Moore's Lobby: Where engineers talk all about circuits

As CTO and co-founder of Virgin Hyperloop, Giegel is a mechanical engineer, former aerospace researcher, and a transportation revolutionary.

Hyperloop transportation has always been a bombastic proposal. Virgin Hyperloop aims to provide ground transportation up to 670 miles per hour. At those speeds, you could step into a hyperloop pod in New York City at noon and step out of it in Los Angeles in time for dinner five hours later, requiring 10x less energy than an airplane.

A robust hyperloop transportation infrastructure would change the way we travel forever.

As Giegel puts it, being one of two of the very first "hypernauts" was something akin to a Roman architect standing underneath an arch he designed. He put his very life into the hands of the engineers he leads, trusting them to hurl him 500 meters in 15 seconds—the initial test of Virgin Hyperloop's test track. 

Hear Giegel talk about the vision behind his company's goals of creating a fully-electric, high-power, autonomous maglev system. (Spoilers: As it turns out, a hyperloop is just one of the ways their technology stands to change the transportation world.) You'll hear a fellow engineer discuss the technical elements of hyperloop creation that have long made experts think hyperloops are science fiction. 

Would you know history if you were standing in the middle of it? Learn how much closer we are to the age of the hyperloop than you probably realize.

What does it take for a motorsport team to win five Formula E championships? And how do automotive companies translate that success into the electric vehicles we drive every day?

We’re kicking off Season 2 of Moore’s Lobby with a guest who will be familiar to motorsports fans across Formula 1 and its electric vehicle counterpart, Formula E. 

Motorsports are the ultimate proving ground for automotive technologies. When it comes to electric vehicles, no prototyping in the world can match the rigor—and the excitement—of a Formula E race. 

Learn about crucial power design aspects in Formula E, including why the engineers have evolved towards using direct drive motors and one battery rather than two. And did you know that the cars must regenerate around 30% of the energy used during a race through regenerative braking, etc.? And that the drivers must trigger it manually at key moments?

Hear the details from an expert who has made a career out of blazing trails.

Season 2 of Moore's Lobby releases January 21st, 2021! 

Last year, we brought you the personal stories and experiences of some of the most interesting engineers from some of the most respected companies in our industry. This season, you’ll get cutting-edge insights from the leaders of groundbreaking companies like Virgin Hyperloop, Formula E, NS Nanotech, and many more.

This keynote panel is moderated by engineer, New York Times bestselling author and producer of the Moore's Lobby podcast on All About Circuits, Dave Finch. 

About Our Panelists

Mark Burr-Lonnon, Senior Vice President of Global Service & EMEA and APAC Business at Mouser Electronics

Mark Burr-Lonnon, Senior Vice President of Global Service & EMEA and APAC Business, helps guide and lead Mouser Electronics’ global service strategy as well as day-to-day international efforts. Today, with the help of his vision, Mouser has 27 Customer Service Centers strategically positioned around the globe, providing local language, currency, and same time-zone support. He brings a wealth of global electronics distribution experience, totaling over 35 years.

Dave Doherty, President and Chief Operating Officer at Digi-Key Electronics

Dave Doherty, President and Chief Operating Officer at Digi-Key Electronics, brings over 30 years of professional experience between the semiconductor manufacturing and electronics distribution industries, the last 10+ with Digi-Key. His experience and knowledge enables him to provide great insight and innovative leadership within Digi-Key and the electronics industry. Dave holds a BSEE from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, an MBA from Babson College, and has served as President of the Educational Foundation Board for the Electronics Component Industry Association as well as the chairperson for their Executive Conference.

Frank McKay, Senior Vice President & Chief Procurement Officer at Jabil, Inc.

Frank McKay is the Sr. Vice President & Chief Procurement Officer for Jabil, Inc., a global manufacturing solutions company with revenue of more than $25B. He leads an organization of approximately 600 employees located in the Americas, Europe, and Asia that are responsible for the company’s procurement and supply chain activities.

In this keynote, Dev Singh will engage in discussion with Dave Finch, engineer, New York Times bestselling author, and producer of the Moore's Lobby podcast on All About Circuits. The keynote session will be followed by a live Q&A with the audience.

About Dev Singh

Dev Singh serves as Senior Director of Business Development and Head of Autonomous Robotics, Drones and Intelligent Machines at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. Dev is responsible for leading and managing the robotics and intelligent machines in the IoT business unit where he focuses on strategy, business development, R&D investments and execution for accelerating net revenue growth while optimizing operating cost. Prior to this role, he led the execution of multimedia IP development across Snapdragon application processor platforms for mobile, IoT, and automotive segments.

