CryoElec LLC is a technology company focusing on developing electronics components and assemblies for a wide variety of scientific, industrial and research Instruments. It was founded by engineer Hamdi Mani after a 15-year experience working at research labs at Arizona State University and the California institute of Technology(Caltech).
Hamdi Mani
Engineer, Consultant
Education
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ Bachelor of Science, Physics, December 2013
Professional/Research Experience
Engineer / Lab Manager at the ASU THz/Radio Astronomy Lab: January 2014- November 2020 Phoenix, Arizona, USA
Development of state of the art cryogenically cooled low noise amplifiers, ultra wideband circuits for radio astronomy and detector readout as well as low temperature physics experiments. Managed 3 research labs, including: procurement of parts and test equipment, helping PhD students and mentoring students of all levels. Designed cryogenic test systems for semiconductor and superconductor characterization. Provided 100s of cryogenic low noise amplifiers to collaborators.
Research Assistant at the ASU THz/Radio Astronomy Lab: August 2010- December 2013 Phoenix, Arizona, USA
Development of Submm/THz Instrumentation, Low frequency Radio astronomy instruments, RF/Microwave Electronics, Detector Readout, Digital Signal Processing (DSP),Cryogenic and vacuum systems, Hardware and software projects
Research Technician at the Electrical Engineering Department at Caltech: June 2005 - June 2010 Pasadena, California, USA
Designing, assembly, testing and deploying of highly sensitive Cryogenically cooled receivers for Radio Astronomy and deep space communication applications.
Skills
Design, assembly and testing of room temperature and cryogenically cooled RF/Microwave Low noise amplifiers (LNAs ), including multi channel LNAs/Amplifiers.
Extensive experience with RF/Microwave Design tools: Cadence/AWR Microwave Office EDA software.
Printed circuit board (PCB) design for low frequency and RF application, in rigid and flexible substrates.
Packaging of RF microelectronics components in multi chip modules (MCMs) and MIC/Hybrid (chip and wire) packages, including micro-soldering and wirebonding.
Experience with wirebonding machines from different manufacturers: WestBond, TPT, Hybond and Kulicke and Soffa. Thermosonic and Ultrasonic Wirebonding using gold and aluminum wire.
Extremely efficient at surface mount technology (SMT) soldering down to 0201 and 01005 size components using micro soldering equipment or hot air stations.
IPC J-STD certified soldering
Design and calibration of RF noise measurement setups at room and cryogenic temperatures, including:Calibaration of Solid State Noise sources and Design and operation of primary thermal noise generators.
Design of Vacuum/Cryogenic systems for electronics testing and for instruments deployment.Including UHV (Ultra High Vacuum) systems and vacuum systems with large windows for radio astronomy front-ends.
Experience with High frequency test equipment: Spectrum Analyzers, Vector Network Analyzers, high speed oscilloscopes, wafer probe stations, Digital Spectrometers... Including in setting automated testing station: Programming different pieces of test equipment using Python and SCPI language.
3D/2D mechanical design using CAD tools: Autodesk Inventor and Autocad
Mechanical skills: Some experience with milling machines as well as other machining/shop equipment ( drill press, band saw, disc sander, shear, corner cutter, tube bender...)
Management Skills: Helped with setting up 3 research Labs at ASU, experience buying expensive highly specialized equipment, working and collaborating with people with different levels, mentoring young undergraduate and PhD students in the lab
Some Past Projects
GAVRT: Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope: Designed, built and deployed 2 wide band receiver Front ends for a 34 meter Radio Telescope on the Mojave Desert in California. This work has been published in the peer reviewed literature ( IEEE journals)
SUPERCAM: A 64 pixel heterodyne focal plane array operating on the 350GHz band: I was involved in packaging and testing a lot of the components of Front end of the 64 Pixel system at ASU and Caltech.
Development of flexible, multi channel, high frequency transmission lines for multi-channel room and cryogenic temperature applications.
ngVLA PROTOTYPE FRONT-END: Development of low power, compact front end for the ngVLA project (Next Generation Very large Array) :1-4GHz receiver with a 1.2Kw power consumption.
GUSTO: Development of an 8 Channel cryogenic low power LNA for the 0.3-4GHz band for a NASA long duration Balloon mission instrument (GUSTO)
GUSTO: Development of an 8-channel high gain/low power IF system and delivering NASA flight hardware compliant assemblies
Development of very high gain (90dB), low power (200mW) amplifier for IF systems of Heterodyne Terahertz receivers.
Development of SiGe Heterojunction bipolar transistor(HBT) Amplifiers
Development of room temperature L Band Low Noise Amplifiers as part of the technology development program for the Square Kilometer Array (SKA)
Design of a 32 channel highly reconfigurable test system to characterize the testing and calibration of the MWA (Murchison Widefield Array) analog beamformer.
Development of Solid State and thermal Noise generators to calibrate radio astronomy receivers Development of the IF processing hardware and software for THz receivers
Development of antialiasing filters for high speed analog to digital converters
Development of a TRL calibration kit for vector network analyzer measurements
Provided room temperature and cryogenic LNAs ( about 500 units) to many ground base and balloon borne instruments: BLAST (MKID detector array), MUSCAT (at the LMT) ,NIKA 2 Camera on IRAM telescope, GUSTO (Heterodyne THz, in progress) , Simons Observatory CMB instrument, HEAT instrument in Antarctica, GUSTO...