About me#
When I was born in 1981, I did not possess too many engineering skills except for curiosity and eager to learn. I have been learning for my entire life and I cannot stop.
I have learned what responsibility is at a quite tender age. I was 11 years old when my father died and I started to work over summers to support my family.
I have learned what the feature of self-sufficiency is when I finished high-school and my mother did not have money to send me to the university. I made up a simple plan: earn my own money to go to university and work hard to have a scholarship during the studies. I started to look for a job and I won a contest for a secondary school mathematics teacher position.
There were not more than three persons who believed that I would still follow my plan to go to university the next year. Of course, I did it and after the second year I was the first one in the department of “Automatic Control and Industrial Informatics” of the “Automatic Control and Computer Science” faculty of Iasi.
In faculty I have studied control theory, topics like system identification and control strategies. I have put this into practice for my diploma thesis when I engineered a “Real-Time Nonlinear Model Based Predictive Control of a DC-DC converter using a Digital Signal Processor”.
When I obtained my first job I had no idea what is a V-model, design patterns or safety critical systems development. Now, after more than fifteen years in the Automotive Industry, I can argue about the advantages and disadvantages or limitations of using the V-model during both prototyping and series development. During these years I have designed, implemented and tested components for Electronic Braking Systems, I was responsible for the software integration, managed small development teams and designed automated test environments.
Currently I develop software applications for the automotive industry and I help individuals and teams to improve their software development skills. I am interested in engineering software product lines, software architecture and build systems.
A rough timeline#
2005 Graduated from TU Iasi
I have studied Automatic Control and Computer Science for 5 years at the Technical University of Iasi, Romania. In the fifth year I was awarded a Socrates-Erasmus scholarship to study at the University of Gent, Belgium. I finished my studies with a final mark of 9.81 out of 10.
2005 Diploma Thesis
My thesis focused on the implementation of a Model Based Predictive Control (MBPC) strategy for a switched-mode DC-DC power converter (SMPC) using a Digital Signal Processor (DSP). In addition to working on my thesis, I also followed the master courses in Computer Control of Industrial Processes. I got the highest mark in the class.
2005 Advanced Radar Sensor
I start my career at Rücker (now EDAG AG), in Wiesbaden, Germany, as a software engineer. I was responsible for the control of the elevation motor of the ARS300 radar sensor.
2007 Electronic Wedge Brake
I was recruited by Continental AG as a software engineer for the Electronic Wedge Brake (EWB) project. I was responsible for the development of monitoring and calibration routines for the EWB control unit.
2009 Continental Ambassadors Program
Teaching control theory in automotive applications to master students.
2009 Electro-mechanical Wheel Brake (EMB)
Software engineer for the Audi R8 e-tron concept car electro-mechanical brake system. I was responsible for the application state machine handling different brake modes and calibration routines.
2010 Brushless DC Motor (BLDC) Control
DIY project to control a BLDC motor using a micro-controller. I have designed the H-Bridge driver hardware, motor control library and a GUI to test and control the system.
2012 Integrated Parking Brake (IPB)
My first multi customer safety critical project. I was responsible for the development of the IPB safety barrier. I was also the software integrator and software project manager.
2015 Continental Air Supply (CAirS)
My first Autosar project. I was responsible for the Memory Stack and the Basic SW integration. I also implemented a test framework to run on the target to support basic SW integration tests.
2017 Signal Manipulation Application (SigMa)
This was my first application in Python which was rolled out to be used by the vehicle test department.
2017 Courage - Continental C-Unit Test Framework
My first agile project. I was responsible for the ECU target test execution and organizing trainings on how to test embedded software.
2018 A.SPICE Conform Review Application for GitHub Enterprise
My first GitHub application (using Javascript). This application was developed to support the A.SPICE review process for the software development.
2018 MonoRepo History Cut Transformer
My first it must work otherwise the whole software development is blocked project. I implemented a tool (using Gradle) to cut the history of a mono repository, restructure it and push it to a new repository.
2020 Phoenix - Ninja Build System Generator for C Applications
Implementing a Ninja build system generator for C applications. We had to support custom code generators, component test reports and handling of different build configurations.
2021 Yet Another Architecture Description Language (YAADL) Code Generator
Personal challenge to re-implement a legacy code generator and reduce the generation time from 50 minutes to 1 minute 😎
2022 Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE)
My first CMake project to support engineering Software Product Lines.