellow at the time, organizing a workshop at the Fields Institute on geometry and applications to 3D models, which Hambleton, who was just getting his fledgling consulting company off the ground, spontaneously decided to attend. And the rest was history. After working remotely on a contract basis, Ross soon became a full-time member of the team, applying her mathematical knowledge to problems in architecture, advanced manufacturing, geology, and even art.
MESH is a geometry consulting company, providing mathematical expertise to a variety of digital design problems.
“ A lot of the traditional construction approaches have patterns,” explains Hambleton.“ If your building falls into the kind of pattern that the glazing manufacturer is used to, then you’ re good to go. But what designers always try and do is push the limits, and as soon as they do that they come up against these manufacturing constraints.”
That’ s where MESH comes in. Using custom-built software called IOGRAM( iogram. ca), their aim is to make the design and construction of more complicated objects cheaper and more efficient. If you’ ve ever walked by the Lassonde Engineering building at York University with its cloud-like façade, you’ ve seen the results of MESH’ s work.
Hambleton started out working at large engineering firms, but found that he couldn’ t explore as much as he wanted to.
“ I thought there could be a deeper role for applying math to the design industry.”
And being part of Fields incubation program has been crucial in making that happen. In order to offer mathematical development services, Ross and Hambleton have to stay on top of the research in their respective fields – something that is very difficult to do outside of academia.
“ Fields was the perfect blend between a space where I could run a business but also get access to journals, people and conferences,” says Hambleton.
Recently, Ross was working on a novel method for applying thickness to a design surface, when she realized she was coming up to some challenges outside of her own mathematical expertise. So she walked down the hall and knocked on the door of someone who could help. This led to an 8-month NSERC Engage grant where Xiulei Cao, a postdoctoral fellow at York University co-supervised by Professors Huaxiong Huang and Michael Chen, worked with MESH to advance their techniques.
“ That’ s the amazing thing about Fields – those sorts of moments.” �
— Malgosia Ip
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