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Nicholas G Lesniewski-Laas

My goal is to improve lives and make a positive impact by building the best teams to solve the toughest problems.

Experience

Sr Director of Sunrise Systems & Software, 2024–present

Sr Director of Sunrise Systems, 2022–2024

Director of Systems Engineering, 2016–2022

Director of Electrical Engineering, 2018–2022

Sunrise Labs, Inc

• Senior Leadership Team:
  • I report directly to President and CEO.
  • My responsibilities include corporate governance and strategy with special focus on technical leadership.
  • I grow the engineering teams in both size and capabilities.
  • I create new business processes and oversee their implementation:
    • Information security management system.
    • Business continuity and disaster recovery.
    • Strategic partnerships to supplement Sunrise capabilities.
    • Internal knowledgebase and migration of quality systems to the cloud.
    • "Sunrise Toolbox" dev ops tools to improve team efficiency.
• Team Management:
  • Sunrise Systems and Software is comprised of roughly half of the company's employees, split between 4 departments:
    • Systems Engineering.
    • Software Engineering.
    • DevOps.
    • IT.
  • I previously lead and managed other teams directly, including Systems Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Design verification.
  • I mentor leaders including both technical managers and project managers.
  • I mentor engineers across the company with a special focus on systems, electrical, and software engineering.
  • I create an environment where engineers and managers can push their limits and develop new skills.
  • I manage staffing levels across all projects so that every project has the right talent mix to succeed.
  • I work with business development team to attract new customers by representing Sunrise's technical capabilities in sales calls, whitepapers, blog posts, webinars, etc.
  • I author project proposals and statements of work.
  • I manage group growth, including strategic hiring to round out the group skillset, building / outfitting new lab space, and keeping us on top of industry trends in tools and methods.
• Project Management:
  • I manage projects with small teams of highly capable engineers, schedules ranging from 6 wks to 2 years, and budgets from tens of thousands to millions of dollars.
  • Examples include:
    • A connected smart inhaler that measured and reported on quality of dose.
    • An accessory device that measured and reported on dose delivery for a wearable insulin delivery device.
    • A cortical neurostimulator that integrated multi-modal neurostimulation into a disposable handheld battery operated device.
    • A highly configurable manufacturing test software suite that seamlessly integrated into industrial control systems.
    • A calibration fixture for a bioimpedance spectroscopy device with extremely wide dynamic range.
  • I strongly support agile methodologies (not "big-A" Agile) in all projects and for all engineering disciplines.
• Systems Engineering and Technical Leadership:
  • I design system architectures for systems ranging in complexity from simple IoT devices to complex electromechanical life support devices, e.g. Syncardia Total Artificial Heart.
  • I align the stakeholders and contributors to a common product vision.
  • I develop system models, including high-level performance analyses and highly detailed analytical models.
  • I perform trade-off analyses and risk-benefit analyses.
  • I perform hazard analyses including top-down, e.g. fault tree, and bottom-up, e.g. FMEA.
  • I review the engineering outputs and analyze the technical performance metrics.
  • I provide direct inputs and guidance to the engineers across all engineering disciplines.
  • I develop and manage system and subsystem requirements.
• Electronics Design:
  • I have deep electronics expertise with good fundamentals and broad design experience.
  • I am the resident expert in mid-voltage (1-100kV) and high-current (up to 7kA) design.
  • I am the resident expert in low-level metrology, e.g. femtoammmeters.
  • I have broad experience in mixed signal electronics design, e.g. ADCs, DACs, MCUs, etc.
  • I have specific experience with high speed electronics design, e.g. picosecond pulsers, etc.
  • I also have broad experience with precision controls and motion systems, e.g. servos, speed control, pmsm, bldc, stepper, etc.
  • I am well versed in digital signal processing, e.g. FPGAs, DSPs, algorithm development, etc.
  • As EE team lead, I reviewed every electronics design (~25/year) at the schematic, layout, and system levels.
  • I frequently contribute to design for EMC and ESD-tolerance.
  • I provide guidance on DfR (design for reliability) such as how best to strain relieve wiring / cabling.
  • I analyze circuit performance with paper analyses and numerical simulations, leveraging symbolic and numerical computation tools (pylab, matlab, etc) and SPICE.
  • Design example: I designed a novel handheld neurostimulator intended for use in brain surgery:
    • The electrical specifications exceeded the specifications of existing neurostimulators.
    • BOM reduction to 25 parts (from over 200 in predicate device) leveraging clever usage of peripherals available in low-end PIC16 MCU.
    • Miniaturized to fit entirely in the hand (no cords).
    • Electronics designed to survive ETO sterilization.
    • Cost reduced to ~$10 (from $900 predicate device) to allow a disposable use mode.
  • Design example: I designed a clever solution to cost-reduce a wearable medical device by integrating most of the peripheral functionality into a Silego (now Renesas) GreenPAK device:
    • Reduced BOM by 15 parts (out of only ~30 parts in the original BOM).
    • Reduced CoGs by 80¢ at 20M per annum production quantities.
    • Implemented NiMH battery monitor and undervoltage cutoff to prevent microcontroller failures.
    • Implemented NiMH battery charging including constant current, constant voltage, and trickle charge, with only 3 external parts. No op amps were available in the Silego part so closed loop current control was achieved with an internal comparator, internal voltage reference, and a single capacitor as a filter (leveraging the high on resistance of the Silego GPIO pin's drive FETs to filter the control signal).
    • Eliminated a discrete soft-switch circuit by building a little bit of debouncing logic and minimal state management into one of the smallest Silego parts.
• Software Development:
  • I am responsible for ensuring consistent quality across all projects so I review much of the technical outputs of the teams.
  • I host lunch and learns and internal projects for continuous learning, e.g. functional programming concepts, concatenative programming, signal processing, performance optimization, ISAs, etc.
  • I also contribute code to many projects, e.g.:
    • Automated test and calibration software for a test fixture that pushed physical limits of precision.
    • Algorithms for data model management in a Xamarin (C#) cross-platform mobile app.
    • Many state machines using custom frameworks (C, C++, Python), QP (C++), and stateless (C#).
    • All of the firmware for a novel handheld neurostimulator. All of the functionality, including waveform generation, configuration, safety monitoring, and communications were implemented in 8-bit PIC assembly.
    • A highly configurable test management tool in elmish.WPF (F#).

