A comprehensive career log, hidden from nav. Draws from CV entries, SOPs, and detail Cooper surfaced in conversation but that didn't make the curated site.

Framing

Ten years running the same loop: ask hard questions of people close to the problem, build the best solution I can, and share what I learn with others. On repeat.

What I care about. Problems most critical to human and planetary flourishing: clean and abundant energy, accessible medical care, ocean stewardship. Wicked problems, each on an unacceptable trajectory.

The realization. Each time I summit a new challenge, there is always another peak. One person cannot climb them all. I need vastly more leverage. The conclusion is to plumb the platforms that enable more leverage for everyone. The most effective realization of this so far has been powerful coding agents and their harnesses. The next frontier is the same pattern extended to 3D — the problem space where the tools (3D compilers and constraint managers) already exist but the training environment doesn't.

Signature concept. Representational Friction — the chasm between digital abstractions and physical manufacturing. A mesh captures geometry but loses semantics. A B-Rep captures clean boundaries but resists neural manipulation. Implicit fields offer topological freedom but are slow to craft. Engineers spend their time writing scripts to patch context between these formats rather than solving the actual problem.

Pattern that recurs. Interview-driven research. Counts across eras: 8 (Blue Current internal), 69 (Climate Ventures heat-stress study, 18 personal), CEO + team (Tidal), world experts + DR field (Sargassum/N), dozens (AI-for-science + agentic-engineering for Hardware FYI), dozens (Uncapped Potential users).

2014 — 2018 · Early inklings

• Idaho Solar Go-Kart Challenge (2015 — 2017). Founder, designer, driver. Converted a gasoline go-kart to solar. 1st place 2015 and 2016 races. Solar-only 16 mph; solar + battery 30 mph. Pitched at HackFort; cultivated adoption by 6 schools over 3 years.
• Ballista from suspension springs. Scratch-built large siege-weapon class engineering project.
• Earliest programming experience. Reprogrammed the throttle on the go-kart.
• Foundational skills. CAD, welding, metal shop — learned hands-on during this era.
• Tutoring and teaching. Early pattern that continues across the full arc.
• Medical papers (co-author). Cadaveric / pediatric knees and MPFL work. Real co-authorships; details unimportant (see Google Scholar ↗).

2018 — 2022 · Education

Stanford, B.S. Materials Science and Engineering (Energy Systems) — June 2022

GPA 3.9.

Mayfield Fellow — Stanford Technology Ventures Program (2022)

1 of 12 selected for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program's program in technology venture leadership. Crash course in VC and ethical venture leadership, creating culture.

DeSimone Lab — Stanford (September 2020 — June 2023)

Three years of computational medical-device research.

• Bioresorbable 3D-printed coronary stents. Designed to alleviate heart disease.
• Biomimetic microneedles. Refined with finite element analysis. Publication in JACS Au 2022 (Rajesh et al., "3D-Printed Microarray Patches for Transdermal Applications," DOI: 10.1021/jacsau.2c00432). Patent pending (US20250186754A1).
• Cleft-palate device workflow for infants. Built a Blender + nTopology + Python pipeline with a team of 6 researchers that cut the standard-of-care's 14-hour manual process to 2 hours. A consulting computer graphics researcher noted the design process could be fully automated with ~2,000 training samples.
• NIH R01 grant draft. Contributed technical sections.
• AI adoption workshops (2022–23). Ran workshops on adopting AI in research and literature review. Early evangelism, pre-NotebookLM.
• Origin of Representational Friction. This was where the chasm between mesh, B-Rep, and implicit fields became the idea I've been chasing since.

Arete Fellowship (2020)

Intensive cohort-based course on Effective Altruism. Weekly reading and debate of Peter Singer and others. First formal training in how to pick what to work on.

Sargassum + distributed nitrogen (Spring 2021, parallel)

With a classmate from the Caribbean, took on two linked climate problems: fertilizer-driven Sargassum blooms choking Caribbean coasts, and modular distributed nitrogen production that could decouple local food systems from industrial fertilizer supply chains.

• Interviewed world experts on both.
• Traveled to the Dominican Republic to interview people living with the blooms.
• Tried to ship Sargassum back to the DeSimone Lab to develop a bioresorbable 3D-printing resin for medical devices. The blooms are such dense biomass that they're an attractive feedstock. Importing invasive species is illegal, so I stopped.

Blue Current — Battery Pilot Plant (June — August 2022)

R&D intern. Solid-state battery company.

• Led optimization and quality-control development for a conductive slurry, producing the process recommendation for the pilot plant.
• Wrote two reports for the CEO on competitive positioning. Board allocated resources to explore the findings.
• Completed 8 internal interviews to quantify organizational communication and value alignment.

Gordon Lab — Arizona (August — September 2019)

Undergraduate field researcher.

• Field research on Pogonomyrmex Barbatus (desert harvester ant) during the dry season.
• Dissected and prepared insect tissue samples for neurological study.

