STEM on FIRE

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27: Civil and Architectural Engineer in Transportation – Ebtesam Hazbavi Feb 25, 2018

Show notes

Ebtesam (Eb) Hazbavi has an Bachelor of Science in Architectural Engineering from Azad University and a Masters in Civil Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is currently working in Transportation for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.

Eb touches on the different career options for Civil and Architectural Engineering and indicates that team work is very important. She is fired up on how technology is going to change transportation, especially with autonomous vehicles.

She talks about how every choice has an impact on your life so you need to think about those choices and that every day brings new opportunities.

Her recommended book is “Who Moved my Cheese” by Spencer Johnson.

You can get a free book like “Who Moved by Cheese” from Audible at www.stemonfirebook.com and can cancel within 30 days and keep the book of your choice.
Free Audio Book from Audible.

26: Chemical Engineer with a great varied career – Murthy Munagavalasa Feb 18, 2018

Show notes

Murthy Munagavalasa has a PHD degree in Chemical Engineering which he earned while working at SC Johnson. What is interesting is that Murthy was scared of Chemistry but comfortable with Math and Physics. It turns out the Chemical Engineering is more about math than chemistry.

While working at SC Johnson, he has had the opportunity to work with many customers and his ah-ha moments have come when what he thought would be a great prototype ended up not going over very well, and prototypes that he thought were not that great got great acceptance by the customers. – Always involve your customers during product development!

Back when Murthy was heading off to college, he really wish he had a mentor to help him figure out what was important and what was not.

Some advice while in your career is to take on projects that are critical to the companies success and you should always spread positivity.

He recommends listening to Ted talks and you should write a personal mission statement and review regularly to make sure what you are doing aligns with what is important.

You can get a free book from Audible at www.stemonfirebook.com and can cancel within 30 days and keep the book of your choice.
Free Audio Book from Audible.

25: iOS App Developer and Electrical Engineer – Tom Ganley Feb 11, 2018

Show notes

Tom Ganley earned an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State and a masters in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and recently completed an iOS app development course at DevMountain. He is currently a Senior iOS app developer at Move, Inc.

While a 4 year undergraduate degree is not required, you could go from high school to a coding bootcamp, Tom feels that the 4 year degree is very valuable.

He likes to start his day reading blogs to learn something new as technology is every changing. From his point of view, the future is in augmented reality, overlaying images on top of live images.

To launch into college successfully, he highly recommends truly understanding the concepts it will make future courses much easier that continue to build on the early concepts.

Best advice? You don’t need to be an expert in everything, ask questions in the areas you are not the expert in.

Favorite app is “Medium” and book is “Think Like a Freak”

You can get a free book from Audible at www.stemonfirebook.com and can cancel within 30 days and keep the book of your choice.
Free Audio Book from Audible.

24: Chemical Engineer in Manufacturing – Jennifer Morikawa Feb 04, 2018

Show notes

Jennifer Morikawa earned a Chemical Engineering degree from the University of Michigan and a Masters Degree in Interdisciplinary Engineering from Purdue University. She currently works at General Motors (GM) in Manufacturing.

She chose Chemical Engineering over a Chemistry degree as she wanted to see things being manufactured and created. Being in the production area, she gets to interact with many people and is always working with new technology.

An Ah-ha moment she had was when she heard that work life balance is a myth it is really work life integration. Some advice for students starting out in college is to get a solid foot hold that first semester and then start getting involved with activities and take on some leadership roles.

If you are in high school or younger you get get involved with SWE Next.

Also remember, you CAN have it all, just not all at once!
Engineering needs all types, get those experiences and share them with the world.

A good book is Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg. Jennifer also recommends to utilize Get Abstract.

you can get free from Audible at www.stemonfirebook.com and can cancel within 30 days and keep the book of your choice.
Free Audio Book from Audible.

23: PHD Mechanical Engineering and New Product Manager – Aroon Viswanathan Jan 28, 2018

Show notes

Aroon Viswanathan has a PHD in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech and an MBA from the University of Wisconsin Madison. He is currently a Manager of New Product Development at Generac.

He started out working in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) where you can simulate very complex models like explosions and fluid flow for aircraft design. Outside of the traditional mechanical design some other fields of mechanical engineering are Materials Engineering and Fluid Mechanics.

What he likes about engineering is if you have an idea, you can realize that idea, if that sounds interesting to you then engineering could be a great path for you. He believes learning about programming is important, not to the level of a Computer Engineer or Software Engineer but you need to understand the concepts of what it is capable of as it will be controlling your mechanical system.

In new product development, you need to understand what your customer really wants so you design a product that will be valuable in the market place.

An ah-ha moment? When he was introduced to SWOT analysis which is your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats and recommends you perform one on yourself.

Best piece of advice: Don’t limit yourself.

A phone app is Scholly to help find scholarships for college.

Book recommendation is “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey which you can get free from Audible at www.stemonfirebook.com
Free Audio Book from Audible.

