Seth O. Newburg, Ph.D.

Seth Newburg is a principal engineer and managing partner at NK Labs, specializing in scientific instrumentation and robotics. Dr. Newburg was one of the architects of Google’s Project Ara modular phone, for which he developed the product concept, chipset architecture, connector interfaces, and electrical design. He led NK Labs’ effort to develop and produce a line of specialized analytical equipment for electrophoretic displays. This equipment has been installed in factories around the world, where it is used to calibrate and test the E Ink displays in the Amazon Kindle and other E-paper electronic books.

Newburg was a Research Scientist at the MIT Sea Grant Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Laboratory, where he designed the modular system architecture of several AUVs, and supervised the electrical and software systems integration. In order to meet the unique design requirements for AUVs, Newburg has custom designed and built electric motors for underwater robotics with particular attention to EMI, thermal cycling, corrosion engineering, lifetime, reliability, and serviceability.

While pursuing research in auditory physiology for his doctorate, Newburg developed a novel apparatus to study the physiological properties of the delicate membranes in the inner ear and characterized their anisotropic material properties that provide filter-bank transduction of acoustic vibrations into neurological signals. He holds Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Boston University and an S.B. in mechanical engineering from MIT.