News
Dr. Zhao MA won first prize in the nTop track of the ASME IDETC-CIE 2026 Hackathon. Teams had to optimize a blended-wing-body aircraft using surrogate models and inverse design under uncertainty, while meeting aerodynamic and structural requirements. nTop recognized his approach to linking design parameters across disciplines during optimization. Official announcement.
Dr. Zhao MA released XelToFab, a post-processing pipeline that converts density fields, signed distance fields, and occupancy fields into fabrication-ready geometry. It handles preprocessing, extraction, smoothing, repair, and quality analysis. The pipeline prepares results from topology optimization and neural field workflows for simulation or fabrication. Source code is available on GitHub.
Dr. Zhao MA released GeoSharPlus, an open-source C# / C++ library for exchanging geometry across platforms. Originally built for Rhino and Grasshopper, it uses FlatBuffers for zero-copy serialization between managed .NET and unmanaged C++ environments. It is used in IG-Mesh and BeingAliveLanguage. The release includes documentation, examples, and support for adding new geometry types.
Dr. Zhao MA will present recent work on BeingAliveLanguage at the Digital Landscape Architecture Conference (DLA 2025). The presentation covers methods for integrating living systems with computational design in landscape architecture. The paper and related work appear in Issue 10-2025 of the Journal of Digital Landscape Architecture (JoDLA).
Dr. Zhao MA's BeingAliveLanguage project is featured in the "Digital Planning Tools" issue of the Netzwerk Stadt und Landschaft newsletter. The article describes the software, its aims, and its approach to illustrating landscape systems.
Dr. Zhao MA released BeingAliveLanguage, an open-source Grasshopper plugin developed at ETH Zurich's Chair of Being Alive. The plugin automates illustrations of living systems and supports the design and visualization of soil separates and their associated data.
Dr. Zhao MA released IG-Mesh, an open-source Grasshopper plugin for low-level and advanced mesh processing. It brings C++ mesh algorithms to Rhino and Grasshopper for use in architecture, design, and fabrication.
Dr. Zhao MA's doctoral thesis, Computational Re-Forming, is now available in the ETH Zurich Research Collection.
Dr. Zhao MA received the 2021 DigitalFUTURES YOUNG Award from DigitalFUTURES for his work on robotic sculpting. He was one of four recipients.