About Me
Engineer with experience using numerical optimization techniques on a variety of research and industrial applications, ranging from material parameter identification to equivalent neurological circuits. Experience performing full field experiments on membrane materials and animal tissues. Passionate about creating software to solve complex problems. Interests include optimization, machine learning, uncertainty quantification, and parameter identification. I’m currently applying optimization and machine learning to expensive multi-physics simulations. Take a look at my full CV.

Selected Software
pwlf: fit piecewise linear functions to data
similaritymeasures: quantify the difference between two curves

PhD, Mechanical Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 2019

Meng, Mechanical Engineering, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa, 2016

BSc, Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO, 2013

1. Jekel, C.F., Venter, G., Venter, M.P., Stander, N. and Haftka, R.T., 2018. Similarity measures for identifying material parameters from hysteresis loops using inverse analysis. International Journal of Material Forming, 12(3), 355-378. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12289-018-1421-8
2. Jekel, C.F. and Haftka, R.T., 2018. Classifying Online Dating Profiles on Tinder using FaceNet Facial Embeddings. arXiv preprint arXiv:1803.04347. https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.04347
3. Jekel, C.F., Venter, G. and Venter, M.P., 2017. Modeling PVC-coated polyester as a hypoelastic nonlinear orthotropic material. Composite Structures, 161, pp.51-64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compstruct.2016.11.019
4. Jekel, C.F., Venter, G. and Venter, M.P., 2016. Obtaining a hyperelastic non-linear orthotropic material model via inverse bubble inflation analysis. Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, 54(4), pp.927-935. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00158-016-1456-8