Paul Anderson (paul@electronicautomations.com)

Senior Engineer at Pleno Inc.

Previous roles: Mechanical Engineer, Rapid Prototyping at Roswell Biotechnologies. R&D Engineer at Bionaut Labs

Resume can be reviewed by clicking here

Education: MS in Physics California State University Long Beach, BS in Physics University of California Santa Cruz

Awards, Fellowships, Papers, and Proceedings

• Outstanding Initiative and Achievement, (Zenith Specialty Bag Co., Inc.)

• Richard D Green Dean Graduate Research Fellowship, (CSULB)

• “Updated Results of Solid-State Sensor Irradiation Study for ILC Extreme Forward Calorimetry”, https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.05429

• “Strain-tuning of domain walls in multilayer graphene probed in the quantum Hall regime” https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.105.L081408

Thank you for visiting my page! Please scroll down to find information supplemental to my resume. Note: to the right are pictures with links to pages related to the work described. Much of my Industry work is not presented here out of respect of company IP.

 Highlights of my projects and inventions while working in the paper conversion industry. 

I  worked in the paper conversion industry (Zenith Specialty) for 7 years (2007-2014). About a year after graduating high school (2006), a family member who worked at the company approached me about a position opening in the maintenance department. I was offered the job and accepted the position of purchasing agent. It was my responsibility to order machine parts, fill out purchase orders, and maintain shop inventory.

The shop mechanics taught me about the machinery and maintenance. Over time, I began to install parts and fix the machines. I further learned how to operate shop machinery including a lathe and mill. To reduce costs and downtime, I began machining parts instead of ordering them. 

Eventually, I began designing and building machinery. This motivated me to learn AutoCAD for modeling and schematic purposes. I became fascinated with was mechatronics, and wanted to integrate mechanical parts with electronics, so I taught myself to program Arduino micro controllers. One notable machine I built was the Automated Packaging proof of concept which can be explored in more detail to the right (below for mobil devices). Taking on these projects gave me the opportunity to meet with management regularly to propose new projects and discuss time lines and budgets.

 Projects and research while studying at University of California Santa Cruz. 

In June of 2017 I was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC). My research was with the International Linear Collider (ILC) T506 group at the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics (SCIPP) under the guidance of Professor Bruce Schumm. Our focus was on radiation damage studies of solid state devices intended for ILC detectors in the extreme forward calorimetry. Particle detectors are subject to radiation damage, causing significant loss in charge collection efficiency. One reason for this is the charge trapping mechanism at defect sites. My thesis pertained to a shaping time study where I measured pulse rise and fall times for many integrator-differentiator circuit time constants. To quantify pulse geometry, I generated pulse simulations in Excel with VBA to determine whether charge collection time was dependent on the rise or fall time of a pulse. The purpose was to investigate a collection time that was long enough to collect trapped charges, but not so long as to overlap pulse events. 

I was also a member of the student-run magazine, Scientific Slug, dedicated to showcasing the research being performed at UCSC. Although my main responsibility was as a writer, I also secured funding for the magazine by presenting requests at college senate meetings in front of the student body. I interviewed prominent campus scientists and established strong connections, writing about their research in a palatable format for a general audience to consume. I diversified the content of the magazine by developing a DIY section, where I included instructions and schematics for different projects, an example being how to build a Bluetooth speaker. These collaborative experiences helped fine-tune my communication skills and opened doors for my dedication to the science community.

Projects and Research while studying at California State University Long Beach.

I began the M.S. in Physics at CSULB in August of 2017. I chose this particular program because there was a strong emphasis on condensed matter experiment, a field that struck my interest while working with detectors at UCSC. Electronics and device physics is what I wanted to focus on. While condensed matter experiment is more a study of the fundamentals than of application, I felt that having a strong understanding of the physics would give me an advantage if ever wanted to develop electronic devices in a research facility or the semiconductor industry. 

The Nanoelectronics group led by Professor Claudia Ojeda-Aristizabal was a perfect match for my interests. Equipment training I’ve acquired includes photolithography, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and Physical Property Measurement System (PPMS). I also learned how to automate measurement instruments such as a Keithley source meter, SRS lock-in amplifier, and an Oxford Instruments cryostat Teslatron using Python.

My thesis is on the study of graphene under strain using micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). I perform electronic transport experiments at low temperatures on suspended graphene where a reversible strain is applied through a sophisticated micro-actuator. Samples are provided by our collaborator Qin Zhou from the University of Nebraska. The MEMS are fabricated such that two probes are in poor contact with the graphene, causing them to behave like tunnel barriers. A differential conductance measurement can therefore access the density of states in graphene, allowing me to potentially track the opening of a band gap with strain. This could lead to similar observations that were found under a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) by Crommie et al., in which signatures of large pseudo-magnetic fields were observed on graphene nano- bubbles. In recent experiments, I have observed a clear magnetoresistance with features related to quantum Hall effect. I think that these features are the result of the superposition of the applied magnetic field and a pseudo-magnetic field created by strain.

Other projects:

Breakout box: from concept prototype to functioning instrument

The “automated breakout box concepts” as found in the page above was a proof of concept I developed in my MS program to propose an automated switchboard for performing experiments. This work paved the way for a recent project I’ve taken on at Roswell Biotechnologies. Here I have successfully developed a working automated breakout box instrument. The implementation of such a board has freed up dozens, if not hundreds of hours in experiment monitoring and operation of electrode switching.

My home laboratory in response to COVID 19

During the California shut down due to COVID-19, I was able to continue a portion of my work study molecular electronics by moving my lab setup to my home. Here I perform lock-in impedance measurements to study the electronic properties of biological molecules. I’ve simulated the electronic properties of “nano-wires” which can be modeled as unique molecules by generating a tight-binding Hamiltonian and literature based onsite energies and hopping terms. I model the IV and dI/dV (differential conductance) using Kwant in Python.

Designing a low temperature measurement probe

Here I have designed a liquid cryostat vacuum probe using AutoCAD Design Suite to generate a model, and AutoDesk Fusion 360 to perform a thermal analysis simulation.

Routine maintenance and repairs of closed cycle cryostat

A significant part of my work in the CSULB Nanoelectronics lab consisted of routine maintenance and repairs of lab equipment. Here I have learned much about the inner workings of a closed cycle cryostat. I have also been trained to pump and evacuate vacuum lines, replace and clean filters, replace scroll pump tip seals, pump and flush and recharge the UHP (ultra high purity) helium circulation system. Since my experiments depend on the functionality of this system, I take special care while learning about and maintaining this system. In addition to this Oxford Instruments Teslatron, I have also done experiments in and repairs on a Quantum Design PPMS (physics properties measurement system).