Baraja appoints Erica Newland as Chief Financial Officer

DETROIT, Oct. 6, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Baraja, creator of the breakthrough Spectrum-Scantm LiDAR technology for autonomous vehicles, today announced the appointment of Erica Newland as Chief Financial Officer. Bringing more than 20 years of experience in leadership, management and strategic financial analysis, Newland will support Baraja's commercial growth and global expansion in the automotive industry.

Newland was most recently the Vice President for FLIR Systems, a world leader in the design and manufacture of thermal imaging cameras and sensors for a wide variety of applications, including autonomous vehicles. Prior to FLIR, Erica served over 17 years with leading semiconductor company Intel, with multiple leadership roles across accounting, finance and strategy in the US, China and Russia.

"Erica is joining Baraja at an inflection point in the company and will help set the stage for the company's next phase of growth as it commercializes Spectrum-Scan for automotive integration," stated Federico Collarte, Founder and CEO of Baraja. "With her experience in strategic financial leadership, I am confident she will bring Baraja's business goals and objectives to surpass our expectations." 

Newland joins Baraja following the hire of Joseph Notaro, Chief Commercial Officer.

Their appointments are the latest in a series of major company milestones, 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. 

About Baraja  
Baraja is building the future of LiDAR to enable the autonomous future. With its revolutionary Spectrum-Scantm 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-Scantm  
Baraja's revolutionary Spectrum-Scantm LiDAR completely rethinks the way autonomous vehicles see the world around them. 

Built on proven optical and photonics technologies from the telecommunications industry, Spectrum-Scantm 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-Scantm 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-Scantm 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-Scantm is built for maximum reliability in real-world environments. Tested on the dirt roads of mines and arctic tundra, Spectrum-Scantm 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