Baraja appoints Joseph Notaro as Chief Commercial Officer

Notaro brings over 25 years of experience from the semiconductor market

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Oct 04, 2021, 08:00 ET

DETROIT, Oct. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Baraja, creator of the breakthrough Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR technology for autonomous vehicles, today announced Joseph Notaro as Chief Commercial Officer.

Notaro brings 25 years of experience in the semiconductor market, successfully leading research and development, business and market development, and worldwide sales at major automotive and semiconductor brands. He joins Baraja after serving as the Vice President of WW Automotive Strategy and Business Development at onsemi.

Notaro's appointment is the latest in a series of major company milestones for Baraja, including a recent partnership with Tier 1 automotive supplier Veoneer, and a USD$31 million funding round earlier this year, led by Blackbird Ventures and Hitachi Construction Machinery. This appointment strengthens Baraja's move to commercialize the Spectrum-Scan^TM platform for automotive integration.

"Joseph brings us decades of automotive expertise at a time we need it the most," stated Federico Collarte, Founder and CEO of Baraja. "We are rapidly increasing our engagements with various automotive tier1, ecosystem and OEM partners and this appointment is instrumental to further expand our penetration in this market. We are honored to have him on our team."

Notaro joins Baraja on the heels of a company-wide expansion, adding to recent executives including Yannick Lize, VP of Research & Development, Pieter Kerstens, VP of Engineering, Jim Kane, VP of Automotive Engineering and Head of Product and Paul Eichenberg, Chief Strategy Officer.

About Baraja
Baraja is building the future of LiDAR to enable the autonomous future. With its revolutionary Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR technology, Baraja gives leading automotive companies a solid-state system in the fast axis that sets a new benchmark in precision and reliability.

Baraja was founded in 2016 by telecommunications engineers Federico Collarte and Cibby Pulikkaseril, who discovered a way to use the industry's proven optic fiber + photonics technology to solve the problems faced by legacy LiDAR. Baraja is backed by Sequoia China, Blackbird Ventures, Hitachi Construction Machinery and Main Sequence Ventures.

About Baraja Spectrum-Scan™
Baraja's revolutionary Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR completely rethinks the way autonomous vehicles see the world around them.

Built on proven optical and photonics technologies from the telecommunications industry, Spectrum-Scan™ precisely steers infrared lasers through prism-like optics in the sensor, rapidly switching the laser's wavelength to send each color of light in a different direction — the same way optic fiber technology works. The resulting pointclouds are extremely high-resolution and immune to interference from other light sources and LiDAR systems.

Because it is solid state in the fast axis, Spectrum-Scan™ sensors have fewer moving parts and are more tolerant to factors that have hindered traditional LiDAR systems such as heat, shock and vibration. It delivers high resolution to detect objects at distance, and speed, and is immune to interface from other sensors and light sources.

Baraja Spectrum-Scan™ operates on the 1550 nm infrared spectrum, making it safe for human eyes, and creates crystal-clear pointclouds with a high-resolution 2000-channel vertical axis and responsive focus to detect objects at effective ranges of more 250 metres.

Spectrum-Scan™ is built for maximum reliability in real-world environments. Tested on the dirt roads of mines and arctic tundra, Spectrum-Scan™ has higher tolerance to heat, shock and vibration than other systems so it can brave the toughest environments, from city streets to the outback.

SOURCE Baraja