Meet Guido Niederer, a Lead Optical Engineer at Volpi Group who has worked on projects ranging from point-of-care qPCR instruments to confocal microscopes with single-molecule detection. He takes us through his work at Volpi and shares his insights into the field of optical engineering.
My Name is Guido Niederer, and I am a Lead Optical Systems Engineer at Volpi Group.
I grew up in the Eastern, German-speaking part of Switzerland in the canton Appenzell. To pursue my studies in electronic physics, I moved to the Western, French-speaking part, canton Neuchâtel. Upon completing my studies, I continued to learn and obtained a Ph.D. in Micro-optics at the Institute of Microtechnology at the University of Neuchâtel (currently part of EPFL).
My first real-world job was with GretagMacbeth, which was acquired by X-Rite and later became part of Danaher. I spent 12 years with them working on calibration algorithms, spectrometers and appearance measurement devices. After a while, I was looking for a new challenge and joined Volpi.
Besides work and family, sport is an important part of my life, not for competition but for pleasure. I like to play volleyball, bike and jog. On the weekends, I spend a lot of time in the mountains. One of my hobbies is being a tour guide for the Swiss Alpine Club. I organize ski tours in the winter and hikes in the summer to enjoy and appreciate nature in remote areas. I’m very fond of this hobby, as it allows me to meet folks from all walks of life and backgrounds.
A typical Monday starts by taking a train to work. I organize the day and write emails and technical documents during my commute. I particularly enjoy writing simulations and crunching numbers to analyze measurement data.
Once in the office, I embark on the most sacred tradition – coffee with colleagues. We try to talk about what we did over the weekend, but invariably, the conversation turns to work-related subjects. I continue my day with coffee in my stomach (“Kaffee am Morgen vertreibt Kummer und Sorgen”). Depending on the phase of the projects, I’m engaged in data analysis, simulations or meetings. The work consumes me, and I’m reminded of lunch only when people ask me about my plans for it. We will do a quick run to grab something to eat and situate ourselves in Volpi’s spacious, glassed cafeteria on the 6th floor with a beautiful view over the Limmat Valley and the Alps if the visibility allows. Lunch is a great time to catch up with colleagues, especially those with whom daily contact is rare. All good things must end, as does the lunch and lunchtime chatter. With new energy, I continue with the rest of the day.
Keeping with Agile methodology, we meet for daily team meetings at 1:00 p.m. in the project area. I’m part of a core project team that includes a project manager, a systems engineer, a mechanical engineer, an electronics engineer and an optical engineer. The new methodology allows us to have stable teams with the possibility to scale up quickly. Each core team works on 2-3 major projects in parallel. As a full OEM, we work on bespoke optical-based measurement systems for our customers. Each project has varied technical requirements, timelines and stages. Therefore, we must be flexible and adaptable to many customers’ needs and requirements.
The variety of projects at Volpi is very appealing to me. I’ve worked on point-of-care qPCR instruments, dPCR lab instruments and fully automated fluorescence microscopes, from relatively low-tech modules to imaging devices with moderate complexity to highly sophisticated and complex devices with a very small number of built instruments (but limited diffraction performance). As Volpi continues to expand and grow, we enter new market segments and continue to improve our technical capabilities and know-how. Currently, I’m working on a project involving a confocal microscope with single-molecule detection with fluorescence and on another project involving biosensing with the help of surface plasmon without fluorescence but with polarization.
As lead optical systems engineer, my responsibilities also include onboarding new employees. It’s a responsibility I cherish, as it allows me to interact with different people, ranging from optics novices to optical engineering experts. I realize the need to speak with them at different levels depending on their mastery of the subject. One of my favorite sayings is, “Optical engineering is the art of using the appropriate approximation, simple enough not to lose the orientation and complex enough to keep the essentials!”
I train a new production workforce as part of my peer training responsibility. Not everyone who joins Volpi production has an optical manufacturing background, so a fair amount of training is required. I focus on teaching the essential functioning and failure modes and how to spot them, the color in transmission/reflection, wavelengths and their corresponding colors, incidence angles and the difference between a pinhole and a dust particle. My goal is to imbue sufficient knowledge to ensure a person becomes an expert in detecting failure modes, so when I’m called to assess a deviation on the floor, I know it’s not trivial.
A typical Monday wrap-up includes tackling my email inbox and reviewing my to-do list that has changed, but not in size. With a positive outlook for the next day and the opportunity to continue working with great people in an exciting environment, I close the lid of my laptop; a little later than wished ….
Guido Niederer, Ph.D.
Lead Optical Engineer