Aloft Systems
Mechanical engineer | 2025-Present
Summary
In 2025, I joined my good friend Miles’ company, Aloft Systems, to help them push forward on their efforts to prototype an automated sail that could be easily retrofitted onto cargo ships to reduce fuel consumption and emissions. I met Miles at the Autodesk Technology Center, where my own company was a resident team. I was really impressed with the progress they were making in the two years prior, and when he was looking for increased bandwidth, I was more than happy to help. During my time at Aloft, we’ve built a larger version of their initial prototype, designed a data collection system to generate real-time weather and voyage data from cargo ships, and deployed that system on multiple ships globally.
Experience
At-Sea operations
1
Deployed data collection boxes on multiple ships globally, to generate meteorological, voyage and performance data.
Analysis and Modeling
2
Implemented sensor fusion algorithms to calculate ship attitude, wave behavior, and sea-state from GPS and IMU data.
Software
3
Developed data pipeline and processing system to ingest data from collection boxes using AWS IoT Core, SAM, DynamoDB, S3, and CloudFormation.
Built and deployed customer facing data visualization tool with Python, Streamlit and Plotly to evaluate vessel performance, voyage status, contract compliance and wind-assist readiness of cargo vessels.
Design
4
Responsible for structural design and analysis of major sail, skid and foundation components.
Designed mechanisms, linkages and hydraulic systems to drive variable camber wing and enable the wing to raise-lower and lower automatically.
Architected robust and modular telemetry and control system to measure cargo vessel performance, weather and voyage data from IMUs, GPS, AIS SDR, and other meteorological sensors.
Fabrication
5
Coordinated fabrication of full-scale prototype, managing suppliers and vendors.
Milled and turned mechanical components for 4 bar linkage mechanism, and destructive test fixtures (CNC milling, CNC turning with live tooling, manual turning).
