Overview
Charles Hirsch is a Belgian CFD pioneer and academic. He is Professor Emeritus at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), both in Brussels. In 1993 he founded NUMECA International as a VUB spin-off focused on computational fluid dynamics software. Under his scientific leadership, alongside Marc Tombroff on the operational side, NUMECA grew to around 150 employees and became one of the pillars of commercial CFD, particularly in turbomachinery, aerospace and maritime applications.
NUMECA was acquired by Cadence Design Systems in February 2021 for around USD 188.6M, becoming the foundation of Cadence's CFD business. In autumn 2024 Charles co-founded PrediQT Technologies with Marc Tombroff, Kunal Puri and Luke Peffers, to build GPU and quantum-native CFD software under the SuRF platform.
Charles is the author of the standard reference work "Numerical Computation of Internal and External Flows," widely used in graduate-level CFD courses. He has also held advisory and editorial roles across the European CFD research community.
Career history
- Co-founder, President and CSO2024 - PresentPrediQT Technologies
- Founder1993 - 2021, acquired by Cadence Design SystemsNUMECA International
- Professor of Fluid Mechanicsnow Professor EmeritusVUB and ULB
Education
- PhD and academic chairs in fluid mechanics, VUB and ULBEducation
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