Peter Neyra

I'm a designer-engineer who builds whole things alone — and a jazz drummer who builds his own instruments. One instinct runs through all of it: I use technology to sense what people feel and machines overlook.

A drum that captures the feel of a player's hands and can sound like any material on earth. A sensor that reads a field's airborne DNA to count the species living there. Software that hears the sentiment inside a restaurant's order, so a small food maker can spend the day on people instead of paperwork. Speakers I built by hand that split a record into its instruments, so a crowd could walk through the band. The taste comes from a person — the tools just let it move at the speed of an idea.

Few people hold both: the taste to know what's worth making, and the engineering to make it real. I work in that overlap — taste and the ability to actually make the thing — and it's what lets one person carry an idea all the way from first sketch to working product.

How I got here

I studied engineering at UCL and started a student incubator there, Moonshot Launchpad. Then I spent years in innovation — running programmes for Sony Music, Lacoste, the NHS, Gojek and others, turning early research into things people could use. It was sharp work, but it was advising from the outside. I wanted to make the thing myself.

So I went to the Royal College of Art for an MA in Design Products, as a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Fellow — to get hands-on with physical computing, fabrication, sound and code. I exhibited at the London Design Festival, and built an electric drum I tested with Kokoroko's drummer Ayo Salawu and composer Dru Masters.

Along the way I founded Selva, a venture reading biodiversity from airborne DNA. It was shortlisted for the Terra Carta Design Lab — where I presented my work to Sir Jony Ive — and later nominated for the Earthshot Prize.

Today I build whole products solo, front to back, from Barcelona: Sancho y Panza, an AI order desk for Spain's family food distributors, and Vitrina, a farm-drop grocery platform — alongside instruments, speakers and spatial-sound work. I still play, too: as Chez Tito I've played sets blending house and jazz around London, including the Brick Lane Jazz Festival. I think by building.