Writing & Ideas

Essays & Notes

Technical writing on physics, engineering, and deep technology. Specific, opinionated, grounded in direct experience.

In progress — first essays coming soon

I'm building a body of writing on the things I think about most. Science at the edge of what's buildable. Where fundamental physics meets real engineering constraints. What it actually takes to translate a lab result into something that works in the field. Why the gap between academic research and commercial technology is one of the most interesting opportunities of the next decade.

The essays here will be technical, specific, and opinionated — not survey pieces, but original takes on problems I've worked on directly or thought about seriously. If something is wrong, I want to know. If something is useful, I'm glad.

Writing is how I find out whether an idea actually holds up — or whether it only seemed to inside my head.
On why I write
Draft Index
i
Why NIR-II Is Underutilized — And What Changes When It Isn't
The second near-infrared window offers fundamentally better optical properties for deep tissue imaging. A technical and commercial argument for why most clinical systems are still in the visible, and what shifts when that changes.
PhotonicsNIR-IITranslation
Draft
ii
The Speckle Problem: Why Coherent Noise Has Held Back Quantitative OCT
Coherent noise isn't just a nuisance — it's a fundamental barrier to using OCT as a quantitative chemical measurement tool. What makes speckle hard, and why solving it matters beyond biomedicine.
OCTSignal ProcessingPhysics
Draft
iii
What "Physics-First Engineering" Actually Means at a Startup
The phrase gets used a lot in deep tech. Here's what it looks like in practice — the difference between using physics as a constraint versus as a source of genuine competitive advantage.
Deep TechStartupsEngineering
Draft
iv
Label-Free Imaging: The Case for Removing Chemistry from Diagnostics
Exogenous contrast agents are a workaround for inadequate optical specificity. The case for building sensitivity into the hardware and algorithms instead — and what becomes possible when you do.
PhotoacousticsMed Devices
Draft
v
From Bench to Bedside: What Actually Takes So Long
Biomedical optics research produces remarkable results. Very little of it becomes a product. An honest accounting of where translation breaks down — and where it doesn't have to.
TranslationMed DevicesStartups
Draft
vi
The Fiber Laser as a Platform Technology
All-fiber systems are compact, robust, and scalable. How fiber laser technology is opening spectral regimes previously accessible only to large table-top systems — and what that enables downstream.
Fiber LasersPhotonicsHardware
Draft
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Essays planned 6 in progress
Format Technical essays, 1,500–4,000 words
Frequency As finished, not on a schedule
Audience Engineers, founders, physicists