Hi there, I'm

Dennis Ren.

I build complex hardware systems, from consumer electronics to industrial automation to rockets. Currently building Neuron Industries.

Hello

I'm CEO and co-founder of Neuron Industries, where we're building the next generation of industrial control infrastructure. Before this I spent four years at Freeform as the founding EE, growing into company leadership across engineering, operations, and company building.

Prior to Freeform I was a hardware design engineer at Apple on Vision Pro, working on eye-tracking cameras and system integration. Before that I built sensor and embedded systems at Amazon Go, did test hardware for iPad and Apple Pencil, and designed end-of-line testers at Tesla Fremont.

BS Electrical Engineering from UC San Diego, class of 2018. I spent three years there leading rocket and propulsion projects at SEDS.

Work

I like building things that ship into the real world.

May 2025 — PresentLos Angeles, CA

Neuron Industries · CEO & Co-founder

AI native hardware control fabric for industry. More to share soon.

Nov 2021 — Feb 2026Hawthorne, CA

Freeform · Founding EE → Company Leadership

First EE hire. Built the full electrical hardware stack (compute, high-speed IO, power, opto-mech, robotics) from breadboard to autonomous production. Ran print engineering for a year, stabilizing the core technology for recurring production. Beyond engineering, stood up production operations from zero, built the homegrown ERP/MES system, managed key customer accounts, and negotiated critical vendor deals.

Mar 2019 — Nov 2021Cupertino, CA

Apple · Hardware Design Engineer, Vision Pro

Led EE integration for the dev-platform HMD, designing the MLB and system interconnects across all cameras, displays, and sensors. DRI for the eye-tracking camera subsystem on the shipping product, owning flex design, optical-module interconnects, and MLB integration. Built automation tooling that significantly cut bring-up and failure-analysis time.

Jun 2018 — Sep 2018Sunnyvale, CA

Amazon Go · Hardware Development Engineer Intern

Designed sensor, power, and embedded systems for the checkout-free store hardware platform. The store count tripled during my time there.

Jun 2017 — Sep 2017Cupertino, CA

Apple · iPad & Apple Pencil Intern

Built custom test PCBs and an automated corner-case validation system for the iPad Pro / Apple Pencil interface. Also wrote Verilog modules for early prototypes.

Jun 2016 — Sep 2016Fremont, CA

Tesla · Manufacturing Test Intern

Designed and built end-of-line testers, including industrial control panels, robotic interfaces, and custom PCBs, to qualify components for final vehicle assembly. One of my projects shipped to the Gigafactory.

Sep 2016 — Dec 2017La Jolla, CA

Shtrahman Lab at Salk · Researcher

Built an automated behavioral training and brain-imaging system for the Temporal Pattern Recognition experiment studying memory formation. Also co-developed a miniature EEG system for freely moving mice.

Mar 2015 — Jun 2018La Jolla, CA

SEDS at UCSD · VP of Engineering, Project Lead

Built the EE team from scratch. Solo-designed SEDS's first test-stand control system, led avionics for the Vulcan-1 rocket, then founded and chief-engineered Colossus, a $300K, 15,000-hour rocket test platform. VP Engineering in 2017.

Awards

Select honors and recognitions.

Technical Project of the Year

SpaceVision 2017 · SEDS-USA

November 2017

Colossus won the national technical project award at SpaceVision, competing against hundreds of student teams from across the country.
Gordon Scholar

Jacobs School of Engineering, UCSD

September 2017

Selected for UCSD's Gordon Engineering Leadership program, a selective cohort named after the inventor of the analog-to-digital converter.
Judge

Moonbots · XPrize Foundation

March 2017

Invited to judge the Google Lunar XPRIZE global student robotics challenge.
World-Record Programming Challenge

Vex Robotics

March 2014

Scored #1 globally in the 2014 Vex Robotics autonomous programming skills challenge.