Work

Things I've made, led and figured out.

Open any of them for the short version. The bigger ones have a full story.

01A wing that blows its own flapMEng research · short-field take-off for a hydrogen UAVIn progress2026 – 2027

AerodynamicsSoftware

MEng researcher · supervised by Dr A. Venter and Dr R. Heise

I'm designing an internally blown Coandă flap that can be retrofitted to a fixed-wing, hydrogen fuel-cell UAV. The aim is to cut its ground roll from roughly 100 m to under 10 m. To get there I built a fully scripted CFD pipeline and used it to run a 98-case flap study. Wind-tunnel validation comes next.

  • Scripted 2D RANS pipeline in Python that generates flapped sections, meshes them with Gmsh and drives ANSYS Fluent through generated journals
  • 98-case flap study run end to end without manual meshing
  • Design work at several fidelity levels, from vortex-lattice (AeroSandbox, OpenVSP, XFLR5) up to 2D and 3D RANS
  • Validation planned on a static Coandă bench, a section model in the low-speed wind tunnel and a propeller traverse

ANSYS Fluent · PyFluent · Gmsh · Python · AeroSandbox · OpenVSP · XFLR5 · XFOIL

Read the full story →

02nook.A planning app I designed, built and sell on my ownLive2026 – now

Software

Founder, designer and developer

nook. is a planning web app I built solo, from the product idea to billing. It runs on Cloudflare Workers with Supabase behind it, and I keep shipping features for its users.

Cloudflare Workers · Supabase · JavaScript · SQL

nookapp.cc ↗

03A referee for SpikeballBEng final-year project · computer vision2025 – 2026

Robotics & visionSoftware

Final-year project, BEng Mechatronic Engineering

An automatic rally-detection and video-capture system for Spikeball. It uses computer-vision algorithms and other tracking techniques to act as a referee and highlight extractor: it spots when a rally starts and ends and clips it.

Python · OpenCV · NumPy

04Kaal Vellies KollektiefMy photography and videography studioLive2025 – now

Photo & film

Founder

A small studio I founded, doing photography and video for events, social media and brands.

05Running four labs with less paperworkLaboratory Engineer · SU Mechanical & Mechatronic EngineeringIn progress2026 – now

AutomationLeadership

Laboratory Engineer

I'm responsible for the metallography, microscopy, furnace and powder laboratories. That covers equipment, safety inductions, signing off student operators and reviewing safety reports. I replaced the spreadsheet inventory and equipment booking with automated Microsoft Lists and Power Automate workflows.

Microsoft Lists · Power Automate · SharePoint

06Ukubayi Leadership ProgrammeA university-accredited leadership course I co-foundedIn progress2026 – now

Leadership

Co-founder and facilitator

A values-based leadership programme of four modules (Identity, Strengths, Collaboration and Impact) over 12 sessions a year. It's accredited by Stellenbosch University's Unit for Experiential Learning. I wrote all the materials and lead the sessions.

07Small tools that save hoursSoftware I write whenever a process annoys me2023 – now

SoftwareAutomation

Election software for my residence, written in Python. A personal career-search tool. WhatsApp and Power Automate messaging workflows. Plus a LaTeX document builder that generates whole report and CV projects from reusable components and styles.

Python · TypeScript · React · LaTeX · Power Automate