I’ve always been drawn to the moment where measurement becomes meaning—where a real-world signal is noisy, ambiguous, and stubbornly physical, and the job is to turn it into something precise enough to trust.

That thread started early in research settings, where I learned to treat biology like an engineering problem. At Vanderbilt, I worked in neurobiology using electrophysiology and microscopy, and built tooling that made experiments possible—designing and fabricating an optogenetics rig with the classic building blocks of signal acquisition and control, and writing MATLAB signal-processing software to clean and analyze responses. 

Before that, at the University of Virginia, I worked on sensory systems research using electric fish—building electronics and data-acquisition setups, writing analysis scripts, and using electrophysiology to quantify what the organism could detect. And even earlier, I was selected for NASA Langley’s summer research program, contributing to an oculometer project for understanding pilot workload—where good instrumentation design and good interpretation had to meet in the middle. 

Over time, that curiosity hardened into a practical discipline: build closed-loop systems that sense, decide, and act. I deepened that skill in industrial automation as a controls technician—wiring PLC cabinets, integrating sensors and HMIs, and living in the real constraints of machinery: safety, clarity, reliability, and debugging what the schematic didn’t predict. 

Since 2015, I’ve applied that same approach to molecular diagnostics as Lead Mechatronics Engineer at MicroGEM International—leading early R&D on a qPCR platform and later helping drive the work that supported an NIH RADx award for COVID-19 diagnostics. When the pandemic forced a pivot, I headed internal engineering efforts to bring the Spitfire 6830 saliva-based qPCR instrument to market, collaborating across engineers, scientists, and manufacturing partners to iterate the consumable and core design. Alongside the product work, I also owned pieces of the operational reality—facilities and logistics upgrades needed to scale a team from a handful of people to a real organization. 

Across all of these chapters, what I’ve enjoyed most is the same: taking something complex and fragile, and engineering it into something portable, manufacturable, and dependable—from prototyping through PCB design and build refinement, all the way to systems that can survive the real world. My work has contributed to a body of publications and patent filings in microdevices, DNA workflows, and related instrumentation. 

Outside the formal job titles, I’m still the same person: I like building tools, learning how systems behave under stress, and chasing the satisfying click when engineering turns uncertainty into a result.