Born and raised in Shanghai, Tan got here to MIT to check high-energy astrophysics and wrote his dissertation on computational modeling of neutron stars. “Coming from China at that time, I had very little experience with computers,” he says. “I was fortunate to find many helpful students during my time there.” Tan additionally met his spouse, Hong (Zhang) Tan, SM ’88, PhD ’96, at MIT. The pair have been married within the MIT Chapel and at this time have two sons.
Tan struggled to seek out work in astrophysics after commencement and shortly shifted towards business. At his first job, he helped a protection contractor develop a pc simulation of the primary Gulf War for a US navy coaching program. “I was able to make that shift because of the training I received at MIT modeling neutron stars,” he says. “I learned a method. And I understood that method could be applied to other fields.”
Tan and Nainesh Rathod cofounded Imaginestics, an Indiana-based consultancy, in 2002 and shortly counted many industrial and protection contractors as shoppers. In their spare time, they labored sporadically on a method to find 3D fashions utilizing geometric search standards. The firm launched VizSeek in 2015. Since then, it has deployed this software program to develop a 3D printing and challenge administration system for the US Air Force, an answer to eradicate redundant elements for Ingalls Shipbuilding (a number one producer of ships for the US Navy), and a quoting system for a contract producer that elevated its effectivity 40% over 14 months. Imaginestics has tripled its buyer base since 2016.
“Originally, we just thought of VizSeek as an interesting project,” recollects Tan. “It turned out that it filled an enormous demand in industry we didn’t know existed. So much of manufacturing is redundant. You can be a lot leaner as a company if you eliminate that redundancy.”