About Sean Bone

Sean Bone portrait photo

I am currently a student of Computational Science and Engineering at ETH Zürich, where I arrived in 2017. My main interests are programming and robotic space exploration.

I began coding back in 2008, when I started making websites: I learned HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, SQL, and many techniques like SEO and AJAX. True to Richard Feynman’s parting words, “What I cannot create I do not understand”, as well as my father’s favourite motto “never the easy way”, I made sure to never use a tool I hadn’t built myself before. That’s why I didn’t make my website using WordPress until I had made a dozen fully functional websites from scratch, including forums, blogs, an online shop and even a basic Content-Management System. This kind of grass-roots approach has always been a guiding principle in everything I learn and study.

Later on I began branching out into more “traditional” programming, learning Python in high school. I made a simple videogame with my friends, and used Python in my matura project. This is also the time when I decided to study Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) at ETH – it is for me the perfect mix of programming, mathematics, and applications in the natural sciences and engineering.

At ETH I received my first formal programming education, in C++. I found the courses I enjoyed most were related to scientific programming and algorithms: Programming Techniques for Scientific Simulations, Physically-Based Simulation for Computer Graphics, Dynamic Programming and Optimal Control, High-Performance Computing.

I love using software to tackle complex problems that arise in physics and engineering. I have gained a broad range of skills working on projects such as supersonic CFD, eulerian-lagrangian fluid simulations for CG, simulating hydrogen energy storage, robotic exploration and more. All of these are hard problems in physics or engineering that require clean, high-performance software to solve. This challenge never ceases to fascinate me.

Ever the avid reader of hard science fiction, my aim is to apply my scientific computing skills in the space exploration sector.

This site is where I deposit everything and anything I might find useful for future reference. Past projects, exam summaries from lectures I took at ETH, tips&tricks, reference sheets – it’s all there.

Hey, look, even my CV is here!