My work so far can be seen as a progression from the lower tiers of Technology Readiness Levels to higher, market-ready tiers. I expect that I will return to lower tiers in the future.
TRL 7 - 9
I run IoTReady.co where we build simple, industrial-grade IoT products. Our focus is on intelligent, single-purpose edge computing devices such as RFID readers, barcode scanners, print controllers & data loggers. Most of our hardware is built using microcontrollers and C with some built using GNU/Linux and single-board computers. Our core cloud platform is built using Elixir and our workflow solutions are built using Python. I spend my time between sales, marketing, cloud infrastructure, GNU/Linux, Python and Elixir. As a (profitable) bootstrapped venture, my job is to ensure Traceable Quality™, keep our heads above water and groom people to replace me in various contexts.
Partly to recover from burnout and partly to build a loosely-coupled innovation ecosystem, I ran Jaaga Startup - India's oldest coworking community for entrepreneurs. I took over from the founders and built a curated, sustainable community that helped each other grow through skill and network sharing. I handed the reins back once the itch to build products overpowered the itch to build communities. Also, while aligning startups for collaborations is easy enough if your curation is strong, turning this into a monetisable model is much tougher.
I co-founded beyon:labs, a naive precursor to IoTReady. I sought out the best golang developer I could find, Sathish VJ, and convinced him that building more intelligence at the Edge was the future (when everything was moving to the cloud). beyon didn't survive the first monetary and resource allocation hiccups but provided the "do not do" list for IoTReady.
TRL 3 - 6
I ran micrograce - an RF & Microwave focused new product development studio. We built and sold 4 patents across UHF RFID and microwave processing of shoes. I started up because I believed there was a more efficient way to innovate than what I had observed in the EU funded project world. I worked on much the same things as at Pera, except with the highly recommended constraints of fewer resources. micrograce brought me to Bangalore.
TRL 3 - 6
I was a Senior Technologist at Pera Technology in Melton Mowbray with a responsibility for leading RF & Microwave delivery. Most of the projects were funded by the EU. I was lucky enough to have worked across 30+ projects with 100+ SME partners. And unlucky, or bad, enough to have no patents and only 1 paper to show for the time.
TRL 1 - 3
I worked as Postdoctoral Fellow on near field imaging (among some other things) with my research group at Queens. Some time during this phase is when I realised I wanted to be further up the TRL levels. Sadly, this meant leaving Belfast - a place I continue to miss.
TRL 1 - 3
I worked towards my PhD thesis at Queen's Belfast - on the design and applications of Impedance Tuners. I started my PhD with work on Road Surface Imaging by adapting acoustic holography techniques but soon realised that the work would need programming ability that I didn't yet have. I took the easy way out and worked on (passive and analog) hardware design.
I received my Masters in Microwave Engineering from IIT Kharagpur. I helped start the student-led GNU/Linux Users Group which in turn led to a job offer with a fast track to the IT Head role. I went down a different path. Today, I administer all our servers. Full circle?
I got my Bachelor's in Engineering (Electronics & Communications) at a random college in the Bombay University system. I did get the privileges to manage the computer lab on account of being the only student with reasonable GNU/Linux skills and spare time. A pretty good score in a competitive exam meant I could have gone to medical school if I wanted to. A pass score in Biology meant that I realised a) I was unfit for medical school and b) not all competitive exams are equal.