About Astera
Astera is a private foundation on a mission to steer science and technology toward a better future. We believe the coming years will bring an era of unprecedented scientific and technological advancement as exponential progress in AI converges with central advances in other fields to accelerate innovation. This inflection point provides an unparalleled opportunity to fundamentally rethink the institutions, systems, and tools that drive progress. We have committed a $3.5B endowment to that work and fit the form of our support to the function it serves: grants, investments, and in-house research programs. We accept meaningful risk in the research we back and expect some of it to fail because transformative ideas are rarely the ones already proven. Our projects, and the foundation itself, operate like high-velocity startups, with a high performance bar and competitive compensation to match. We are searching for leaders who are compelled by the challenge of driving high-impact change in the way science is funded, conducted, and communicated. You can read more about our mission, vision, and programming at astera.org/vision.
Position Summary
The Astera Institute is seeking a Controls & Systems-Design Consultant to shape the control-system architecture and requirements of the Gen-1 DNA-origami electrostatic actuator so the device is designed, from the outset, to be observable and controllable. This is an early, fractional engagement: the consultant sets the closed-loop and system-identification constraints into the device-physics and molecular-design decisions during the months those choices are locked. This position reports to Dr. Jeremy Barton (Astera Institute Resident, Project Lead). This is a contract position.
Responsibilities
Define the control-system requirements and constraints for the DNA Origami actuator–sensor system — sensor bandwidth, noise floor, and latency; actuator drive-signal range and dynamics; and end-to-end observability — and feed them into the device-physics and DNA-origami design decisions early.
Review the field-effect (FET) position-sensor and electrostatic drive-stack designs through a controls lens, flagging choices that would make the system hard to stabilize, identify, or estimate.
Specify what the early ensemble and single-molecule experiments must log (sampling, excitation, metadata) so the data is usable for later system identification and ML modeling of the device response.
Sketch the closed-loop control architecture and a simulation/estimation plan (feedback stabilization, averaging, observers) that the incoming full-time Controls engineer will implement.
Provide a clean, documented handoff to the team.
Qualifications and Experience
PhD or MS (or equivalent industry depth) in controls, robotics, electrical engineering, or a related field, with hands-on closed-loop control-system design.
Track record translating plant and sensor characteristics into design constraints, ideally for noisy, nanoscale, or precision-instrumentation systems.
Strength in system identification and estimation (Kalman filters / observers) and in specifying data capture for later modeling.
Comfort advising a physics and wet-lab team fractionally, with occasional on-site collaboration in Emeryville.
Location
This position is hybrid — remote-friendly with occasional on-site collaboration in Emeryville, CA. Some travel may be required from time-to-time for in-person collaboration and work.
Compensation
This is a contract engagement. Compensation is a competitive contract rate, commensurate with experience and the agreed scope and duration of work.
Cultural Alignment
Surprising problem-solver – you love finding unexpected solutions to problems we don't even know we have, and see options where others only see constraints.
High standards, internally driven – you hold yourself to the bar of building world-class public goods without benchmarking against others.
Embrace the tools that define great work today – Astera is building for an AI-driven future and equips the team accordingly; we see these as genuine force multipliers, not optional extras.