2022 — 2026 · Early career

Stanford, M.S. Mechanical Engineering (Biomechanics and Thermodynamics) — June 2024

GPA 3.9. Graduate coursework in Data Science, ML for Materials, Engineering Design Optimization; alongside bare-metal programming to understand the machine. Also studied bioethics, energy law, entrepreneurial ethics.

Climatebase Fellow (2024)

Cohort-based fellowship for climate builders and operators — network, frameworks, and peer cohort for people working on climate at the intersection of technology and policy.

HAI Grant Applications (2023 — 2024)

Applied for several Stanford HAI grants to build AI-for-science agentic systems for academic labs. Direct lineage to the 3D harness pitch: the idea of deploying agents into lab workflows is not new for me.

Okamura Lab — Stanford (March — May 2024)

Rotation student.

• Co-led mechanical design (CAD, CAM, FEA, fabrication) of a low-pressure vine robotic base station.
• Machined test fixture, performed pressure validation and failure analysis.

Stanford Climate Ventures — Heat Stress Team (January — March 2024)

Engineering Team Lead.

• Co-led a team of 6 exploring heat impacts on outdoor workforces.
• 69 interviews in 8 weeks; conducted 18 personally.
• Led a team of 3 to prototype a cooling fabric.
• Pitched the work to VCs.

X — Tidal (Aquaculture Robotics), Master's Residency (July — December 2023)

Mountain View / Google X, the moonshot factory.

• Designed in-situ jigs and a poolside crane for testing underwater cameras and machine-vision rigs.
• Manufactured and operated HALT-methodology testers on cable system to quantify reliability.
• Prototyped next-gen underwater camera housing; validated watertight seals and lighting. Learned DFMEA in this context.
• Taught classes on AI prompting, image generation, and co-design to ML engineers, leading to follow-up sessions.
• Taught a class on the Sargassum problem to the ML team.
• Interviewed the CEO.
• Pitched a moonshot to the rapid evaluation team (practiced storytelling).

Ocean Plastics Recovery — SE Alaska (May 2024)

Collected 19,100 lbs of rigid plastics and fishing line in 5.5 days. Have a photo with the aurora and a mountain of trash.

Verne — Mechanical Engineer, Product Design (November 2024 — July 2025)

San Francisco. Hydrogen transport.

• Designed and built a DOT-compliant shell for a full-scale hydrogen transport system. Integrated electromechanical systems. Managed procurement.
• Pair-programmed an interactive concept-vehicle app, deployed at multiple tradeshows.
• Designed a 1/24 scale concept trailer for investor showcases at Newlab and ARPA-E, resulting in new business leads.
• AI adoption & governance. Tested general and domain-specific grant-writing and programming AI services. Produced adoption strategy. Integrated best general-purpose tool across engineering and sales (50% adoption companywide). Co-authored the company AI policy. Led service-provider selection.
• Workshop manager agent. Built to manage inventory and quality-control practices. 100% adoption within 2 months, ~5% productivity gain during critical build sprints. Kaizen/5S principles. Expected returns up to $12,000 from the inventory training program.
• Taught the team to use Claude across engineering, sales, and operations.

Hardware FYI — Writer (October 2024 — Present)

Remote. Hired to map and report on the future of CAD and engineering tools through extensive interviews with researchers, engineers, and tool-builders across the design stack.

• Dozens of interviews across AI-for-science, agentic design for engineering, and generative CAD.
• Publishing field notes and analysis for a technical audience at hardwarefyi.substack.com ↗.
• Backlog of drafts I'm too perfectionist to ship.

JAS Surgical — Fractional Chief Engineer (April 2025 — Present)

Palo Alto. Building the next generation of meniscus repair devices for minimally invasive surgery.

• Responsible for mechanical design, CAD development, prototyping, and iterative engineering refinement across the product line.
• Lead product design for a meniscus repair device: need-finding, product requirements, DFMEA, FEA, TEA.
• Completed functional prototype, managed vendor relations, assessed manufacturing feasibility.
• Produced technical documentation for regulatory and commercialization milestones.
• Defined patent database and documentation strategy; created a NotebookLM patent librarian to check designs for infringement against the IP corpus.

Uncapped Potential — Founding Prototype Engineer (July 2025 — Present)

San Francisco. Pro-social, human-centered hardware: tools that help people become the most fully realized versions of themselves rather than more distracted ones.

• Hired for hardware. Deleted the hardware product with software, and have been a software engineer ever since.
• Led design through EVT2/DVT1 of BLE-enabled fitness hardware. CAD, reliability, firmware, frontend, assembly. End-to-end ownership from user interviews and beta onboarding.
• Managed BOMs, revision control, DFM/DFMEA, multiple vendors, supply chain redundancy.
• Developed frontend and firmware using AI-assisted development tools.
• Fun-Fit: pose-estimation fitness-gaming web app. React, Supabase, MediaPipe, Unity. Live demo ↗.
• Taught the team Claude Code workflows.
• Dozens of user interviews across the beta.

