# Nishita Deka

> Nishita Deka is the co-founder and CEO of Sonera, a Berkeley deep-tech company building chip-scale biomagnetic sensors that read the body's magnetic fields. Trained as a semiconductor-device physicist at USC and UC Berkeley, she partnered with PhD colleague Dominic Labanowski in 2018 to commercialize a room-temperature magnetic sensor that strips brain and muscle imaging of its supercooled, room-sized hardware. Sonera's first product, the S1 chip, brings magnetomyography out of the lab and toward wearables, gaming, AR, prosthetics, and silent-speech interfaces. The company has raised about $20 million and works with partners including the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at Sonera
- **Organizations:** Sonera (Sonera Magnetics), Cyclotron Road / Activate, UC Berkeley, University of Southern California
- **Education:** B.S. in Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (semiconductor devices), UC Berkeley
- **Known for:** Co-founded Sonera, raising roughly $20 million from venture capital and government awards, Led development of a room-temperature, chip-scale magnetic sensor (the S1) that avoids cryogenic cooling and magnetic shielding, Co-authored a 2024 preprint introducing magnetomyography (MMG) as a novel non-invasive muscle-sensing modality

## Career timeline

- **2010-2013** — Undergraduate researcher in the Armani Research Group (optics) at USC under advisor Andrea Armani
- **2013** — Began PhD at UC Berkeley in electrical engineering and computer sciences, researching nanoscale devices and 2D materials
- **2018** — Co-founded Sonera Magnetics with Dominic Labanowski to commercialize a chip-scale magnetic sensor
- **2018-2020** — Activate Fellow at Cyclotron Road, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- **2023** — Sonera announced $11 million seed round led by Amplify Partners
- **2024** — Co-authored preprint introducing magnetomyography as a non-invasive muscle-sensing modality
- **2025** — Speaker at SEMI MEMS & Sensors Technical Congress (MSTC) on biomagnetic sensing

## Achievements

- Co-founded Sonera, raising roughly $20 million from venture capital and government awards
- Led development of a room-temperature, chip-scale magnetic sensor (the S1) that avoids cryogenic cooling and magnetic shielding
- Co-authored a 2024 preprint introducing magnetomyography (MMG) as a novel non-invasive muscle-sensing modality
- Selected as an Activate Fellow at Cyclotron Road (2018-2020)
- Secured a partnership with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory

## Latest updates

- **2024-04** — Co-authored a bioRxiv preprint, 'Magnetomyography: A novel modality for non-invasive muscle sensing.'
- **2025-01** — Featured discussing Sonera's technology in a podcast appearance shared by the company.

## Links

- Website: https://sonera.io
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ndeka/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/NishDeka
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvWSSMhvF9M

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/nishita-deka
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-22