Robotics engineer and founder
I design, build, test, and deploy robots, from complex mechanisms through software and autonomy. Programs have included NASA docking and in‑space assembly hardware, semi‑autonomous construction layout at Rugged Robotics, and robotic makeup application at Overlay.
Selected work
Co-Founder and CTO, 2024-2025, Oakland
As co-founder and CTO at Overlay, I invented a robot that applies makeup on a variety of human faces.
I developed and filed a patent on the end-to-end system including mechanical design incorporating actuators and sensors, and wrote the perception that tracks the face while the robot is moving. We raised VC and hired a team to take the system to production.
Stills and video from the Overlay site.
Lead Mechanical Engineer, first full-time hire, 2019-2021, Houston
Rugged hired me as the first full-time engineer. There were four of us, seed stage, in Houston. The robot takes a BIM model and prints walls, doors, MEP, and finish lines on the concrete, so the trades are not each snapping their own chalk lines.
I designed and built the drive, then set up an OptiTrack system so we could measure whether it was actually hitting the line. The chassis was sheet metal. I also wrote a Flutter app to communicate with the robot through ROS. From a tablet you could run the robot and see what it was doing. Rugged still sells that work as the Mark1 layout service. The plastic shell came later.
The sheet-metal chassis from the first robots, before the plastic shell, and the dot layout it printed. Photos from Rugged Robotics, 2021. The video is a later robot.
NASA and aerospace
Assembly mechanism prototype, with a video
Ground test of the CIRAS hardware at Langley
Air and Space Magazine
I was mechanical lead on the NextSTEP-2 mockup at JSC
We printed the mechanisms in plastic before cutting metal
Brought the hardware to Capitol Hill
Experience
Independent robotics and AI lab
My own lab. We build custom robots and the software that runs them. Some of it is for NASA technology transfer and U.S. Space Force programs.
ExLabs
I advise ExLabs on a robot that has to find and grab objects in orbit that were not built with a fixture to grab. The work is on a $1.7M U.S. Space Force Orbital Prime contract and a $1.9M TACFI with Space Systems Command.
Overlay
Rugged Robotics
Lockheed Martin, NASA Johnson Space Center
I worked on the Orion docking system at NASA Johnson. That covered where the LiDAR and navigation cameras went, titanium capture hardware meant to be printed, and a look at how lightning could get into the docking subsystem on abort or return. I also tested the fluid quick disconnects the way an astronaut would, in a suit.
Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems
Purdue University
I co-founded the Purdue Hyperloop team and was assistant project manager. We had more than 70 students and raised six figures in sponsorships. I also played in marching band and jazz band.
About
I studied mechanical engineering at Purdue, then went to work on NASA hardware at Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. At Rugged I was the first full-time engineer, so I wrote the software that ran the robot as well as the mechanism. Overlay came after that. The robot touches a person's face, so the tolerances and the safety work are tighter, but it was still a mechanism, sensors, and control software.
These days I run my own lab. Part of that is still space robotics, including work for the U.S. Space Force. If you are building a robot and want another engineer to look at it, email me.
Contact
I am in the Bay Area. Email me if you are working on one.