The perfect team — combining ideas with inspiration, creativity, knowledge, and skill.

Michael Aprea, Founder

Michael Aprea, founder and President of Sakonnet DesignWorks, Inc., is an engineer, entrepreneur, and inventor, designing medical, consumer, industrial, and accessory products. Michael has over twenty years experience in business development, project management, engineering design, development, analysis and manufacturing, creating hundreds of innovative products for commercialization. At the Double E Company, Michael was Engineering Manager, responsible for the technology and the engineering group. He was Project Manager at Alden Products, working with a medical business team to develop advanced connector systems for the medical community; co-wrote and won an SBIR (Small Business Investigative Research) proposal, and was notably involved with implanted Left Ventricle Assist Device as an interim device for heart transplants candidates. At a start-up Separation Technologies he managed and technically supported cross-functional engineering teams in the design and fabrication of a variety of machines for use in dry based electrolytic separation. At Sippican he was a Project Engineer providing technical research, engineering concepts and SBIR proposal writing to develop new oceanographic environmental sensors.

Michael earned his B.S.M.E & M.S.M.E. from Northeastern University and his Graduate work in Business Entrepreneurship from Harvard University. He enjoys and continues to work with UMASS Dartmouth and Bristol Community College as an Adjunct Faculty, teaching courses in Mechanical engineering and Computer Aided Design. Michael has an extensive background in innovation, multitasking development projects, 3-D parametric solid modeling (SolidWorks, Pro-E) and Finite Element Analysis, and working knowledge of rapid prototyping techniques, plastic injection molding, insert molding, metal casting, stamping, forming techniques, instrumentation, sensors, & machine shop practices.

Center Of Innovation & Entrepreneurship @ UMASS Dartmouth

CIE is a partnership we established at the end of 2016. They are providing prototype support for our ongoing projects and interns of many technical disciplines to support our efforts.

We have an office at there facility where we can meet with clients and the CIE on projects.

Matthew Cummings

Matthew Cummings, the founder of Cummings Electronics Labs, is a collaborator with Sakonnet DesignWorks and is our Electronics expert. He has worked on LED lighting projects including PC board layout using ORCAD and circuit design. He has 15+ years of experience as a consultant, project leader and electronic design engineer specializing in precision instrumentation and control systems. Broad technical skill set includes radio-frequency circuits, precision analog design, high-speed data conversion, power electronics, electrical product safety, embedded control, micro-controllers, firmware, software and programmable logic. He has worked on embedded software and firmware for General Electric, American Science and Engineering, T2 Biosystems, Communication Power Corporation, University of Minnesota, Aurora Imaging Technology, Triple Ring Technologies and others.

Matthew earned his B.S.E.E and M.S.E.E from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.