Digital twins: A personalized future of computing for complex systems | Karen Willcox | TEDxUTAustin

Digital twins have the potential to enable safer and more efficient engineering systems, a greater understanding of the natural world around us, and better medical outcomes for all of us as individuals. Director of UT Austin's Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, Karen Willcox, outlines the key role played by predictive models and data assimilation in creating digital twins, and how this technology can continue to change our world for the better.
Karen E. Willcox is Director of the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, Associate Vice President for Research, and Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds the W. A. “Tex” Moncrief, Jr. Chair in Simulation-Based Engineering and Sciences and the Peter O'Donnell, Jr. Centennial Chair in Computing Systems. Prior to joining the Oden Institute in 2018, she spent 17 years as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she served as Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the founding Co-Director of the MIT Center for Computational Engineering, and the Associate Head of the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. She is also an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute.
Willcox holds a Bachelor of Engineering Degree from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and masters and PhD degrees from MIT. Prior to becoming a professor at MIT, she worked at Boeing Phantom Works with the Blended-Wing-Body aircraft design group. She is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and in 2017 was appointed Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) for services to aerospace engineering and education. In 2022 she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).
In addition to her research pursuits, Willcox is active in education innovation. She served as co-Chair of the MIT Online Education Policy Initiative, co-Chair of the 2013-2014 Institute wide Task Force on the Future of MIT Education, and Chair of the MIT OpenCourseWare Faculty Advisory Board. She is a recognized innovator in the U.S. education landscape, where she is a 2015 recipient of a First in the World Department of Education grant that developed and deployed educational technologies in community colleges. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx

[@rimjhimmajumdar1243]

Very nice talk. We should encourage others by sharing the same.

[@TheHexTechGal]

Wonderful breakdown of a Digital Twin!

[@RobTiffany]

Great presentation! It's nice to start seeing others talk about our little niche world of digital twins. I always use the Apollo 13 example in my presentations as well.

[@christo138]

As if there's not thousands of conversations about this since the 80s.... Dr Ben G

[@daviddevlogger]

I AM HAPPY I TOOK BOLD STEP THIS YEAR TO START A KZbin CHANNEL. I AM NOW A KZbinR GUYS. HAPPY INTERNATIONAL HUMANS DAY🎊☺️❤️

[@user-zu4zn2zw4w]

thank you because I decided today was the day I should finally learn what is a digital twin. I am sort of pleasantly surprised that the concept is as simple and accessible as this, and that there are all sorts of examples of digital twins already. I once studied and worked in aerospace, and these days I keep my distance, I started to feel like muddling my brain in that work kept me from the reality of how short, unpredictable, and really un-controllable life really is, and also, how very much we need to focus on protecting this planet. But! A talk like this gives me hope that bright, physics minded people care about human individuals by modelling things like tumors and hearts. It's a lot of energy (computing power is not really free) and maybe it will save lives and keep our planet livable for seven generations down the road. Also, she is a great speaker, the presentation was engaging.

[@benjamindover4337]

Excellent talk. Well done.

[@nicolecodbrajoe5229]

My dad would have loved this topic. ❤️

[@jeffsternstein4834]

Really fantastic. It seems in many cases personalized digital twins are a long way off, but it is nice to be reminded by my Apple watch how much I am moving compared to yesterday. Most near-term use cases like the weather example seem more like model refinement, using data for updating.

[@bonishagarwal6315]

Great talk. Learnt something new.

[@rajithkumar3424]

One of the Best presentation .

[@garimatrivedi9789]

Digital Twin can make controlling machines excitings possible.. Awesome talk

[@Vinceto4229]

Reminds me of some games: Digital Twin of a city = Sim City Digital Twin of a theme park = Roller Coaster Tycoon Digital Twin of a plane = Flight Simulator Digital Twin of a race car = GranTursimo Digital Twin of a farm = Farming Simulator

[@Marius-vw9hp]

Isnt almost any game a simulation of some sort of activity?

[@Sportsman134]

@@Marius-vw9hp no because in each game you can only do a limited amount of tests/conditions. Digital Twins is a virtual model thats capable of multiple tests/ conditions.

