Christopher Stawarz
Software Engineer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Summary
👤
SeniorChris Rinard is a MIT-trained software engineer and entrepreneur with 17 years of experience building high-performance, embedded, and AI-driven systems. As co-founder of Standard Kernel and a founding CTO in a venture-backed Web3 identity startup, he blends low-level engineering—firmware and BLE support for Arduino-class boards and flight-critical embedded code—with ML performance work at MosaicML and MIT CSAIL. He’s skilled at squeezing performance from hardware and software, having written CUDA kernels, optimized memory settings for industry-leading utilization, and taught performance engineering labs at MIT. Comfortable in early-stage environments, Chris pairs rapid prototyping with production-grade rigor across aerospace, edge, and neuroscience instrumentation projects. Outside work he’s an avid pilot and surfer, often applying hands-on hardware experimentation from the lab to the hangar and surfboard.
17 years of coding experience
Github Skills (21)
c-language10
firmata10
plugin-development10
bluetooth-le10
xcode10
btle10
sys10
embedded10
cprogramming-language10
bluetooth-low-energy10
arduino10
architecture9
makefile9
build-system9
zeromq9
Programming languages (2)
Github contributions (5)
firmata/arduino
Mar 2018 - Nov 2021
Firmata firmware for Arduino
Role in this project:
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:3 reviews, 8 commits, 5 PRs in 3 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Christopher primarily contributed to adding and adapting Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) support within the Firmata firmware for Arduino. Their work involved configuring BLE connection intervals, advertising settings, and flushing mechanisms. They integrated support for various BLE hardware, including the Arduino 101, Adafruit Feather M0 Bluefruit LE, and Arduino Nano 33 BLE, and adjusted configurations for compatibility with Apple devices. The user refactored code for better organization, specifically moving hardware-specific settings into dedicated configuration files.
arduinofirmatafirmware
open-ephys/GUI
Apr 2015 - Nov 2015
Archived source code for the Open Ephys GUI
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & System Architect
Back-end Developer & System ArchitectContributions:19 commits, 9 PRs, 7 comments in 6 months
Contributions summary:Christopher primarily focused on fixing bugs, resolving compiler warnings, and improving code quality within the `open-ephys/gui` repository. They added missing `const` declarations and fixed misplaced parentheses in the codebase, indicating a focus on code correctness. Furthermore, the user addressed issues in the `DEBUG_EMULATE_HEADSTAGES` code path and implemented a critical fix in the `SmartSpikeCircularBuffer::addSpikeToBuffer` function, showcasing their ability to debug and resolve core functionality problems. They also designed and added event broadcaster sink, which suggests involvement in the overall system architecture.
data-acquisitionpythoncomputational-neuroscienceelectrophysiology-dataopen-science
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