The Journey of an Electronics Engineer

Growing up in a family filled with passionate Engineers has given me deep insight into many areas of physics as well as a large appreciation for critical thinking, problem solving, and troubleshooting. Both of my grandfathers had engineering mindsets and created, recreated, fixed, and built many wonderful things from boats, airplanes, and houses to scratch made engines and even an electromagnetic pinch (he actually got in a bit of trouble for this but that was a different era). One of my grandfathers (an Electrical Engineer) was a fantastic communicator. He could explain the most complex and nuanced system to a 7 year old with complete understanding by both parties. Thus began my drive to understand the world around me in such a way that I too could fix, build, understand, and even devise such fantastic contraptions. My fathers patience and thoroughness proved very instrumental in my drive to understand and create as my mind often delved into hordes of questions about the things around me.

As a kid, I often pulled apart my toys trying to figure out how they worked and to see if I could make something else out of them. When my toys weren't enough, I started to dig into old electronics and tear them apart. Components and circuitry have always amazed and intrigued me. In high school I was fortunate to attend a school that made a technology institute available to its students for dual credit. I enrolled in every class I could including web design, digital design, and electronics. I was also intrigued by one of my step fathers hobbies, ham radio. It wasn't long before I was studying for my technician license and learning lots about electronics, electricity, and RF. We built a few projects, one of my favorites was a power supply for my guitar amp. From there I started taking on high school jobs and thinking about circuits and electronics in my spare time. Eventually I stopped messing with electronics as much and started thinking more and more about taking flight.

My family was also very much into aviation. Most flew, fixed, and/or rebuilt airplanes. All things aviation soon took over my life. I worked odd jobs in food, as a waiter, computers, as a computer technician and DSL sales manager, gas station as an assistant manager, and even a pet store. I often held more than one job at a time, saving for school, but always found time to play with random circuits and circuit concepts. When my wife graduated college we swiftly relocated closer to a school of aviation. I spent a few years flying and getting my private pilots license and IFR rating. Soon though, the whole industry starting taking major hits and at the same time my wife started to have some serious medical issues. I determined at that point that a career in aviation was out of the question and pivoted back to engineering. With a propensity toward electronics and the help of a very generous engineer, who allowed me to interview him about the best engineering path, it was decided that Electrical Engineering was the choice for me.

I began working on an associates degree at McLennan Community College under the guide of some tremendously remarkable professors. The aforementioned professors guided me through a very thorough, awe-inspiring, and driven experience. In this community college I was pushed to write papers, attend conferences, present in front of many audiences, innovate on my own work, push myself in weak areas, attend honors college classes, and even participate in a week long journey to the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah where I put my designs to test in real world environments under extreme social and environmental conditions. These professors at McLennan Community college gave me an education and experience I could not have gotten anywhere else in the world or from any other teacher. My gratitude to them is immense.

As soon as able, we moved back to our hometown, Lubbock Texas, and I started work on my bachelors in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas Tech University. Fortunately, being an nontraditional student, having a great deal of work experience, a good amount of very driven college experience, and a large amount of ambition, I fit right into the four year college environment and thrived. I quickly determined my favorite professors, the ones who really pushed and guided well at the same time, and took as many classes as I could with them. My favorite time at Texas Tech University was the Electrical and Computer Engineering labs. We were given a team and a general project statement with specifications for the project (sometimes multiple projects in one lab) and expected to apply what we were learning as well as research to learn more to accomplish each project. It was a very lightly guided process with presentations and tough grilling once a week. I quickly realized the utility of having my own lab and set one up in the house as soon as I could get the equipment in my hands. Many late nights were spent designing, planning, building, problem solving, troubleshooting and researching. Some of those projects are presented in my portfolio. Through these labs I became much more proficient at all things project management from concept to creation including scheduling, budgeting, part sourcing, team cohesion, task layout and so much more. Toward the end of my time at Texas Tech University I was invited to work on a project in the Pulse Power lab. With direct guidance from graduate students and Doctorates I completed my labs and was invited to stick around for graduate studies covered by the lab. However, in my last year of college, my wife became pregnant with our first child. I felt an obligation to enter the workforce swiftly.

