# [About](https://blog.hirnschall.net/about/) author: [Sebastian Hirnschall](https://blog.hirnschall.net/about/) meta description: Technical maths student in Vienna documenting real projects: FEM simulation, ESP8266, PCB design, 3D printing, and C++. All code and files open source. meta title: About — Sebastian Hirnschall, Engineer in Vienna date published: 24.03.2026 (DD.MM.YYYY format) date last modified: 03.04.2026 (DD.MM.YYYY format) --- about me -------- Hi! I am currently studying technical maths in Vienna and work part-time at Cerbsim. At the moment, I am most interested in PDEs, Numerics of PDEs and differential geometry. The applied nature of these fields makes them a natural extension of my other hobbies: mechanical engineering, 3d printing, electrical engineering, and software development. You can also find some of my papers and notes from university [here](https://blog.hirnschall.net/downloads/). If you'd like to get in touch, feel free to reach out. about this blog --------------- I started this blog in 2020 to share my favorite projects and thoughts on various technical topics. I just really like to document things. ### open source I document not just to share progress but also to keep track of my thoughts. Sharing knowledge and open sourcing everything is especially important to me as I learned so many topics by watching other peoples content or following along with their projects. Same goes for 3D printing. As long as it was patented the technology was basically unavailable to average people. Almost every post on this blog is open source and published [under a Creative Commons license](https://blog.hirnschall.net/license/). If a project I am working on is not on the blog it is probably on [GitHub](https://github.com/shirnschall). ### attribution For many projects of mine, I talk to friends and colleagues who help me discuss my ideas or outright contribute to the project. However, I generally avoid naming them in the post explicitly. The reason is not that I would not like to give them credit or tell you about how I like working with them, but that I want to avoid the impression of affiliation or endorsement where there is none. I do not like name dropping. Many of my friends and colleagues are known in their respective fields, and mentioning them here would add more weight to this project than is appropriate. If possible I try to link to their page for the project instead. Of course, if they want to be mentioned I am very happy about it. projects I am proud of ---------------------- This section lists some of the projects I am particularly proud of. Not necessarily the most impactful or flashiest ones. * **Netgen contribution:** I contributed two small features to Netgen's workplane object. Namely Arc/ArcTo and Revolve. * **3D Models:** From time to time I get asked to help with creating a 3D model for some simulation or project. You can find two such models [here](https://jschoeberl.github.io/talk-pdesoft/wta/Sydney.html) and [here](https://blog.hirnschall.net/about/). ![3D shell of the Sydney Opera House](https://blog.hirnschall.net/about/resources/img/opera.jpg) Figure 1: 3D shell of the Sydney Opera House * **Lecture Notes:** I had the opportunity to help turn handwritten lecture notes into a nice latex. You can find the result [here](https://www.tuwien.at/index.php?eID=dumpFile&t=f&f=1457291&token=9e374070d403491da4f237053af9f1b8603a6eea). * **Seminar talk:** The seminar talk I gave with Rafael and Christoph on the topic of computing eigenfrequencies using FEM (LOPSD, LOBPCG, etc.) is available on the NGSolve YouTube channel [here](https://youtu.be/35Yh8kGbMLA?si=LkUqX8yW9qpUWgkJ). * **3D Printer:** Built with all metal parts using hand tools, using the e3d toolchanging system, three independent z axes, duet 3 controller, wobble-x, and a heated enclosure. I started designing my printer before voron or ratrig was really a thing. Many design choices were painful to implement as they were not yet common. All in all a super fast, extremely reliable printer with real multi material capabilities that I am very proud of. I designed it in CATIA. * **Useless box:** Altough it is a simple project, I made both versions (with one and with multiple switches) as a present for a friend. You can find the project [here](https://blog.hirnschall.net/diy-useless-box/). ![Beautiful pink useless box](https://blog.hirnschall.net/about/resources/img/useless_box.jpg) Figure 2: Beautiful pink useless box * **High Performance Computing:** Together with Rafael and Christoph I did a very interesting project for ["Introduction to Scientific Computing"](https://jschoeberl.github.io/IntroSC/intro.html). The results are one repo for [HPC](https://github.com/DHL-ASC/HPC) and one for [linear algebra](https://github.com/DHL-ASC/DHL-LinAlg). In the end we beat numpy in terms of speed for matrix-matrix and matrix-vector multiplication. The package is on pypi. ![Speed comparison of DHL-Linalg and numpy](https://blog.hirnschall.net/about/resources/img/hpc.jpg) Figure 3: Speed comparison of DHL-Linalg and numpy * **Two and a half years of Formula Student:** Many great memories and I learned so much. But most importantly I made incredible friends. ![Me sitting in the Formula Student car (EDGE15)](https://blog.hirnschall.net/about/resources/img/fs.jpg) Figure 4: Me sitting in the Formula Student car (EDGE15)