Conference organizing

• MIT Energy Conference 2025. Panel Director. Recruited stakeholders across industry, investor, regulatory, and government for the climate-communication panel (Oct 2024 – Present).
• Kinetic Hardware Conference 2026. Organizing.

Consulting business

Two medical device companies and pre-hire Uncapped Potential engagement. Not enumerated publicly.

Service and teaching

• Blue Ocean Student Pitch Competition. Judge. Evaluated and gave feedback on 20 student pitches (Aug – Dec 2024).
• Exploratorium Science Museum. Volunteer (Aug – Dec 2024).
• DeSimone Lab. Undergraduate/Graduate Mentor (Jan – Mar 2023). Onboarded rotation students; collaborated on cleft palate and coronary stent design projects.
• Stanford Residential Education. Resident Assistant, fostered community among ~60 incoming students during COVID (Jan – Aug 2021). First Year Mentor before that.
• AI tutoring. Family, friends, and neighbors.

Currently also

• Bioreactor. Fully autonomous algae system. Sensing, perception, closed-loop pumps, agent-operated. Optimizes itself toward a target bio-oil yield.
• idactic tutor ↗ Socratic video-embedding tutor to help students focus on what matters in learning. Built in part to teach myself the derivations I want to learn better.
• Vocalize. Speech and interview-prep AI that watches live takes and critiques specific excellent or subpar segments.
• Pickleball damper. A retrofit to quiet any pickleball without changing how it plays.
• Radio propaganda monitor. An LLM pipeline I built for a reporter tracking Spanish-language radio stations for propaganda in the run-up to the 2024 U.S. election.
• 3D harness for RL. The research bet. A harness extending Claude's code-compilation tool-use loop into 3D design. Domain pilot: tolerance stack-up reasoning (GD&T). Complex, required, low-creativity skill that still requires a huge amount of automation. 3D compilers exist (FreeCAD, OpenCASCADE, FEA, manufacturability checkers); what doesn't yet exist is the training environment that lets a model call them in a tight loop and learn. Same pattern that made frontier models competent at code, applied to engineering design.

Art of engineering

A practice of engineering as craft, alongside the research and hardware.

• VR-sculpted, fully playable chess set. (Gravity Sketch.)
• CNC'd dragonfly at life scale. ME318 photo essay, Winter 2024.
• Monster-leaf bottle opener. ME318 photo essay, Winter 2024.
• Fiber-optic lamps running on Arduino (2020 — 2021).
• Earrings generated from fluid simulation.
• Lattice sandal, geometric 3D prints, DNA-shaped jewelry, CNC puzzles, fiber-optic light art, microscope work, artistic print failures turned into objects.

Off the clock

• Soccer. Eight years on various teams. Something I really enjoy.
• Cooking. How I experience chemistry now that I'm no longer in the lab. Gradient descent on recipes, obsessively practiced until they're really good. Current repertoire: pretzels, pizza, focaccia, chicken with pan sauce, pasta with sautéed kale, pan-seared salmon and fish, fried chicken, lasagna, paratha and curry, tacos gobernador.
• Reading. See the reading list.

Publications & patents

• Publication. Rajesh NU, Coates I, Driskill MM, Dulay MT, Hsiao K, Ilyin D, Jacobson GB, Kwak JW, Lawrence M, Perry J, Shea CO, Tian S, DeSimone JM. "3D-Printed Microarray Patches for Transdermal Applications." JACS Au 2022, 2(11), 2426–2445. DOI: 10.1021/jacsau.2c00432
• Patent. DeSimone JM, Shea CO, Ilyin D, Jacobson GB, Kwak JW, Hsiao K, Dulay MT, Driskill MM, Lawrence M, Rajesh N, Ajao OO. "Compliant Polymeric Structures Having Polymeric Microneedles and Methods for Making and Using Same." US20250186754A1 (Filed 2023, Patent Pending, 2025).
• Other medical co-authorships: see Google Scholar ↗.

Vision (personal, from 2024 notes)

1. Create a world where the only limit for each individual is the depth of their desire to do good.
2. Build technologies that improve quality of life for people and all other life on the planet.
3. Central to the above: remove the obstacles to human and planetary flourishing — climate change and associated fatalism, inequality and wealth concentration (mycorrhizal vs zero-sum), access to education, freedom from oppression, technological coevolution.
4. If people are not free to live, learn, and hope for a better future, it will not arrive. Bring it about by enabling prosocial and pro-biological achievement by all.

Goals: (1) Be well calibrated to physical reality — reason from first principles, maintain healthy skepticism for what is true vs what is True. (2) Solve climate change. (3) Transmit and tend the Vision — acquire influence, stem internal corruption.

Receipts

GitHub ↗ · Scholar ↗ · LinkedIn ↗ · Hardware FYI ↗