Patrick Burkhalter completed his apprenticeship in Engineering, with specialization inautomation of technical processes, at the L. Kellenberger & Co. AG (St. Gallen/Biel,Switzerland) in 2009. Subsequently, he followed a specialization traineeship as industryoperation manager at the TEKO (Bern, Switzerland) and received his diploma in 2013. Inparallel to his specialization, Burkhalter gained 3 years of experience as project leader at mb-microtec AG (Switzerland), where he guided 12 technical and commercialization projects,which equipped him with a broad experience in process development, productcommercialization, and quality securement of technical and mechanical processes. From2013 to 2015 Burkhalter was head of production and logistics in the Medical Technologydepartment of Glencatec (Niederwangen, Switzerland), a subsidiary company of the mb-microtec AG, that revolutionized micro sealing with a new laser micro welding process for hermetic glass encapsulation for medical applications. In 2015 he joined Smolsys ltd. as chief operating officer (COO), where he is managing and implementing the automation of the manufacturing processes for glass sealing of microsystems. Burkhalter has completed education in health physics radio protection and gained extensive practical experience in handling tritium radioisotopes under highest safety standards, including ISO-13485 certification for medical devices, during his work at Smolsys ltd. Burkhalter brings a high degree of technical knowledge in process engineering and upscaling of automated manufacturing to the Smolsys team. Furthermore, his ample experiences in managing interdisciplinary projects, including planning and realization of advanced production facilities and their validation under stringent quality-control standards in highly regulated environments (ISO-13485).