Employment:

Electrical Engineer – Intuitive Surgical (Sunnyvale, CA, USA)

Intuitive Surgical is an incredible company with an incredible product: a robot that does surgery on people! The robotic instruments are much smaller, more precise and more dexterous than human hands (plus they don't shake, twitch or get tired) so that complex surgical procedures can be performed in a minimally-invasive fashion with small incisions requiring just a few stitches.

I am personally designing several PCAs, responsible for motor/brake control and drivers, monitoring of current/voltage/position feedback, DSPs for converting surgeon-commands into motor positions, power conversion and management. I work closely with mechanical engineers to fit the PCAs in tight cavities defined by moving robotic arms as well as PCA layout designers to layout complex PCAs containing both high-current motor lines and fine-pitch BGAs communicating over high-speed digital lines. Of course, the designs include multiple levels of redundancy and fail-safe, as required by powerful motors moving instruments inside living humans.

Electrical Engineer – Continental (Dearborn, MI, USA)

Continental is a large automotive company headquarted in Germany. I work in the electric vehicles division, currently focusing on an electric drive system to be used by both Ford and Daimler in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

Specifically, I am designing the system controller board, which controls both a 3-phase inverter module for the electric motor as well as a DC-DC power module to step down the high-voltage fuel-cell power for use by the vehicle's low voltage electronics. The board also monitors a plethora of sensors as well as generating isolated power supplies for each of the switch drivers.

I am also assisting in the design of an electric drive system of a hybrid electric vehicle for Hyundai.

There remain some challenges to overcome in the development of electric or fuel cell vehicles, but it seems very clear that we have an environmental responsibility to get there. I am happy to be able to contribute to this effort.

Education:

Bachelor of Applied Science (BASc) in Electrical Engineering – University of Waterloo (Waterloo, ON, Canada)

The University of Waterloo is a cooperative education school, which means I alternated between 4-month work and schools terms. I worked for three companies over the course of completing my degree. At MDS Sciex (Concord, ON, Canada), I was involved in the development of a precision mass spectrometer system. At Nuvation Engineering (San Jose, CA, USA), I was involved in the design of a digital scent synthesizer as well as a fiber-optic polarization dispersion controller. At Honeywell Aerospace (Mississauga, ON, Canada), I worked on a motor controller for the main engines of the upcoming Boeing 787 jet as well as the life-support systems of the Boeing C-17 jet.

Also at UW, I designed a smart power meter capable of displaying and tracking the power consumption of an appliance, along with other statistics such as current, line voltage, power factor and operating cost.

Finally, I was team manager of the UW Midnight Sun Solar Car Team and was also involved in building the car and racing it against 40 other teams across outback Australia.

Resume:

My resume (PDF) is available here.