Benjamin Hackett Email & Phone Number

Saratoga, Ca, Us

Decisions made early in a start-up's timeline are critical, since It takes a lot more time and money to correct course if you started off in the wrong direction. I bring the most value when dealing with unknown unknowns, and when requirements and capabilities are not yet clear.

Saratoga, California, Us

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."― Neuromancer, William GibsonMojo Vision was developing the "Mojo Lens" a smart contact lens that is a complete display, sense, communication and compute platform housed within a functioning contact lens.My group was a multi-disciplinary (but mechie-centric) team responsible for the design and fabrication process design of the physical framework of the lens. Having only a fraction of a cubic cm to work with, it is a larger step in miniaturization than occurred when transitioning from desktops to smart phones.Things I've done while at this position at Mojo:- Moved the company to create an in-house materials engineering group, oversaw that group. (people and lab)- Recruited and built a replacement team when a star employee left the company, using diverse “regular” team members, a team that became a productive, tight-knit and long-lasting group.- Initiated and created a different mechanical design when it became apparent that the direction we were pursuing was going to have longevity/reliability challenges, as well as eliminated design inefficiencies that we were dragging due to decisions that made sense 4 years beforehand.- Introduced a different understanding (harmonic analysis) into a surface matching problem we were having. This allowed us to characterize the surfaces with a lot fewer parameters (a few coefficients as opposed to thousands of spatial points) and gain more insight into the nature of the surfaces.

Saratoga, California, Us

"Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” ― Antoine de Saint-ExuperyI was the first mechanical engineer at Mojo, and later headed the mechanical team.The primary challenge at Mojo Vision lay in raging against complexity.The number of conflicting requirements that are levied on the product framework is very large, and so it naturally gravitates towards ever more complex design solutions that try to solve everything for everyone. ("You can lie to some of the people some of the time..." applies)In this position, in collaboration with a group of very talented and level-headed people, I am responsible for the core mechanical framework of the product, and its evolution over time as the team grew."If only I knew at the beginning which are the parts that I’ll want to keep at the end…" ― an imaginary little prince

"For every complex problem there’s a simple solution, and it’s wrong.” ― Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Ecog2 Engineering produces and markets unique solutions for high-load ruggedized kinematic couplings, selling to the defense and aerospace sector, scientific instruments, semiconductor process equipment and precision robotics and automation.

"Can one desire too much of a good thing?"--- As you Like It, William Shakespeare.Developed what is in objective retrospect the cleverest-ever dish-based high-concentration PV system. We had a non-imaging non-parabolic large primary, a unique ring-shaped secondary and powerhead, and complete resiliency against all ailments that afflict dish HCPV systems.We got as far as constructing 5 m diameter articles, one flavor for terrestrial systems, and another for a certain loony lighter-than-air telecom platform.Alas, Heliocentric taught me an important lesson: Never bring mechanical engineering solutions to a materials engineering fight. When the cost of flat PV panels equals the cost of a controlled primary reflector, it's long past game-over.HCPV made sense during a certain window of time, and with advances in PV cost reduction, the underlying impetus to undertake all the complexity of HCPV simply evaporated.It's how things work.(The bulk of the work occurred in 2012-2014)

"Millions for nonsense, but not one cent for entropy."― The Stars my Destination, Alfred BesterSpaceward was a huge personal undertaking.It was formed around the Space Elevator games - a technology challenge undertaken in collaboration with NASA's Centennial Challenges office.It helped increase public interest in the Space Elevator concept as well as promoted professional interest and innovation in the fields of strong tether material science and wireless power beaming.http://www.SpaceElevatorGames.org

"Millions for defense, but not one cent for survival." ― "The Stars my Destination", Alfred BesterThis light technical presentation runs 45 minutes + Q&A, and chronicles the coming of age of the Space Elevator, from the original proposal in 1960 to the active research area that it is today.The talk is given by Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation. An aerospace engineer by day, Ben dons the cape and mask of a Space Elevator crusader by night, and engages in escapades such as running the $4M Space Elevator Challenge in partnership with NASA, and delivering talks like this one.See recommendations for presentations given at Google, Lockheed Martin, Rutger's University

“The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.”― John Le CarreQuiet Skies NorCal is a regional advocacy group created to coordinate regional public dialog with the FAA, local elected officials, and local advocacy groups to address jet noise impact due to changes in airspace design (related to the "NextGen" air traffic control system) that affected the NorCal Metroplex.The scope of work is 50% technical (the easy 50%) and 50% political.We were successful in working with the congressionals to arrive a working forum with the participation of the FAA, and then securing a recommendation by both a committee of 12 local elected officials, and by the 3 congressional representatives, of a set of proposals to the FAA that reflected a well balanced regional plan for addressing the impacts.

Gizmonics is a mechanical design firm. We specialize in being diverse.Project Gizmonics worked on include:- Gravity Reference Sensor on the ST-7 mission- Proposal for the Next Generation Space Telescope- Precision actuator on CELT/TMT, a ground-based 30 -meter telescope- Advanced industrial food processing machines- Wind turbines- Medical devices- Semiconductor process equipment.

Digigroups was a dot-com that worked on a social networking community web platform. Yes - a facebook before there was THE facebook. I worked mostly on dynamic HTML generation and front-end back-end data communications - things that got standarized later on and became redundant. As was I.

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EDA Software Engineer

EDA Software Engineer

Electronic Engineering Intern