Lance Norman
Hardware Engineer
I’m a hardware engineer with a background in embedded systems and industrial robotics. With 9+ years of experience in a variety of different industries, currently I’m working on advanced automation for cell therapy manufacturing at Bristol Myers Squibb, while also pursuing an MS in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University.
Areas of interest
Skills
Educational Experience
MS · Electrical Engineering · Part Time · Current
BS · Computer Engineering · minor in Mathematics · 2014
Professional Experience
Bristol Myers Squibb – Building a fully robotic workcell to prepare final drug product samples
Role
Automation Engineer
Duration
Oct 2020 - Current
Overview
- Being in the Cell Therapy division, there is a critical need to automate the testing and QC of personalized CAR-T therapies to scale production as these life-saving medicines move from small clinical trials to being prescribed by doctors worldwide.
- We integrated common lab equipment like centrifuges and incubators with custom microscopy and liquid handling devices into a single platform to reduce the man hours and operator variation that comes with processing samples manually.
Opal Wearables – Developing smart jewelry for users to discreetly call for help in a potentially unsafe situation
Role
Co-Founder
Director of Hardware Engineering
Duration
Oct 2021 - Current
Overview
- Responsible for designing and building the first prototype device containing tiny embedded electronics capable of communicating with the user’s phone while smoothly integrating into a ring-type form factor.
- As both a manager and an individual contributor I am working with the rest of the Opal team to deliver a product that is both fashionable and functional that women can wear to protect themselves.
Sortile – Developing solutions to enable textile recycling
Role
Electrical Design Engineer
Duration
May 2022 - July 2022
Overview
- Consulted with Sortile to help build a prototype of custom spectroscopy device to distinguish textiles by fiber type to help automate the sorting of used clothing.
- Responsible for developing an enclosure allowing for sensitive measurements to be made in potentially harsh environments with minimal external equipment needed.
Autonomous Therapeutics – Developing novel biologics and vaccinations against deadly infectious diseases
Role
Electrical Design Engineer
Duration
Feb 2019 - Jul 2020
Overview
- With significant funding from DARPA and the CDC we built a custom microbioreactor system that could track therapeutic efficacy and viral evolution over time.
- My job was to design all of the embedded hardware/firmware and automated liquid handling required to keep viral cultures alive along with custom optical systems to perform cell-based assays.
Academic Experience
Columbia University
Coursework focus: robotics, IoT, advanced programming, and battery management systems
Projects
LoRa-enabled sensors with Geolocation
- Research project with Internet Real-Time Lab in CS Dept
- Low power sensor communication over campus-wide LoRaWAN network
- Schematics and source code can be found here
Robotic vaccination system
- Conceptual research for an automated vaccine delivery system
- LModeling inverse kinematics and joint parameters in Solidworks and Matlab
- Full paper can be found here
University of Connecticut
Coursework focus: embedded systems, digital logic design with microcontrollers and FPGA’s
Projects
Wireless network of motor controllers
- Senior design project sponsored by Lenze, producer of variable frequency drives (VFD)
- We developed wireless transceivers communication via Zigbee mesh network
- Full paper here
Physically-Unclonable-Functions (PUF)
- Research project on detecting counterfeit microchips via intrinsic signal path delays
- Full paper here
Thanks for visiting. If you’d like to work together or just chat, get in touch at lancebnorman [at] gmail.com
ⓒ 2022 Lance Norman