About Me

I am currently a Senior Hardware Systems Engineer with Mill Industries. Mill is addressing the huge climate impact of household food waste head-on; they accomplish this by developing a novel kitchen bin that turns kitchen scraps into nutrient-rich grounds and building the pipeline for customers to send these grounds for processing into chicken feed. My role involves the mechanical integration of the various components and systems that make up the bin, and defining the requirements and specifications that ensure product features that delight and deliver.

I graduated from MIT in 2010 with a S.B. in Mechanical Engineering.  During my undergraduate career, I researched with the Personal Robots Group, working on robotic design projects such as the Huggable, MeBot, and other smaller collaborations.  For my bachelor's thesis, I explored the use of various sensing technologies in creating a new type of virtual character controller.  As part of the thesis work, I constructed a mock-up prototype of a physical puppeteering interface and tested its proposed affordances with volunteer users.

I also completed my S.M. with the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab in Media Arts and Sciences. My Master's thesis took charge of the Huggable project and is currently being developed for Boston Children's Hospital as an ongoing study of socially assistive robots in pediatric care.  As a graduate researcher, I worked with toy manufacturers in Panyu, China, to redesign the entire structure of the bear in order to design it for manufacturing and improve its robustness as a platform.

Since coming to San Francisco, I helped start and was Mechanical Engineering Lead for Catalia Health, a healthcare tech company focused in delivering continuous patient interaction and engagement as part of an integrated care management solution.  My role involves the design, manufacturing, assembly, and supply chain of delivering Mabu, the physical embodiment of the Mabu Care Insights Platform™.  Mabu provides wellness tips, reminders, and engagement to chronic illness patients in the home, while delivering information and insights to the patient's health care team for a more complete picture of their well-being.

I pivoted into the sustainability space during the pandemic by working at Cana Technology, a startup that's working in the space of sustainability and food & beverage. Their offering is a "molecular beverage printer" that aims to put the capability of the beverage industry onto the kitchen counter of the consumer. It's part of The Production Board, a permanent capital holding company that nurtures great ideas and builds them into companies focused on solutions that impact the planet and its inhabitants. I worked as one of their first Mechanical Engineering hires to design various sub-systems for the next revision of their prototype - now dubbed "Cana One". I then switched to leading Systems Engineering at Cana, where I refined engineering requirements and drove system integration to clarify device behavior as the prototypes evolved.

From there, I served as the ME Lead for the Sustaining Engineering team of Ground Systems at Zipline. Zipline was created to provide equitable logistics for all, starting out in Rwanda delivering blood supplies to hospitals. They now operate worldwide and are rapidly expanding their capabilities to provide a delivery service for all humans.  I owned all Ground Systems for Zipline's Platform 1 product, and led a team of three engineers to tackle and triage sustaining mechanical engineering work. I took on multiple engineering change orders that unblocked vendors and address technical/documentation debt,  and developed a financial impact assessment of a future revision of the Ground Systems that demonstrated over 50% cost/delivery savings. I also advanced and productized a brand new weather station system installation that interfaces with our Ground Systems and provides more accurate onsite weather conditions necessary for safe recovery.

My interest is in the various applications of robotics, particularly in the home and for use in education and healthcare.  I also have a growing interest in sustainability and making products that last (or recycle/break down well).  Ultimately, I want what I make to help people, and to help the world.