Golden Shovel Spotlight

When Albert Winsman joined Cellares, he stepped into one of the most complex challenges in modern manufacturing: scaling the production of life-saving cell therapies. As Staff User Experience Designer, Albert’s mission was clear — design and build the digital systems that would enable Cellares to operate entirely paperlessly, while meeting the rigorous compliance standards of drug manufacturing.

With a background that spans design, development, and manufacturing support, Albert brings a rare blend of creativity and technical depth to the floor. He’s part designer, part developer, and part problem-solver—and his fingerprints are all over Cellares. From the custom software that powers their equipment and operations to fully traceable Electronic Batch Records (eBRs), Albert’s work has helped transform how the company manages, monitors, and scales its manufacturing.

Cellares’s goal is to make advanced cell therapies—like CAR-T treatments—available to more patients, faster. These therapies, which can train a patient’s immune cells to fight cancer, are revolutionary but notoriously difficult to produce. Every batch requires precision, documentation, and compliance at a level that few manufacturing processes can match.

To achieve its mission, Cellares developed the Cell Shuttle, an automated manufacturing system capable of performing complex, multi-step processes with minimal human intervention.

Cellares was in need of a transformative MES, much like their transformative Cell Shuttle. This MES would handle the few non-automated processes like reagent prep, the unloading and loading of consumables, and processes that haven’t been automated through the Cell Shuttle, like Control Rate Freezing. That’s where Albert and his MES team came in. “My counterpart, Nate Robinson, has also been pivotal in all of this. He took the design system and we worked together to build out the operator-facing applications”

Cellares’ immediate need was for a flexible client process MBR framework that could be adapted and applied to the wide variety of cell therapy client needs and be part of Cellares’ fully integrated Smart Factory ecosystem.

Having designed and established the design language for Cellares’ custom hardware and software, Albert was able to bring this UX consistency into Tulip. “Now the operators have this consistent experience, " says Albert, “whether they're interacting with our device or they're on the bench top preparing reagents.”

By establishing these design principles and data schemas early, Albert ensured that every future digital solution would be consistent, intuitive, and ready-to-scale.

Building upon the operator-facing applications, Albert developed apps for MFG Managers and QA Reviewers to gain full visibility over their operations through a suite of Process Review and Management applications.

This suite handles everything from process order issuance and execution to observation logging and eBR review, providing full traceability for every batch produced. Albert architected the MES to automatically collect data from across manufacturing operations — capturing operator actions, equipment and material use, observations, and all required electronic signatures.

Albert and team are currently working on integrating with their new ERP so that process orders will be pushed down to Tulip from SAP.

Because regulatory standards require complete, long-term records, Albert and the Cellares team engineered a custom method for generating archival PDFs from the collected data. The solution compiles everything — materials, equipment, observations, and approvals — into a compliant, permanent document. It’s a complex technical challenge that Albert solved through creative design, data modeling, and automation.

The result is an integrated, centralized, scalable architecture that supports multiple clients and processes, ensuring consistent compliance and easy traceability across operations.

Albert’s greatest achievement extends beyond any single app: he’s helped build a lasting culture of collaboration across teams.

His systems are designed to empower scientists, engineers, and operators to contribute directly to digital improvements. With clear design patterns, flexible interfaces, and modular architecture, anyone familiar with the process can update steps, refine workflows, or improve documentation—without waiting on a dedicated developer.

This approach has accelerated iteration cycles, reduced bottlenecks between teams, and created a shared sense of ownership across Cellares’s digital ecosystem.

Albert’s design-led development has made Cellares more efficient — and helped the company stay adaptable in a fast-changing industry. Cellares’ MES architecture allows new processes, clients, and regulatory requirements to be incorporated quickly, without reworking core systems.

He’s also continuously refining the digital experience — experimenting with new tools and seeking ways to make global logic, automations, and data flows even more streamlined. That curiosity and adaptability have become defining traits of his work.

Albert has been designing and developing apps for more than two decades, so adapting to a new platform came naturally. “It’s intuitive and uses the same technologies developers already know,” he says. “It hasn’t changed how we build — it’s just made us faster.”

Through his creativity, technical skill, and user-centered mindset, Albert Winsman has helped Cellares lay the groundwork for a new era of cell therapy manufacturing. His contributions to Cellares’ digital systems provide structure and visibility to one of the most complex production processes in the world — while empowering the people who run it to continuously improve.

By uniting design, data, and collaboration, Albert is redefining how Cellares — and the broader life sciences industry — is approaching digital manufacturing as a human-centered, adaptable, and impactful discipline.