Associate Director of Automation

Aera Therapeutics

Biography

Sam holds multiple degrees in Mechanical Engineering, Physics, and Mathematics. The first stage of his career was at NASA working research labs Glenn, Langley, and the Dryden Drop Tower (DDT). It is here along with Dr. Mark Weislogel he specialized in low gravity fluid dynamics simulations, analysis, and flight experiments.

In a productive 3 years their lab completed multiple ISS flight experiments validating several analytical methods estimating flow rates of liquid life support systems, greatly increasing their TRL. During COVID, Sam then held a faculty position and championed the online classroom teaching undergraduate and graduate level fluid dynamics. His students have gone on to work at companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, and NASA. After this, Sam pivoted to a career in biotech, specifically lab automation. He quickly earned certifications programming every major liquid handlers and developed a suite of robust programs for the wet lab.

Soon after he began to work with integrated systems. Sam is quite passionate applying agile project management and other software concepts to the field of lab automation. In parallel to all this, Sam created the lab automation society ‘Boston Lab Automators’ and quickly made a name for himself in the community. He organizes sponsored meetups with regular attendance over 100 guests. He later collaborated with Stefan Golas to launch labautomation.io to “make automation google-able.” Most recently Sam, was voted to be on a NE-LRIG committee to further grow the lab automation community.