He began his career at Texas Instruments and served in various engineering and leadership roles for execution, operations, product management, and new product development across TI’s foundry and analog products business units for over 10 years.

Dev holds an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Arkansas.

In this keynote, Lucas and Bryn will engage in discussion with Dave Finch, engineer, New York Times bestselling author, and producer of the Moore's Lobby podcast on All About Circuits. The keynote session will be followed by a live Q&A with the audience.

About Lucas di Grassi

Born in Sao Paulo, Lucas di Grassi is one of developers of the highly successful, electric-powered Formula E. Lucas also is a member of the board and developer of Roborace, the racing series for electric cars run by artificial intelligence which is set to become the most efficient developing environment for connected AI-based technology. Recently, Lucas was announced as partner and ambassador for the Electric Scooter Championship (eSC), a new international series aimed to promote both competition and technology development for urban micro-mobility.

Di Grassi drew international attention when he drove a Formula E car on the North Pole ice cap to set an alert to global warming. In May 2018, Lucas was appointed ambassador for the United Nations Environment Program with the mission to increase awareness about poor urban air quality, which causes over 6 million premature deaths around the world.

Lucas is the most relevant driver of the FIA Formula E history having amassed the impressive sequence of three thirds and a second championship season places, plus the 2017 world title. Having previously competed in Formula One, di Grassi is again a title contender of FIA World Formula E Championship for the official Audi Sport Abt Schaeffler team.

About Bryn Balcombe

Bryn Balcombe is the Chief Strategy Officer for Roborace. He received his BEng in Mechanical Engineering and Vehicle Design from the University of Hertfordshire. Balcombe previously spent 16 years working with Formula One racing, architecting communication systems for vehicle-to-infrastructure connectivity, as well as implementing the Formula One Global Media Network. He has experience on projects ranging from circuit development to full tracking systems and automated vehicles.

Balcombe is the founder of ADA.ngo, a non-profit alliance developed to ensure the safe and ethical deployment of human-centric artificial intelligence in automotive applications to prevent road traffic injuries. ADA.ngo supports the use of motorsports as a means of accelerated R&D for automotive AI.

He additionally serves as the Chair of ITU Focus Group on AI for Autonomous and Assisted Driving for the International Telecommunication Union (ITU FG-AI4AD), where this focus group serves as a forum for international organizations such as governments and research institutions can collaborate to evaluate AI-assisted and automated vehicle safety. 

In this episode, Professor Anant Agarwal spoke with host Dave Finch about the next 5, 10, 25 years of online education for engineers. The keynote session was followed by a live Q&A with the audience.

About Anant Agarwal

Anant Agarwal is the Founder and CEO of edX. Anant taught the first edX course on circuits and electronics from MIT, which drew 155,000 students from 162 countries. He has served as the director of CSAIL, MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. He is a successful serial entrepreneur, having co-founded several companies including Tilera Corporation, which created the Tile multicore processor, and Virtual Machine Works.

Anant won the Maurice Wilkes prize for computer architecture, and MIT's Smullin and Jamieson prizes for teaching. He is also the 2016 recipient of the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize for Higher Education, which recognized his work in advancing the MOOC movement. Additionally, he is a recipient of the Padma Shri award from the President of India and was named the Yidan Prize for Education Development Laureate in 2018. He held a Guinness World Record for the largest microphone array, and is an author of the textbook "Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits."

Scientific American selected his work on organic computing as one of 10 World-Changing Ideas in 2011, and he was named in Forbes' list of top 15 education innovators in 2012. Anant, a pioneer in computer architecture, is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the ACM.

In this episode, Richard Barry discusses real-time edge processing with Dave Finch, New York Times bestselling author and producer of the Moore's Lobby podcast on All About Circuits. 

About Richard Barry

Richard Barry founded the FreeRTOS project in 2003, spent more than a decade developing and promoting FreeRTOS through his company Real Time Engineers Ltd, and currently continues his work on FreeRTOS as a senior principal engineer at Amazon Web Services.

FreeRTOS is a cross-platform standard RTOS kernel for microcontrollers with ports to more than 40 microcontroller cores and 18 toolchains. FreeRTOS is now downloaded once every 175 seconds – making FreeRTOS one of the leading RTOSes in its class.

Richard graduated with 1st Class Honors in Computing for Real-Time Systems, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate for his contributions to the development of embedded technology. Richard has also been directly involved in the startup of several companies and authored several books.

This week in Moore's Lobby, our guest is Matthew Dominick—EE, Navy test pilot, and astronaut for NASA.

