Member profile: Electrical engineer Utsav Gupta

By the time Utsav Gupta graduated from Olin College in 2021 with a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, he knew he worked best in small teams of skilled, high-agency individuals with a lot of operational latitude, creating products that delivered a tangible human impact. Now, five years later, he’s held key roles working on an array of groundbreaking projects. 

Whoop was his first stop. He joined as the youngest electrical engineer on the team and got deep into low-power optimization, battery testing, and next-gen biosensing including ECG and skin-temperature sensing. That experience opened up the wearables and consumer electronics ecosystem for him, and set the trajectory for everything after.

Next came Nuro, the autonomous delivery vehicle company, where he was one of three systems integration engineers and the person directly responsible for everything touching sensors, thermals, and human-computer interaction. On the surface, AVs and biosensing wearables share little overlap, but through an engineering lens, both demand the same fundamentals: sensors, power delivery, systems integration, manufacturing discipline, and above all, reliability.

Utsav went on to lead electrical architecture at Lumia Health, where he built their sub-1-gram in-ear wearable that monitors blood flow to the head for people living with dysautonomia, including conditions like POTS, ME/CFS, and orthostatic intolerance. The device reads from the posterior auricular artery, which sits just 1–2mm beneath the skin and closely mirrors blood flow in the middle cerebral artery, a measurement previously only possible in a handful of specialized labs using a transcranial Doppler ultrasound.

Through it all, he’s developed a deep passion about solving complex electromechanical problems that make a difference in people’s lives. We sat down with him to learn more.

What was your entry into the hardware startup ecosystem? 

I’ve been interested in entrepreneurship and startups from an early age. I took a gap year between high school and college to do business development at an early-stage startup in Delhi. 

In college, I gravitated toward hardware during my freshman year and nurtured my skills through internships and research. By the time I graduated, I knew I worked best in small teams of skilled, high-agency individuals with a lot of operational latitude, and I sought such opportunities at local startups in Boston, eventually ending up at Whoop as an electrical engineer. 

I was the youngest EE at Whoop when I joined and worked on low-power optimization, battery testing, and next-gen sensing including ECG and skin-temp sensing. My time at Whoop was instrumental in unlocking future opportunities in the hardware startup ecosystem, especially in wearables and consumer electronics, and directly led to my role at Lumia Health.

You’ve worked on autonomous vehicles at Nuro and biosensing at Whoop — pretty different domains. What made you want to go deep on a medical wearable for a condition most engineers have probably never heard of?

I agree, on the surface there’s little overlap between biosensing and autonomous vehicles. But from an engineering lens, both require a deep understanding of sensors, power delivery, systems integration, manufacturing, and most importantly, reliability.

As an engineer, I’ve always sought out complex, interdisciplinary problems with a potential to improve our world. Whoop, Nuro, and Lumia all scratched this itch in their own special way. Whoop was my first foray into the world of health and fitness. Our products were improving people’s lives day in and day out, and our users credited their Whoop for lifestyle improvements like better sleep, healthier heart rates, and reduced alcohol consumption. Nuro, on the other hand, was creating a safer, accessible, and convenient world through their fleet of last-mile, self-driving delivery vehicles. 

Finally, Lumia offered me the opportunity to hone my biosensor-development skills while creating a novel device targeting real medical conditions affecting millions of people around the world. This wasn’t a chance I could pass up. The team at Lumia had been developing their product for over three years when I joined. They cared deeply about their users and wanted their tech to be accessible to all. Their empathy, resilience, and vision drew me in, and the engineering challenges sealed the deal for me. 

You’re known for building a sub-1-gram in-ear wearable that tracks blood flow to the head for people within the dysautonomia (POTS, ME/CFS, orthostatic intolerance) community. How did you come across this invention? 

In late 2022, I was on a vacation in Hawaii when Daniel Lee, the founder of Lumia Health, reached out to me on LinkedIn. He was looking for an electrical engineer to lead the development of their prototype blood flow monitor. While I was happy at Nuro, I was interested to learn more about the product. Turns out, a while ago, Daniel’s father had suffered severe injuries from multiple fainting episodes. After consulting leading physicians, he learned that reduced blood flow to the head was the cause, but was too difficult to measure regularly. Lumia was born out of Daniel’s pursuit to find the real answers behind this condition. 

Our first product, Lumia 1, took the form of an in-ear wearable that peeks into the posterior auricular artery, a parallel branch to the internal carotid artery, which feeds the brain. Due to the incredibly shallow depth (1 to 2mm) of this artery, we’re able to capture a strong arterial blood flow signal that almost mirrors the blood flow waveform in the middle cerebral artery as measured by TCD ultrasound. We use this data to help users understand their blood flow, uncover hidden patterns, and take action to get ahead of their symptoms. 

