About

Looking for hands-on applications I met with the Modulab team. There I got a job as a Junior Hardware Engineer by presenting them my prototyping projects such as slither DOT. Being integrated into the Modulab team from mid-2016 till early 2019 allowed me to work in a boundary region I thrived so much for, specifically between art and technology. I developed with them lots of projects such as mind battle and mind cars, two-players games controlled with neural headsets or smart ear tag for bison, a tracking device for bison. Even if my main skill was hardware engineering, I also gathered knowledge in programming, product design, materials, and mechanical engineering which were later priceless when I started working on my own company, Embeto Electronics.

During the same period, in the summer of 2017, I was an intern at Amiq Consulting, a Functional Verification Company based in Bucharest. Even if verification had little to do with hardware engineering, I met passionate people who guided me through the design of a project I had under development at that time, SMSGate. At the end of my internship, I also wrote an article on the Amiq Blog.

Even if I was working for Modulab during this period, I also established my own company, Embeto Electronics when I started working on projects with other customers such as Father, a Research and Development Company for whom I developed a smart cane for VI. Another big part of my company was its laboratory, documented separately on the Workspace page. Starting from a blank space I assembled a fully functional electronics laboratory. Projects specifically designed for my laboratory were reflowster, a reflow oven consisting of a hacked electrical one, or sigGen200 a custom-made signal generator.

In late 2018 I had the idea of a new and challenging project, Centenescu, a bracelet-symbol of the Romanian Centenarian, followed by a similar idea, Bradescu, a Christmas tree, both made of bare PCB. I learned then how complicated selling a ready-made product is because even if I fabricated and assembled tenths of pieces, only a few were ever sold.

At the beginning of 2019, I felt the need to work in a more organized way and be part of a team. This was in no way a full stop for Embeto, it was just a narrowing of activity, with projects such as microEDMpulse or microEDMpulse (cont’d). I explored the possibility of working as a PCB Designer based on my experience but fortunately, I had been already exposed to something more puzzling, the Electrical Integrity field.

Looking back at the Embeto Electronics’ years combined with the multidisciplinary projects from Modulab, I can certainly say that “focusing (my) early training on conceptual, transferable knowledge” (David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World) allowed me to easily understand and learn the basics of the complicated field of Signal and Power Integrity.

A turn of events got me an interview at Tensor where I started working in March 2019 as a Signal and Power Integrity Engineer. Tensor is an authorized ANSYS Partner Channel in ROMANIA and also operates on consultancies projects. My first months as a Signal and Power Integrity Engineer at Tensor were a little bit of a challenge because besides the work at the office where I was learning to use ANSYS software simulation tools I also had individual research time at home reading technical books such as Signal and Power Integrity – SIMPLIFIED, Eric Bogatin. Once I gained insight into the field, I started to be involved in the company’s consultancy projects where I could apply all the theoretical knowledge I had been learning.

Since it was a part-time job, in mid-2019 I started to prepare a High-Frequency Signal and Power Integrity Course for students at Politehnica University of Bucharest, Faculty of Electronics. Since I consider the measurement part to be essential in any engineering teaching process, I also designed a hardware platform for this course based on Introduction to Signal Integrity: A Laboratory Manual, Stephen C. Thierauf. This hardware platform is well described on Tensor Blog, a technical blog with various investigations and teaching materials I developed during 2020.

Starting from the beginning of 2019 I am also working as a Teaching Assistant at the Politehnica University of Bucharest, Faculty of Electronics where I teach measurements, signals, and systems to 2^nd or 3^rd-year students.

Also, as a Research Assistant, I developed projects such as HTMWE and fringe field sensors, the latter with a published article to the prestigious journal Sensors available here which includes measurements, simulation, and characterization of different capacitive humidity sensors.

The TIE event is a student professional contest where participants receive an electric schematic and are requested to design the layout for the corresponding project in the allocated time of 5 hours. The TIEplus represents another challenge under the same TIE brand, focused on virtual prototyping disciplines where participants design a high-frequency layout, and run an analysis of signal and power integrity both pre and post-layout in a much larger time span of 10 days. The results from both contests are presented in an event where other companies such as Continental, Miele, or BOSCH are present with technical workshops.

Participating at the TIE event in 2018 and 2019 has exposed me to concepts such as Signal or Power Integrity. I found these fields so new and holistically embracing the knowledge I have been gathering so far that I decided to follow this career path in my future.

In mid-2020 as 2nd year Master student, I won 1^st place at the TIEplus contest. An archive with the subject, a technical report about my solution, and my presentation are available for download here. The same year I also won 3^rd place at the TIE contest and since the event was held exclusively online a live feed of my 5-hour activity is still available on Youtube. The TIE subject can be downloaded from here.