You'll hear Matthew and Dave hit on a slew of topics. What's the ultimate "double E airplane"? What makes touchscreen vs. button interface design so incredibly important in the cockpit of a fighter jet? What is WOM and why do we rely on it so much for education? And what makes Matthew describe part of his job as being a "translator"?

This episode delves into the complexities of moving towards RF-enabled devices, Matthew's "weird hobby" of writing software, the role of augmented reality in the coolest of wearables (i.e., fighter pilot helmets), and the challenges facing engineers designing technologies meant to function on the surface of the moon.

Also, toasters. (No, really. There's a surprising amount of talk about toasters.)

In this episode of Moore's Lobby, we continue our series on wireless connectivity for the IoT. This time, we're focusing on Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Bluetooth mesh.

Learn about the "Balkanization" of IoT connectivity, hear where these three specifications fit in the landscape of smart devices, and get to know the new industry standard for hardware of "Can it run Doom?"

And Dave narrowly avoids making a "pardon our meshy home" pun. 

In our eighth episode, host Dave Finch discusses how to get from prototype to market, zeroing in on the process of DFM or, more accurately DFX, which stands for "Design for" ...well, anything that comes after the design.

Why does cost go up after a product's been released for a while? When should you consider certifcation in the design process? How can young engineers hope to familiarize themselves with DFM if they never even designed a full board in school?

Learn the many good reasons engineers should know their board manufacturers. Consider how EMS (electronic manufacturing services) companies have evolved from mere contractors into design partners.

And hear some truly unfortunate stories about what happens when you fail to plan beyond the circuit design stage appropriately.

Don't call it a wireless protocol! In this episode of Moore's Lobby, we're talking about Wi-SUN, an interoperable, auto-optimizing wireless IoT specification that supports smart city functionality in dense urban environments. 

What do you imagine when you think of the smart cities of the future? IoT streetlights, smart metering, gunshot detection, pollution sensing—the possibilities of interconnected, wireless sensor networks and communications are endless. 

We'll take a hardware designer's look at a new and rising wireless IoT specification that is open rather than proprietary. Along the way, you'll hear two engineers explain the complex world of wireless communication in their own words and share their experiences with the evolution of IoT design and why the move towards modules can "take all the fun out of some of RF design."

In this episode of Moore's Lobby, Dave sits down with two engineers about power design in the automotive space. 

You'll hear about how ignoring the holistic system in favor of high efficiency can mean too much of a good thing. You'll learn about IGBTs vs. MOSFETs in the automotive space. And you'll also pick up snippets about why single-sourced new components are forbidden fruit and why it's important to acknowledge that copper's not getting any more efficient.

Thermal management, EMI, switching losses, oh my! This episode is full to the brim of the technical details practicing EEs crave.

In this episode of Moore's Lobby, host Dave Finch takes a look at wireless IoT technologies and comes away with the knowledge that there is definitely no such thing as a "one size fits all" solution. 

Hear the voices of two experts weigh in: CEO of The Things Network, Wienke Giezeman, and CTO/COO of Senet (as well as LoRa Alliance board member), Dave Kjendal. 

This conversation will dive into the intricacies and extraordinary promise of one of the most versatile protocols out there: LoRaWAN.

Welcome to the age of coding. Hardware design has changed a lot in recent years, in no small part because electrical engineers are required to take part in more and more firmware and software design.

In this episode of Moore's Lobby, host Dave Finch talks to two engineers with storied careers about how the engineers at their two mega-companies rely on coding skills to make the best products possible. 

First, you'll hear Tim Saeger—Executive Vice President and Chief R&D Officer at iRobot—explain the importance of software development in robotics applications.

Then you'll dive into the details with Sean Newton—Microcontroller Applications Manager, Americas at STMicroelectronics—as he and Dave talk shop about the use of control algorithms for MCUs and motor control applications.

When you're launching the next Falcon rocket or Mars rover, the last thing you want is one line of Verilog standing between you and a successful test. Sandip Dasgupta, Senior Electrical Engineer at SpaceX talks about smart rockets, FPGA design, and where SpaceX gets its ICs in this episode of Moore's Lobby.

How do electrical engineers innovate? How can they take the risks needed to try new things when they're focused on delivering functional designs on time and under budget? Hear three industry voices dig into the how—and, more importantly, the why—of innovation in the trenches of electronic design.

In the face of the most severe pandemic in a century, how are electrical engineers dealing with the challenge of working from home? Here are three stories of engineering success in spite of separation from teams and equipment.

Get a first look at EETech's premier media podcast, Moore’s Lobby: Where engineers talk all about circuits. Moore’s Lobby looks at the story behind technology and the people who created it. Be sure to subscribe to the show!