As a transdisciplinary industrial design engineer, I blend structured creative thinking with hard engineering practices to drive innovation that truly make a difference.
Heya, I´m Leon; a recent graduate design engineer with a knack for product development. As a third-culture kid, I've soaked up a variety of cultures and perspectives by growing up in Leipzig, Kiel, Sydney, Athens, Taipei, Enschede and am now living in Den Haag (NL). I love diving into contradictions in our current sociotechnical landscape to come up with disruptive solutions.
Professionally, I've worn many hats; from coordinating technical teams to teaching production engineering, to executing product development engineering projects for consumer and medical devices. In my free time, you'll often find me venturing and exploring new entrepreneurial sparks, tinkering with new tech and AI, as well as travelling for new experiences. Life-long learning has taken me through six schools in five cities, culminating in a master's degree in Industrial Design Engineering. This background equipped me with a multidisciplinary understanding of design engineering, mechatronics, and impactful entrepreneurship.
ALways seek to explore the new;
Never stop learning
Practical work experiences and professional developments are spread across all the product development phases. For ideation, conceptualisation and prototyping, I worked at a research design agency as the coordinator of the technical team, workshop facilitator, fabricator, mechatronic specialist, and executed product development and design conceptualisation projects. For the manufacturing phase, I spend 3 years setting up from scratch a Learning Factory at the UT to teach production engineering students how to operate, plan, and optimise Industry 4.0 factories. Lastly, for deployment and commercialisation; I have worked as the deal flow director of a student venture capital fund.
All of this I put into practice through technical design engineering of MedTech & consumer products. Ultimately, I aspire to lead AI-augmented multidisciplinary product development teams to design and engineer truly impactful products!
After attending 5 schools in 4 cities, I got my iGCSEs in Greece and IB diploma in Taipei, focusing on the Internet of Things and societal impact of IT. I went on to the University of Twente in the Netherlands be trained as a 'New Engineer'. During my Technology, Liberal Arts and Social Sciences BSc (Cum Laude) studies I gained a multidisciplinary understanding of technology and innovation management, new product development for society, and impactful entrepreneurship. To specialise further, I got an MSc in Industrial Design Engineering, focusing in Management of Product Development. Within this IDE study, competencies were developed for technical product development across all phases, ranging from conceptual thinking to mechatronics design, product testing, hands-on fabrication, and more.
As a transdisciplinary design engineer, I have studied all phases of the product development cycle to employ structured creative thinking alongside hard engineering practices.
My personal interest are multifaceted and ever-changing, guided by an overarching affinity for new innovations. Such include First-Person View (FPV) drone piloting and (after the inevitable crashes) tinkering as well as (re)building drones. This plays into another hobby; FDM 3D printing. In my free time I like to try out new VR technologies, and especially AR, as well as explore and play with the newest AI tools being released for product design.
I am also an avid LEGO builder and enjoy taking my motorbike for joyrides. Musically, I DJ since I enjoy the art of social engineering an atmosphere in a social setting. I also initiate and ran various small-scale product ventures with friends in our free time. Lastly, to keep myself in shape, I play Padel for the socialisation, motocross for the technicalities/mechanics, and I bike regularly since I live in the Netherlands.
Hence, I generally spend my personal time exploring and keeping up with the development of radical tech (AI, AR and robotics). However, much of my time is also spend in my workshop designing and making trinkets/gadgets for my home or friends.
