February 2, 2026 Wisconsin mechanical engineers taking AI industry by storm Written By: Caitlin Scott Departments: Mechanical Engineering Categories: Alumni|Students Over the last 8 months, several students from the Simulation Based Engineering Lab co-lead by Mechanical Engineering’s Bernard A. and Frances M. Weideman Professor Dan Negrut and Distinguished Scientist Radu Serban have earned positions in industry. The SBEL operates at the intersection of embodied AI, physics-based simulation, and high-performance computing, which is a decent spot to be during times of flux. We are proud of these enthusiastic and high energy students who learned how to conduct themselves the right way and are moving through the system, picking up speed for takeoff. Luning Bakke – Optimus Robotics group, Tesla Huzaifa Unjhawala – Optimus Robotics group, Tesla Json Zhou – Optimus Robotics group, Tesla (starting in May 2026) Harry Zhang – Optimus Robotics group, Tesla (interning for 8 months, back to Madison in May 2026) Bocheng Zou – Optimus Robotics group, Tesla (interning starting in May 2026) Alexandra Kissel – NVIDIA, IsaacSim group Sriram Ashokkumar – NVIDIA, autonomous vehicle group Jingquan Wang – NVIDIA, LLM group Ganesh Arivoli – Toyota Research Institute in Palo Alto (interning summer 2026) Bo-Hsun Chen – Qualcomm (interning summer 2026) Bret Witt – Varda Space Industries (interning summer 2026) Patrick Chen – GM (interning summer 2026) undergraduate Congratulations to all students, past and current. Forward! See Professor Negrut’s LinkedIn post on the subject.