From the Desk of
Pablo Sobron, Ph.D & Founder
DISCOVERING THE IMPOSSIBLE (SENSING)
"I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts." – Herman Melville, Moby Dick
True to its name, Impossible Sensing is a company that creates solutions to sensing problems often thought impossible. Driven by my own interest to stay technologically and scientifically ahead of the pack, I founded Impossible Sensing as a way to break away from academic & government research –– and find a way to work smarter, faster, and more creatively. I am proud to say that less than five years later, we are building a company that creates breakthrough technologies while gleaning inspiration from our inherent curiosity and taste for adventure.
Curiosity and adventure are foundational in shaping who I am and what I want Impossible Sensing to be. When I was a child growing up in a small town in Northwestern Spain, my grandfather would read me epic sagas that would take us into unchartered waters. As he read me Herman Melville's Moby Dick, I would imagine myself an intrepid mariner piercing through colossal waves, sailing forbidden seas. The excitement of these adventures would stick with me as I grew older.
Years later, I read Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot, in which he masterfully blended Melville's words into a futuristic vision of humans in space. It was then I began to understand the expansive profundity of mankind’s "everlasting itch for things remote.” Sagan's writing distilled for me that humans innately love to explore the unknown; from ancient explorers and sea voyagers, to modern aviation pioneers, to future space settlers. We will always be drawn to the unchartered – to discover more because it’s there, because we want to know.
This curiosity naturally led me to a career in space sciences. As a researcher, I honed my expertise in optical sensing. I invented new gizmos, tested new ideas, and journeyed to the most remote parts of the world. However, not unexpectedly, year after year, project after project, I realized the long grant cycles and the slow pace of research in government agencies were not letting me sail the forbidden seas I set out to chart. I knew there was more I could contribute.
In 2016, while living in St. Louis, MO, I launched Impossible Sensing in the hopes that it would allow me to fulfill this mission in smarter, faster, and more creative ways. I was excited to embrace the risk of navigating under my own compass. It would allow me to pursue opportunities with determination and imagination. I made mistakes. I innovated. I collaborated. I experimented to learn whether my ideas would work or not. From these learnings, I was able to root the concept of Impossible Sensing into a larger, more scalable and impactful vision.
Like Melville's intrepid mariners, a sense of adventure within our team of experts is the driving force behind what we do at Impossible Sensing. We pursue creative, groundbreaking ideas that arise out of curiosity and observation. We explore these ideas with an open mind, always seeking to discover what others think is impossible. We’ve charted a course into the unknown, and, according to Melville, this course “is not down on any map; true places never are."