Staff Electrical Engineer, Advanced Technology Team, 2010–2016

Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University

• Managed "Active Insoles" medical device project, including requirements generation, scope of work, setting customer expectations, and overseeing a multidisciplinary design team.^[1]
• Principal Investigator on 4 human studies investigating Stochastic Resonance for balance, stability, and athletic performance.
• Developed design process controls including requirements for documentation (requirements, theory of operation, test & verification, FMEA) and design reviews.
• Designed, built, tested, and deployed medical devices for clinical research in hospital environments, such as electrical stimulators to enhance upper limb rehabilitation after stroke.^[2]
• Supported cutting edge research, such as hyper-elastic strain sensor measurement systems for human subject studies at NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory.^[3]

Engineering Design Freelancer/Consultant, 1997–2016

Mostly small project-based contracts

• Developed nanosecond laser pulser for 256 parallel quantum cascade lasers with sub-nanosecond control of current profile.
• 9-axis wearable wireless inertial measurement units that incorporate into existing human body network.^[4]
• Support production & test of low noise medical raman spectroscopy device.
• Performance optimization of user interface for 3D integrated circuit design and analysis software.
• High-speed aircraft-mounted IR camera communications interface and algorithm development.

Control Systems Engineer, 2006–2010

Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates, World Leader in Ion Implant

• Received "Excellence in Engineering" award for leading firmware development on a metrology project with high visibility and a challenging schedule.
• Earned "Value Engineering" award for leading a portable systems monitoring project that generated over $1 million in revenue and reduced production costs by $2 million annually.
• Designed and documented robust high voltage grounding system for next generation high energy ion implanter with operating voltages in excess of 1 megavolt and systemic arcing conditions.

Education

Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering

Bachelors of Science in Computer Systems Engineering

Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute - Troy, NY

• Developed control system and AI for fully autonomous dart-gun robot that beat the darts carnival game.
• Designed and implemented control and power systems for homemade electron discharge machining (EDM) tool.

Publications, Patents, Etc

Publication

Miranda DL, Hsu WH, Petersen K, Fitzgibbons S, Niemi J, Lesniewski-Laas N, Walsh CJ. "Sensory Enhancing Insoles Modify Gait During Inclined Treadmill Walking With Load." Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2015 Nov 24. [Epub]

Publication

Miranda DL, Hsu WH, Gravelle D, Petersen K, Ryzman R, Niemi J, Lesniewski-Laas N. "Sensory enhancing insoles improve athletic performance during a hexagonal agility task." J Biomech. 2016 May 3. [Epub]

Patent

(EP3706133A1/WO2020182655A1) An electronic system for gathering data from an inhaler. [Espacenet]

Patent

(US-20210379393-A1) Electrotherapeutic waveform and pulse generation and delivery system and method. [UnifiedPatents]

Webinar

MassMEDIC: "SYSTEMS ENGINEERING FOR MEDICAL DEVICE DEVELOPMENT"^[5]

White Paper

What Systems Engineering means to Medical Device Development^[7]

Podcast

Guest on marketscale podcast discussing user needs.^[6]

References

1. Wyss Institute: Balance-Restoring Insoles (only early feasibility prototypes shown).
2. Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital: Improving Recovery After Stroke Via Electrical Stimulation of Proprioceptors.
3. Understanding Human-Space Suit Interaction To Prevent Injury During Extravehicular Activity.
4. Note: Webinar, white paper, and podcast links have all expired.