Leo Pauly

My journey began in childhood with my dad, an engineer himself. In 4th grade he helped me build my first working prototype — a demonstration of Faraday's Law of Electromagnetic Induction for the school science fair.

That passion grew with me through years of science-fair projects, my favourites being mock-up models of India's 2007 Space Capsule Recovery mission and its first lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1.

I read Electronics Engineering at Cochin University of Science & Technology, one of my state's top technical universities. There I revived the IEEE student branch — dormant for over a decade — and served as its chairman, and became founding chairman of the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society student chapter, leading 10+ events as coordinator and speaker. Today both are among the leading student bodies in IEEE Region 10 (Asia-Pacific).

Along the way I developed a deep passion for embedded, edge systems — building DIY prototypes like LabBot 1.0 and CAMbot 1.0. I briefly contributed to the MIT-RedX project 'SenseCam' in Mumbai, exploring emotion detection with webcams, and was later offered an internship at the Tata DISQ incubator on another MIT collaboration — which I turned down in pursuit of bolder ambitions.

Around that time I attempted my first startup, built on an algorithm I developed for Intelligent Drowsiness Detection using only a camera and classical AI — a standalone dash-cam that monitors drivers and alerts them if they fall asleep. It was the first of several times I would learn to build a product from nothing.

My passion for embedded systems evolved into advanced AI and robotics. As an undergraduate I built robots from scratch — from line-tracing bots to mobile platforms and robotic manipulators. I took that work to the UK, admitted to a fully-funded PhD in AI & Robotics at the University of Leeds, bypassing the master's requirement.

Toward the end of my PhD I briefly launched a second startup — Intelligent Robotic Manipulators for warehouse and logistics, based on insights from my thesis. The venture was cut short by circumstances beyond my control.

I'm now on my startup journey for the third time, and this is the boldest: building backpack-sized AI-MicroSatellite fleets for next-generation maritime monitoring. With limited resources, working from my shoebox room in London, I prototyped the first version — EdisonSat.

Plasma Orbital was selected for the UK Space Agency Startup Accelerator and the Kickstart Global W'26 cohort (acceptance rate under 2%). Along the way I also built London's hardware builders community, 'Hardware is not Hard', from scratch — growing it to 200+ builders in under six months.