Oh neato!
I studied this in Grad school back in 2014!!
"the Innovation" is that high strength alloys like 2xxx and 7xxx are notorious for their "unweldable" nature.
So to report a fairly rigorous investigation of such a material being successfully processed via PBF is interesting.
There are essentially 3 ways to do it, different composition, grain refiner, or pulse shaping.
They seem to be targetting some combo of the first two.
The work is complete, but also very early..(limited macro mechanical work)
small scale mech props work can be very very different than practical size structures like a E8 coupon or fatigue test artifacts
The other issue is that creating new alloys is largely academic.. as the as qualification and supply chain constraints in most performance driven industries with any real market make it a non-starter
Not to say it's not interesting though, I'm excited to see where they take the work next!
There are plenty of teams out there that even modest software skills would dramatically improve!
As was previously mentioned, consider your other interests and strengths (even outside of CS). What companies would benefit from those skills and motivation?
Academia has a completely different framework for dividing folks up by teaching discipline rather than job occupation. You'd be surprised how your existing might fit a job role that isn't traditionally a direct fit from CS discipline.
For example, in operational roles, organization and communication skills are impactful, or business process analyst type stuff, where understanding systems and how sw tools are built around them could be a good place to start.
I'm curious about views from the crowd here on how to apply the recommendations from this article in the context of a startup
I've worked in both heavy industry (mining /metals production) as well as my own startup for the last 7 years
I definitely empathize with the view that diligently investing in people, and taking time to build sustainable processes that focus on the mid to long term is the ideal way to go... But when your runway is weeks, not months, and it's ship or die, seems hard to justify such a Rosy ideal
I must admit , I worry going public might actually be a bad thing for the Pi org. Exposure to the winds of quarterly earnings reports and hardware timelines can often conflict...
I have no real evidence to support that feeling, but I have it just the same.
I'd be curious how the regulatory barriers in marine propulsion differ from static grid level powerplants.
Assuming some movement could be achieved there, hopefully driven by thorium's claims to superior inherent safety characteristics, this could make a really nice dent in shipping costs and emissions all in one go.