On May 7, 2025, Xu Chu successfully delivered his inaugural lecture as the final step of his habilitation at the University of Stuttgart. The event marked the first-ever joint habilitation procedure between the Stuttgart Center for Simulation Science (SC SimTech) and Faculty 6, Aerospace Engineering and Geodesy.
Held in a fully packed lecture hall, the lecture drew strong interest and was met with consistently positive feedback from attendees. The subsequent reception hosted by SimTech provided a warm and collegial setting to celebrate Dr. Chu’s achievement.
Titled “OpenFOAMGPT: an AI Engineer”, the lecture explored the growing impact of large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek, and how these technologies are already reshaping how we live and work. With AI-powered tools like Co-Counsel or Microsoft’s Copilot becoming standard across various industries, Dr. Chu posed a critical question: how can these advancements be effectively applied in the field of engineering?
His answer is OpenFOAMGPT, the world’s first AI “engineer” specifically designed for computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Built as a multi-agent framework, OpenFOAMGPT automates the entire CFD workflow—from preprocessing through simulation to analysis—enabling a seamless, end-to-end process with 100% success rate in nearly 500 test cases (including complex multi-phase flow in random porous media). It is compatible with multiple LLMs and supports local deployment, offering flexibility, scalability, and enhanced data privacy. Based on OpenFOAMGPT 2.0, he introduced the world’s first AI Scientist for fluid mechanics “turbulence.ai”. turbulence.ai is able to fully-automatically generate ideas, perform simulations, analyse results and write papers without any human intervention. The first 5 manuscripts will be submitted to top-tier journals for human peer review shortly. AI Scientists like “turbulence.ai” are able to accelerate innovation enormously and offer infinite research resource for disease, environment and energy. The “Swabian” engineer opened a new era for future engineering.
By accelerating research and development while significantly reducing computational costs, OpenFOAMGPT sets a new benchmark for AI integration in engineering, creating exciting opportunities for both academia and industry.
Congratulations to Dr. Xu Chu on this significant achievement!