Grace Gerwe

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Hi! I make BCIs and do endurance sports.

My long term ambition is to build perfect empathy: a way to literally feel what someone else is feeling.

I got into endurance sport because doctors told me I wouldn't be able to run (I have a congenital heart defect).

In 8 months I went from nothing to earning myself a spot at Ironman World Championships (0.0006% qualification rate) where I will be racing in Kona, Hawaii, on October 14th, 2025.

In past lives, I grew the Yale Entrepreneurial Society from 30 to 400+ members, was a Partner at Dorm Room Fund, did epigenetics research at the Ahuja Lab, worked for Models1 and took care of the chickens on the Yale Farm.

I shaved my head as a social experiment, only listen to hardcore EDM, regularly polar plunge, and in general pursue the extremes of the human experience.

I speak 5 languages fluently and have lived in 7 countries.

My daily hardware log can be seen here. For more physical projects see below. For what I've built in the simulation, see my GitHub.

Only dead fish go with the flow.

Past Projects:

PMUT Waffle Bot

Waffle Bot

Ongoing

Onshape, Fusion360, C++, 3D Printing, Raspberry Pi, OpenCascade, Python, Computer Vision

Building a robot arm that takes waffles out of the toaster.

PMUT Transducer

Full Stack Ultrasound Transducer & Neuronavigation System

Empath, Pre-Seed, Founder & CEO, 2024

Matlab (k-wave, Field II), COMSOL, 3D Slicer, NDI 6D Architect, OnShape, LTSpice, Python

Built tools used for research. Owned the process end to end, including design, component selection/sourcing, simulation, prototyping, fabrication, assembly, safety & integrity testing (extensive).

PMUT PMUT

Piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasound Transducer (pMUT)

Empath, Pre-Seed, Founder & CEO, Provisional Patent, 2024

DFM, Process Flow, FEA (COMSOL Multiphysics, ANSYS, OnScale), KLayout, Python, MEMs

Developed a 400 element, 12 layer, PZT thin film pMUT. Reverse engineered KLayout with Python to automate layout design. Partnered with a foundry for production.

Bricks Bricks

Mycelium Architecture

Side Project, 2023

Grew mycelium (the root network of fungus) in my room as a sustainable building material, using free leftover coffee grounds from Donut Crazy as substrate.

Sauna 1 Sauna 2

Yale Sauna Campaign

Side Project, 2022

Randomly really wanted Yale to rebuild the sauna so got 1/4 of the entire undergraduate class to sign a petition.

Beef Bar 1 PMUT

Organ Meat Energy Bars

Side Project, 2022

Made energy bars from organ meat by working at a butcher and testing recipes in a shared student kitchen — dehydrating and pulverizing beef heart & liver, mixing with tallow & spices.