WDBE UPDATES // Meet our keynote speaker!

Meet Dr. Pallavi Mohan,

Senior Scientist and Solutions Architect at NVIDIA AI Technology Center

Aarni Heiskanen interviews Dr. Pallavi Mohan, NVIDIA’s Senior Scientist and Solutions Architect and a keynote speaker at WDBE 2023. Pallavi discusses her career aspirations and how her work on digital twins opens new opportunities for sustainable built environment development.

Pallavi is a senior scientist and solutions architect at NVIDIA. She collaborates with research institutes and customers to solve exciting challenges in the digital twin research space using NVIDIA Omniverse.

Before joining NVIDIA, Pallavi worked as a postdoc in Singapore, where she also received her PhD from NTU Singapore in human-computer interaction with VR devices. She wanted to understand what makes a virtual experience genuinely immersive and how we can leverage that in creating dynamic virtual environments.

Pallavi’s current position at NVIDIA allows her to extend what she learned about virtual experiences to an industrial scale.

“I like to think of my work as helping to connect the dots between research on virtual environments, industrial digital twins, visualization, and the platforms that we have at NVIDIA, and to enable collaborative research between NVIDIA and researchers in academia, government, and industry, and specific to my field of research,” Pallavi explains.

Digital twins as a means for carbon-neutral construction

Pallavi defines a digital twin as a virtual replica of a physical system. The twin is tied to the physical system through detailed measurements and observations that match reality. This lets you iterate digitally, monitor remotely, take preventative measures, and know which actions to take based on the scenarios.

As the real estate and construction sector must become carbon-neutral, being able to simulate emissions and collaboratively design sustainable solutions becomes necessary.

Traditionally, architects and designers have relied on various disparate tools for modelling, design, and stakeholder reviews. For example, BIM software may be used for modelling, while another software is used for the design and review. This disjointed workflow can lead to inefficiencies and miscommunication among team members.

Digital twins have emerged as a powerful tool for collaborative design in the built environment sector. They enable property developers, architects, and tech developers to work together seamlessly.

Omniverse as a platform for digital twin-powered collaboration

NVIDIA has become a leading force in AI. However, the company is also known for its graphics processing capabilities in gaming and other virtual reality applications.

NVIDIA Omniverse is an end-to-end computing platform that enables individuals and teams to develop Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD)–based 3D workflows and applications for industrial digitalization. It creates a pipeline for all tools to connect and interact with one another. It acts as a shared database for all the work, allowing multiple stakeholders to access and collaborate on the same file or scene simultaneously. This means team members with different skill sets and software tools can work together seamlessly.

For non-tech experts, ready-made foundation apps are available off the shelf, allowing users to start and build their elemental digital world quickly. On the other hand, more advanced programmers and developers can customize and create their pipelines and applications on top of NVIDIA Omniverse.

Pallavi reminds us that a digital twin that simulates the built environment should have vast data. Collecting it from physical environments can become an impossible task. That’s why NVIDIA Omniverse has an extension for synthetic data generation called replicators. The data can train AI applications, such as autonomous driving.

Pallavi’s WDBE keynote

In her keynote speech at the WDBE conference, Pallavi will delve deeper into the capabilities of the NVIDIA Omniverse platform. She will discuss leveraging it to build complex virtual environments and connect existing software and tools in one platform. Additionally, she will unveil a unique project built on NVIDIA Omniverse that aims to be a game changer for climate research and building for a sustainable future.

You can connect with Pallavi on LinkedIn and meet Pallavi in person at World of Digital Built Environment WBDE 203. Get your ticket now!