Nisan Lerea

Nisan Lerea is the Co-Founder and CEO of WAZER and an inventor of the world’s first desktop waterjet cutter.

A consummate “maker,” Nisan spent many hours in the machine shop during his time at the University of Pennsylvania working on projects including a Formula 1-style race car. He needed to cut sheet metal but only had access to laser cutting, which could only cut soft materials. Nisan set out to solve the problem, inventing the first small-scale waterjet that would become WAZER.

While working as a mechanical engineer, Nisan realized that other designers and engineers still faced barriers to waterjet cutting, so he teamed up with a former colleague and fellow Penn Engineering student Matt Nowicki to launch WAZER in 2016.