One of the professors at the school approached me to see if I would be interested in working for a local company "Group NIRE." I interviewed and soon accepted the job. My first responsibilities at Group NIRE, as an Electrical Engineering Intern, were to help with the ARPA-E NODES and CHARGES programs. The NODES program was aimed at aggregating control and acquisition of 100+ DER's. Group NIRE's role in this project was to serve solely as the test facility. The CHARGES program was aimed at testing new battery technology and, like NODES, Group NIRE was to serve as the test facility. Though these were my only responsibilities at Group NIRE, I soon started helping anywhere else I could from networking and helping rebuild the data infrastructure (I have a background and interest in computers and networks as well as formal education in networking) to spec'ing parts and helping to build an aquaponics system (also a background in animals and habitat environmental controls). Soon, along side NODES and CHARGES, I was tasked to build out an Electronics lab for a small startup that Group NIRE was taking partial ownership in. I was also hired on full time as an Electrical Engineer. This electronics lab was the beginning of Group NIRE's drive into electronics engineering and led to many projects as well as a build out of a high power wide bandgap test lab. I was introduced to proposal writing and soon tasked to write as many proposals as I could see myself doing. At that same time NODES was creating issues for the partners who were trying to gain control and acquisition of the full 100 DERs. The controlling company was unable to communicate well with the load switches that were spec'ed out for the project. In passing I mentioned to my boss that it didn't seem like a hard problem to solve. Busy with other engineering projects, I did not figure this statement would lead to much. However, my boss soon approached me and asked if I could present a solution to him. In my free time I gained control of one of the switches, did some preliminary control and acquisition, and built a rapid prototype in Node-Red, Javascript, and BASH for 10 of the switches. I presented this to my boss and discussed the problems inherent on control and acquisition of the switches as well as the intricacies of controlling 100 devices via WiFi in one building and the issues with scaling. The NODES project was nearing an end and the switches had still not been incorporated so I was given the additional task of putting something together and given access to an Electrical Engineer Intern to help. This project has since been through 4 iterations and has a pending patent.

Along side the NODES and charges projects I was encouraged to write proposals and drum up work anywhere possible. Having connections in the Electrical Engineering department at Texas Tech, many proposals were made and a few pulse power projects were won including building a state of the art WBG pulse generator, researching and building a cutting edge high speed dV/dt pulse generator to push the limits of test on WBG devices, developing a low inductance high magnetic field coil to be used for cold fusion research. In order to develop and test these projects I was also tasked with building out the electronics lab to include high power tests and safety for high power test. Ultimately, the pulse power projects lead to a winning proposal to develop a WBG test center for commercial testing of WBG devices and modules. In this proposal I led a team to build out test stands to include: HTRB, HTGB, HTOL, THBT, IOL, TDDB, Avalanche, Surge, Short circuit, di/dt, dv,dt, and continuous switching. Of these tests I was personally responsible for the research, design, and buildout of automated high bandwidth test-beds for HTRB, HTGB, and TDDB. Being the project lead, I was also responsible for the budgeting, customer communication, marketing connections and help, team meetings, customer pricing, and generally overall project continuation, progress, validation, compliance, and commercialization.

During the pulse power projects, as well as NODES and CHARGES completion, I found myself taking care of other tasks including developing a multi point IoT temperature sensor, building out a cryptocurrency mining machine, data center, and energy management system as well as algorithms for cryptocurrency billing and research, writing proposals, and continuing to help technicians maintain and troubleshoot renewable generation equipment. Then it happened, COVID 19.

I was able to continue working on most of the same projects during the pandemic and was deemed necessary personnel and allowed to work in the office when necessary. I put my home lab to good use though and was able to accomplish most of my electrical engineering work from home going to the office to help with device testing for the customers we had brought in as well as some of the other projects I maintained. One day my boss called me and asked if I wanted to be CEO. At first I was a bit shocked. I had no real knowledge or understanding of the companies overall standing. I agreed to talk to our direct board (we have 2 boards) about the offer. After deliberation and negotiation I took the job. We had just won a proposed project with ESTCP to validate the DER project with Texas Tech University at MIT Lincoln Labs. We started work on this right away and I worked on getting a handle on all of the operations as well as our financial position. It didn't take long to understand that there wasn't much time left (3 months to be precise). We quickly re-positioned the company and started to review and negotiate all of our contracts. This was able to buy us time and free up resources. An aim at the Pareto principle was made where two business lines were identified as focus areas: the ESTCP project and Group NIRE's wind turbine testing service.

Ultimately, I guided a very talented Engineer into managing the ESTCP project with minimal inputs from myself. We won another proposal with Texas Tech University to teach cybersecurity in relation to energy and micro grids. In this project I took a role of teaching standards and policy by way of penetration testing. Along the way it became apparent that I needed to take over the responsibilities of the Wind turbine testing service instead of just managing and guiding a project manager. As a part of this service my work became more and more about logistics, project management, and contracts. Though still working on innovative ideas, like building an API for local LMP to better serve our partners, most of my work is now in management and administration. I long for the days of returning engineering work proper.

Personally I have always worked on engineering type projects outside of my normal employ. These projects range from building and shooting complex rockets and improving my vehicles to writing cryptocurrency algorithms and creating specific electrical engineering YouTube content. I also still partake in aviation any chance that I get, though that's not necessarily engineering.

I am not trying to write a book here so there are many projects and other fun topics of engineering in my life left out. I hope this has been a brief but thorough enough look into my journey to give you an idea of my journey so far.