Christopher Dembia
Vehicle Dynamics Simulation Engineer
San Francisco, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolChristopher Dembia is a Vehicle Dynamics Simulation Engineer with 15 years of experience building high-performance scientific modeling and simulation software, currently applying that expertise to autonomous vehicle dynamics at Zoox in San Francisco. He previously led development of Moco and core contributions to OpenSim and Simbody, bringing musculoskeletal optimal control tools to a broad research audience and enabling reproducible biomechanics studies. Christopher blends deep C++ systems work with Python and MATLAB interfaces, shipping production-ready libraries that have been widely adopted (OpenSim downloads >300k) and teaching others through workshops and hands-on training. His open-source contributions span optimization tooling (cvxpy), reinforcement-learning examples (PyBrain), and domain-specific toolkits like PyNE, reflecting a habit of improving build systems, documentation, and examples to lower barriers to entry. Notably, he has translated academic advances—such as exoskeleton energy-optimization—into practical software used by other researchers and engineers. He combines rigorous research instincts with pragmatic engineering to turn complex physical models into reliable, usable simulation tools.
14 years of coding experience
3 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Science - MS, Mechanical Engineering, Master of Science - MS, Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at AustinBachelor of Science - BS, Mechanical Engineering, Bachelor of Science - BS, Mechanical Engineering at Cornell UniversityMaster of Science - MS, Mechanical Engineering, Master of Science - MS, Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University
Stackoverflow
713reputation
21kreached
8answers
4questions
Github Skills (38)
debug10
c-language10
lib10
python10
sphinx10
setuptools10
nucleo10
code-library10
reinforcement-learning10
cprogramming-language10
documentation10
visualization9
debugging9
machine-learning9
cmake9
Programming languages (23)
Github contributions (5)
opensim-org/opensim-core
Aug 2013 - Aug 2020
SimTK OpenSim C++ libraries and command-line applications, and Java/Python wrapping.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:1 release, 24 reviews, 5730 commits in 7 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Christopher's contributions primarily involve modifying and extending the C++ libraries and command-line applications of the OpenSim project. They implemented changes related to the handling and validation of connectee names, introducing functionality for specifying coordinate reference systems, and fixing bugs related to the parsing and handling of model files. The user also added logging, and improved the performance of core functions.
biomechanicspythonsciencecppmusculoskeletal-models
pyne/pyne
Apr 2012 - Sep 2012
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:849 commits in 4 months
Contributions summary:Christopher's commits focus on testing and implementing functionality related to weight windows in the PyNE nuclear engineering toolkit. The changes involve additions to the card classes, including the addition of WWGE, WWGT cards, and modification to the existing WWE and WWT cards. The user also made significant changes to the code, which include adjustments to the cell comments.
pythonnuclear-engineeringpyneengineeringnuclear
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.