Field Report - R&D Project Management @Sensirion

The testimonial from Philipp Imoberdorf provides insight into the working environment at Sensirion. Philipp Imoberdorf is a project manager for gas flow and differential pressure sensors in the R&D department, where he looks after an international project in the medical technology field. With a background as a design engineer, he tells us about a typical workday. Learn more about his job in the R&D division.

When I arrive at the office in the morning, I first check my mail, especially for any messages from my colleagues in the Marketing & Sales department. A few days ago the first prototype of a gas flow sensor was delivered to an international customer in the medical equipment sector. Sure enough, there's a message from Marketing & Sales. The news that the customer has already tested our sensor and its operation in a ventilation device, and is very pleased with the initial results, puts a smile on my face. Apparently the temperature-dependent calibration we recently integrated in the sensor works reliably. Now the customer also proposes that we make stabilize the sensor with respect to humidity. That's an aspect that we haven't yet considered for this custom sensor. However, I realize that precise humidity calibration could be crucial for future applications, such as the ventilation of patients in intensive care.

Accordingly, I get to work on this right away. It doesn't take long to put together a simple calibration station for experimentally checking the humidity components in the lab. After the first measurements and discussions with colleagues, it quickly becomes clear that it would be possible to provide humidity compensation for the sensor signal. However, for this I need a calibration station suitable for use in production. I discuss this with the design team, who take over the task of designing and building the new station. At the same time we discuss with the hardware and software group any modifications to the measurement setup and the procedure for the new calibration method necessary to ensure humidity-compensated gas flow measurement. This regular sharing of ideas between different disciplines is one of the things I really like about Sensirion. You can always count on good cooperation and the vast expertise of your colleagues when developing and refining sensors. After all, good cooperation is essential for our ability to send a new sensor to our customer in just a few days.

Now I'm looking forward to intensive testing of the new version of the sensor in our lab during the next few days, and I'm keen to know what our customer will say about it. At the end of the day I close my office door and head for home, with the thought that sometime in the future patients in intensive care will benefit from what we are doing now and our work can help save lives.