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Sequoia Scientific

David Dana, Sequoia VP Engineering & Production, retires

July 18, 2023

On July 1st, 2023 Sequoia’s VP Engineering & Production Mr. David Dana retired. David started his engineering journey at the age of six when he discovered that he could make his fingers tingle by pulling a 110-Volt plug partly from a socket and touching both blades. He survived childhood and after some more formal education he had expanded his skills to include all facets of electronic and software design, and project management, with a smattering of mechanical engineering, optics, space physics and oceanography.

Photo of David Dana

That skillset led David to a successful career devoted to the design, development, and deployment of sophisticated instrumentation to support scientific research. David worked at multiple companies during his career, but for the last 25+ years of his career he was first with Sequoia, then HobiLabs, which he co-founded around 1996 with Dr. Robert Maffione, and then again with Sequoia since 2013.

At Sequoia, David was heavily involved in the re-design of the LISST-SL to the LISST-SL2, and the LISST-Holo to the LISST-Holo2. He was also responsible for the LISST-Portable|XR updates over the last 10 years and his knowledge in instrumentation design made the LISST-Horizon, Hyper-bb and LISST-Tau developments easier. David also expanded the capabilities of both the LISST-200X and the LISST-Deep, so that they electronically are the same, and make use of the same software.

We wish David all the best in his retirement. We’ll miss his cheerful demeanor but are fairly certain that we’ll see him occasionally: He plans to use his time in retirement to do more hiking in the mountains around Seattle and also spend more time playing in his Afro-Cuban Jazz band – he can frequently be found playing in the Crossroads mall in Bellevue.