Is there any other application or additional use cases that you see for this device? 

In 2013, the Human Spaceflight Architecture team at NASA published a report (Human Missions to Mars: Key Challenges) outlining the challenges of supporting humans in deep space. Turns out, the microgravity in deep space means blood is no longer pulled to our legs.This leads to built up pressure in the head and behind the eyes, which causes structural and vision changes leading to optic nerve swelling, folds in the retina, flattening of the back of the eye, and swelling in the brain. The risk of this condition, called spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome (SANS), is higher during longer-duration missions and remains a key research problem that needs to be solved before a manned mission to Mars. Lumia is one of a handful of tools that can detect the changes in blood flow to the brain and may one day help astronauts manage their health in space!

On Earth, today, there are only a handful of specialized labs equipped with a transcranial Doppler (TCD) ultrasound that can measure drops in blood flow to your head while standing. This metric gives you insight into how well your body regulates blood flow to your head — key for maintaining energy, focus, and overall well-being. 

Lumia 2 brings this same science and insights to an infinitely customizable ear-ring form factor. The entire electronics assembly is packed into a stealthy, smart earring back, enabling users to wear their favorite ear-rings whenever they want, however they want. Lumia 2 will be smaller, lighter, and more comfortable to wear than any other wearable on the market, and will deliver smarter insights in a form factor you actually want to wear.

You studied at Olin, which is known for throwing students into real hardware problems early. Is there any project from those years that you find yourself returning to? 

Attending Olin was akin to being thrown into the deep end of the pool as a beginner — you better learn swimming if you want to survive. I often found myself learning while executing, a skill I heavily lean on as an engineer. In the summer of 2020, I joined the Olin Satellite & Spectrum Tech + Policy (OSSTP) group. This research lab, led by Dr. Whitney Lohmeyer, honed my skills in satellite systems, wireless communications, engineering education, and RF and antenna systems. 

Here, I developed hardware for Othernet, a provider of free internet access that uses geostationary and low-Earth-orbit satellites to broadcast information to all parts of the world. Over the next six months, I led a team that upgraded the Othernet broadcast receiver by designing a more efficient antenna, and ported their system from L-band to Ku-band by creating a link budget for satellite-to-terrestrial broadcasts. My work concluded with the development of a smaller, portable, and lower-cost receiver called the Dreamcatcher, which created localized peer-to-peer networks by converting incoming satellite communications into long-range Wi-Fi signals. 

While I knew that Othernet was often used to aid disaster-relief operations and provide secure internet access in areas of conflicts, I observed the true power of peer-to-peer networks during the 2021 Iran crisis. With an internet lockdown in place, Iranian citizens turned to services like Othernet to organize their protests and share the news of ruthless political oppression with the world. This was a formative moment in my life and pushed me to seek out interdisciplinary engineering problems with a tangible human impact. 

What’s next? What’s firing you up these days? Is there a particular space or industry that you have your eye on?

These days, I’m exploring the Indian hardware ecosystem with a focus on deeptech, medical devices, and consumer products, especially at early-stage startups. Up until recently, India was primarily known for our software engineering prowess; startups like Ultrahuman, Digantara, ALT Carbon, and Agnikul Cosmos are changing that. There’s a big push from the government toward local manufacturing at all levels, from batteries to chips to PCBs to full products. and we’re slowly but surely building a resilient supply chain across the country. I’m closely following these developments and am involved in some of these efforts. 

Wearables have also gone mainstream recently. Oura and Whoop boast several million members globally. I see this trend continuing in the near future, and it makes me particularly excited about deeper integration of consumer electronics and health. I’m personally eager to see noninvasive mass-masket wearables for hormone tracking and neural input devices that map intent to action. Finally, I also feel concerned about the disturbing lack of privacy in today’s connected world full of smart glasses and AI assistants. I notice a digital fatigue setting in and am holding out hope that startups like Deveillance can provide privacy on-demand for users who want to decouple their digital and physical presence.

Any advice to clients new to hardware?

In hardware, slow and steady wins the race. There are no quick or easy bug fixes for electrical or mechanical defects. Give your engineers time to exhaustively test and refine your product before shipping it to the user. In the long run, it’ll save you a lot of money and time!

What is your professional superpower?

My friends describe me as a tamer of chaos. I thrive in an environment where I have to wear multiple hats while working concurrently on distinct yet related issues/tasks. I enjoy diving into complex, interdisciplinary projects and then breaking them down into bite-size chunks to efficiently tackle in a timely manner.

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