Nikhil M Jali

- Architected the controls and management of a turbine based hybrid-electric power generation plant in an eVTOL application - Led systems engineering for the power generation and electrical storage sub-systems - Performed mission analysis to derive specifications of the HV battery (~700 V, 300kW) to support energy demand during vertical take-off, cruising and landing - Led a cross-functional team to design the software, electronics and mechanicals required for HV distribution, and control for a ground based test platform - Architected a regenerative test-setup for load testing the powerplant

- Responsible for the requirements capture and architecture of the company’s next generation motor controllers. - Technical Architect for a wireless embedded platform called Canary(CAN-over-air) to support multiple product offerings for enabling OTA upgrades, remote diagnostics, and fleet management. - Led the product development for the first product within the Canary platform to support field firmware upgrades on motor controllers - Developed the product/system/sub-system specifications, and lead a cross functional team of electrical, software, mechanical, test and production engineers from concept through to volume production on above - Served as the systems engineer and technical lead on 5 motor-controller platforms ranging from 24V to 80V while doing hands on embedded development, testing and applications development - Closely interfaced with internal/external stakeholders to identify market requirements, attended trade-shows and pitched to executives to generate internal/external buy-in on product concepts - Generated several product demonstrators for wireless control of industrial vehicles, autonomous pallet jacks, Android tablet based dashboards, etc - Developed safety critical functions under ISO13849 to meet PL D assurance requirements for safety critical steering and torque control applications

- Setup ALM tools and processes to facilitate effective systems engineering practices across the organization - Spearheaded end-end traceability, parameter/configuration/release management, review processes, incident management, etc. - Led cross functional team to deliver safety critical hydraulic control architecture for forklifts, pallet jacks and other industrial vehicles from concept, requirements, firmware development, test planning and application validation - Developed product concepts for OTA firmware upgrading, remote diagnostics, etc. Led the embedded design(C++, PCB/schematic), and web-hosted UI

Was part of a team of 3 that created Ziro, an educational robotics platform to enable kids to create robots from simple materials, and control the robots through a gesture interface. - Developed the hardware from ground up. Includes design for RF, motor sensing and control, specifying wearable sensors, battery management, etc. - Worked with contract manufacturers to adapt design to suite mass assembly/manufacturing - Identified vendors and co-developed new flexible sensors for gesture detection - Embedded software included gesture/pose sensing, safety, power management, and a custom built real-time self adaptive wireless mesh built on IEEE802.11 - Additional user interfaces for controlling robots with on-device webserver that hosted Google Blockly(MIT Scratch), and Alexa. - Co-PI for National Science Foundation SBIR phase-I & phase-II grants - Wore a lot of other hats(outreach, marketing, etc)

- Performed system identification to develop NOx estimation models - Collected stakeholder feedback and created model-in-loop calibration tools to reduce time, costs and engine testing required for calibration of new programs. - Formulated optimization algorithms to reduce simulation time and provide globally optimized calibration solutions - Assisted in several root cause analysis related to DEF management

- Benchmarked 2-wheeler EVs(market/technology research, motor-controller, performance characterization, etc), and submitted reports to executive leadership for informing product gaps and strategy in developing markets - Developed advanced sensing algorithms for estimating in-cylinder pressure, EGR, vane pump, fuel injector flow rate - Delivered multiple embedded platforms(hw/sw) for novel injectors(pulse count, flow hammer based, etc), excavator platforms, and single cylinder engine control - Authored 9 inventions, filed 4 patents and delivered several technical keynote sessions - Innovator award in 2013

- Developed electronics and controls for an open cockpit single seater racing vehicle that met the Formula Student rules - Developed a seamless pneumatic gear shifting system that changed gears within 100 ms. Novel solution which could recharge air using onboard compressor, and employed ignition kill and phase-back to ensure fast gear change times - Developed a swappable power distribution board that allowed deprecating bulky relays to control vehicle loads and reduced wiring. Allowed PWM control of certain peripherals to reduce power consumption - Developed vehicle wiring harnessing - Developed a basic single cylinder ECU which included crank angle estimation, ignition timing control and fuel injection control. - Other tasks related to the formula student viz. Cost report, managing sponsorship, etc