Bio

From Milton MA and shaped by La Salettes with Shaker roots, Paul did his undergraduate work at Tufts University and his mechanical engineering graduate work (PhD) at Stanford under Thomas Kane.

As a young adult, Paul worked summers landscaping, farming, logging, and construction, then worked at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, NASA Ames, Knowledge Revolution, and MSC.Software, was a consulting editor for McGraw-Hill (mechanics), and has been a consultant for the software, robotics, biotechnology, energy, automotive, and mechanical/aerospace industries.

He helped develop force/motion software used by more than 12 million people worldwide and translated into 11 spoken languages. These software applications include Interactive Physics, Working Model 2D/3D, MSC.visualNastran 4D (now SimWise), NIH Simbody/OpenSim, and the symbolic manipulators Autolev/MotionGenesis.

Paul currently works on Drake, open-source software developed by TRI (Toyota Research Institute) to simulate robots. In his role as Lead TRI/Stanford Liaison for SAIL (Toyota's Center for AI Research at Stanford), he facilitates research between TRI and Stanford.

At Stanford, Paul greatly enjoys working with students and teaches mechanics (physics/engineering), controls/vibrations, and advanced dynamics & computation/simulation. He has written several books on dynamics, computation, and control (broadly adopted by universities and professionals).

Paul is highly appreciative of support from Stanford alumni Dave Baszucki (Roblox CEO). Paul greatly appreciates having worked with Dave and team in developing internationally acclaimed physics, engineering, and educational software, including Interactive Physics, Working Model, and MSC.visualNastran.

He is very grateful to students, co-instructors (TAs), faculty, and staff.