[@manjurawat5084]

This is amazing

[@hoctienganhmoingay.havu369]

Thank you

[@nmkone2207]

The future is all about science, our very existence depends on it and how we use it

[@joewallace9030]

Thanks bot, how insightful!

[@ritataylor4646]

Lovely presentator.

[@MrProudindian001]

Ctrl c Ctrl v, viola we have a digital twin. Tweak margins, pwd and Id viola we have a twin with diff biometrics

[@barronwiles4192]

Karen Willcox: imagine a digital earth! Mark Zuccerburg: money

[@jayeshpatidar6515]

Big fan

[@CalemSmith]

AI and QC will probably be perfect for creating digital twins of any scale.

[@tranghong6607]

Uh

[@tranghong6607]

Uh nha không có

[@tranghong6607]

Có ut đi biển không có tiền thì đi ykhông biết

[@tranghong6607]

Uh

[@silviat8759]

Great... i want to do the same.... but i' m procastinating..... fear of failer

[@BWMS18]

Wow! thanks for your awareness of the techno human tracking and personal exposure/s,,🧐🤔

[@fop2030]

great

[@whattheydoexactly7794]

How do you think is digital twin will affect manufacturing sector ?

[@Lizzieverse]

As incredible as all of this sounds, I can't help but think of the monumental risks associated with it 🤔

[@prodatalab9055]

actually.. will reduce risk

[@GalenMelchert]

@@prodatalab9055 security risks tho

[@Marius-vw9hp]

@@GalenMelchert Thats an interesting observation. What kind of security risks can you imagine rising from this?

[@emmanuellawal2694]

@@GalenMelchert what security risks do you think this brings? would love to know.

[@kenlane9402]

So you have an identity, and a digital identity. So if your digital identity, is determined to be unexceptionable. Then you may be having your digital identity deleted. Or dismissed, for being unacceptable.

[@peachmango5347]

Who said "digital twin" first?

[@andborna]

"Digital Twin = a personalized dynamically evolving model of a physical system"

[@peachmango5347]

A model.

[@jonbikaku6133]

Considering how many times the word 'data' was used, this seemed more like a startup pitch than a TED talk 😅

[@EdunathDalbothVlog]

Hello friend ✋👍❤️❤️

[@user-hf4eh2ts3q]

dont predict me. i do not care what those people say you do not know me better than i do and NO advertising DOES NOT WORK ON EVERYONE. THAT IS A LIE. ADVERTISERS, YOU ARE LIARS!

[@whazzat8015]

Why not just put a chip in evertone's neck? See This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends by Nicole Perlroth or Sushana Zuboff's work

[@patriciosandoval3905]

9:06

[@patriciosandoval3905]

8:47

[@AydenBryceChrisComedy]

1st comment TedX

[@narimansayilov]

👏🎉

[@takayamayoshikazu2782]

I think she overestimates the digital twin. Digital twins are not needed unless they are in an environment inaccessible to humans, in situations where more accurate judgments are required, and in situations where they can be completed only with 3D data. For example, weather in shipping. If transaction data on cargo ships were also added to this, real-time change data would be reflected, resulting in a huge usage cost for the user. Therefore, the current situation is that we have no choice but to simulate a very simple state.

[@helloitsme98]

?

[@KrunoslavStifter]

Are you eating zee bugs there Karen? See, folks. That is why you never name your child Karen.

[@manjurawat5084]

First

[@susanridenour9758]

Interesting but the talk is taking a rather long time to reveal how this is important to *me.* I'd bet half her audience clicked away within the first 5 minutes. Make the info relevant to the audience sooner.

[@mattykakes]

The video is 16 minutes long....if you can't focus that long, it is not important to you.

[@lidiyakupriyanova6867]

А как послушать по-русски?

[@Ashley_Fan_1996]

This is weird. 😮

[@thinker1056]

But in order for a AI operated vehicle to fly in the real world it is living in a simulation paralleling and mimicking. She's saying suppose. She's using trickery she's selling something

[@joewallace9030]

She sounds like a World Economic Forum shill. TedX loves them lol can't wait to throw us into pods and put cattle tags under our skins to "better model our digital twins"

[@user-rp1zp7fe2t]

Digital twin is nonsense!