https://pastrana.xyz Rafael Pastrana @ Princeton Thu, 05 Mar 2020 19:16:10 +0000 https://pastrana.xyz en https://pastrana.xyz/Logo Thu, 05 Mar 2020 19:16:10 +0000 Rafael Pastrana @ Princeton https://pastrana.xyz/Logo &nbsp; Rafael Pastrana https://pastrana.xyz/Text-Page Thu, 05 Mar 2020 19:16:10 +0000 Rafael Pastrana @ Princeton https://pastrana.xyz/Text-Page <img width="1440" height="1819" width_o="1440" height_o="1819" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4bdddb44671529a1301bc2e55bcb60ce31b775f0c679af3e68d110e2b1906e56/h.png" data-mid="62813974" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4bdddb44671529a1301bc2e55bcb60ce31b775f0c679af3e68d110e2b1906e56/h.png" />︎&nbsp; arpastrana@princeton.edu ︎ @arpastrana ︎ @arpastrana︎ Publications I am a Research Fellow at the Princeton Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence. My work focuses on accelerating the mechanical design of meter-scale, architectural structures, such as buildings, towers, and bridges, by combining machine learning, scientific computing, and differentiable simulations. I develop open-source, software tools like&nbsp;JAX FDM and&nbsp;COMPAS CEM. Most recently, in 2025, I completed my doctoral dissertation at the&nbsp;Form Finding Lab, under the supervision of Forrest Meggers and Sigrid Adriaenssens. Before that, I worked as a software engineering intern at Robert McNeel &amp; Associates over the summers of 2023 and 2024, developing new technology to solve inverse problems on NURBS curves and SubDs in Rhino. In 2019, I was at the Block Research Group, and created a digital framework to streamline the fabrication of a 1:1 mockup of the funicular slabs in the NEST HiLo. In 2018, at Gramazio Kohler Research, and in collaboration with Autodesk Research, I trained reinforcement learning models to automate the&nbsp;robotic assembly of timber structures. Between 2014 and 2017, I worked at Bollinger + Grohmann as a structural engineer. There, I was responsible for the structural analysis and geometric rationalization of several art installations in Europe and in Australia. I hold a Ph.D.&nbsp;from Princeton and a Masters from ETH Zurich.