Benjamin Shapiro

Dear visitor, welcome to my portfolio!

Growing up in the beautiful US Virgin Islands, an astrophotographer on a healthy diet of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, I spent my nights looking skyward. When my home was ravaged by not one, but two hurricanes of near-biblical proportions, I felt an obligation to join the battle for our planet’s future. I found my calling in space.

Today, as a space economist and aerospace professional with a strong background in data-centric technical initiatives and team projects across academia, government, and the commercial world, I am enthusiastic about harnessing space to bring tangible benefits to life on Earth. I am especially passionate about deploying space-derived data in tandem with finance to solve problems relating to environmental resiliency, natural disaster response, energy, national security, and space sustainability.

I hope you enjoy

I’m currently thinking about

“Can I park here?” - Natural language processing to make sense of LA parking signage
Creating interactive art pieces – 3D holographic representations of physical change on Earth – using light field printing and reconstructions of satellite imagery timelapses, able to be created by anyone at home with a COTS printer
Realtime time-space cartograms that more accurately reflect travel difficulty over diverse terrain and traffic conditions for multiple modalities of transport
Global extension of Barcelona’s Cool Walks Application (pedestrian thermal comfort routing) using Streetview imagery-derived 3D representations of urban environments
Aeromate: “Your Personal Wind Tunnel”, combining Nvidia’s Neurangelo Surface Reconstruction model with open source CFD to analyze the aerodynamic properties of any physical object from a standard RGB video