Mineral

Co-founded R&D moonshot "Mineral" in agriculture with Will Regan, developing tools for farmers to better understand their crops using robotics and AI.

We learned how to collect data on crops in-field for use in machine learning applications, with the aspiration to accelerate breeding practices in order to keep pace with climate change and population growth (high-throughput phenotyping). Delivered software and hardware solutions for several robot prototypes and data acquisition rigs across multiple growing seasons. Built ROS (rospy) system architecture and integrated motor controls, RF comms, various sensors including cameras (vis and multi-spectral), RTK-GPS, etc. Led all field & lab data collection efforts, data QC, and sensor calibration/testing. Assisted SWE’s on data ingest for ML pipelines.

Initial project pitch awarded 10 headcount & $3.5M opex over 18 months. Project advanced from ‘Investigation’ to ‘Foundry’ project in an unprecedented 7 months. I helped build the initial team of 11 engineers across multiple applications in agriculture, foundations for the current team of 60+ which has spun out of X and become a letter in the Alphabet.

Created relationships with industry leaders early in program development, helped set strategy and target real-world applications for near-term product development. Focused on immediate value-creation, leading to revenue in excess of $500k after only one season, while maintaining ‘moonshot’ trajectory & aspirations.