22: PHD Physics Student Doing Research with Graphene – Kathryn McGill Jan 21, 2018

Show notes

Kathryn McGill is a PHD student at Cornell University and currently doing research in Condensed Matter (a liquid or solid) vs Particle Physic. She has been focusing on graphene which is a 1 atom thick conductive material.

Depending on the phase of the research she will either be working in a clean room wearing a bunny suit, building up the experimental apparatus and taking data, or writing the results in a research paper.

She is really excited about teaching and nano-submarines which can be deployed in your bloodstream – still a work in progress.

Her best piece of advice is to get a good night sleep, that is so important and also to be self aware/mindfulness.

A phone app to help gamify your task list and goals is Habitica.

Book recommendation is Honeybee Democracy by Thomas D. Seeley

Don’t forget to get a free audio book of your choosing from Audible at www.stemonfirebook.com
Free Audio Book from Audible

21: Micro Grid Power Engineer, PHD in Electrical Engineering – Kaitlyn Bunker Jan 14, 2018

Show notes

Kaitlyn Bunker earned a PHD in Electrical Engineering from Michigan Tech University and currently works at the Rocky Mountain Institute in Boulder Colorado. She is an active member in the Society of Women Engineers (SWE)

She focuses her work in Power and Energy specifically in the micro grid and renewable resources area doing a lot of work with the Caribbean Islands and is really fired up about transforming the power grid.

While studying to take her exam for her advanced degree, she realized that while it is important to prepare and worry a bit about it, you should not place undue stress on yourself or panic.

A recommendation for students heading off to college is to get involved with student organizations, it is a great way to practice leadership skills in a safe environment and then you can leverage those skills in your career.

A phone app recommended by Kaitlyn is Asana and a book recommendation is Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly.

Don’t forget to get a free audio book like “How to win friends and influence people” from Audible at www.stemonfirebook.com
Free Audio Book from Audible

20: Entrepreneur, Physics, Computer Science & Math – Kevin Crenshaw Jan 07, 2018

Show notes

Kevin Crenshaw earned a Physics degree and a minor in Computer Science and Math and is now an entrepreneur, CEO, and Author of Neverboss. He is a leadership coach for hands off leadership.

He says that because Physics Majors are not afraid to tackle very tough problems they are actually in demand in the financial world where solving problems with math is the norm. One thing to note about STEM careers is that it is not about learning a bunch of facts and figures, it is about training the mind to think so you can solve any type of problem.

You always need to be aware of and watch for opportunities and be able to seize them by being flexible, adaptable, and agile.

When solving problems, the most interesting problems are about people, and you want to be a catalyst for others.

Advice for high schoolers:
1) Always focus on the principles as they never change
2) Train your brain – just read articles
3) Get a job and learn how to work

Advice for launching into your career:
1) Be teachable and be humble
2) Take initiative – don’t wait to be told
3) Be agile – does not need to be perfect, get it out an prefect it quickly

Best advice Kevin ever received: People do things for good reasons, so always carefully clarify before you reach a negative conclusion.

Recommended book “How to win friends and influence people” – Dale Carnegie (available on Audible)

Don’t forget to get a free audio book like “How to win friends and influence people” from Audible at www.stemonfirebook.com
Free Audio Book from Audible

19: Computer and Robotics Embedded Software Engineer – John Pratt Dec 17, 2017

Show notes

John Pratt earned a Masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Originally thinking of going a pure Electrical Engineering hardware route and working on audio hardware his Play Station stopped working and he tore it apart and fixed it and realized he really enjoyed doing that which drove him towards the Computer Engineering path.

Now working on embedded software for robotic vision, he really enjoys it because with embedded software there are many constraints, such as the processing power and memory size that makes designing those systems fun and challenging. He spends a lot of time in the lab connected to the hardware during development and recommends that when you do your designs, you design them for the long haul. The software you design will live for a long time, so take care to document, make it readable and maintainable.

John also recommends that you find something in your field to play with to help bridge the theory you learn in college to the practical application side but be careful not to chase to many cool ideas as you are also defined by the things you do not do. Find one thing and learn it well. He enjoys reading C|net and recommends the book “America the Ingenious” by Kevin Baker

Don’t forget to get a free audio book from Audible at www.stemonfirebook.com
Free Audio Book from Audible

18: Chemical Engineer Working on an Off Shore Rig – David Hughes Dec 10, 2017

Show notes

David Hughes earned his Bachelors Degree in Chemical Engineering from Penn State. He had no idea what he wanted to pursue in college and was debating between business and engineering. David determined that it would be difficult to go into engineering with a business degree but could go into business with an engineering degree, so he chose engineering.

He highly recommends getting as many internships, co-ops, and studying abroad even if it takes more than 4 years to get through college.

He sees protein engineering as growth field for Chemical Engineering and has many friends in this area. Also, Chemical Engineering is much more math focused that it is Chemical focused, you essentially take an output from a chemist and create a process on a vary large scale.

Book recommendations:
“The Prize” by Daniel Yergin
“The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg

Don’t forget to get a free audio book from Audible at www.stemonfirebook.com
Free Audio Book from Audible

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