Speaker 1: On this episode of engineer your career. We talked with Megan Krieger a research mechanical engineer at the US army engineer research and development center construction engineering research laboratory Megan works on pushing the boundaries of 3D printing through additive construction of buildings and buried to rain in environments. She's LED projects create complex concrete structures, including barracks and bridges through 3D printing Megan holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a master's degree in Material Science and Engineering from Michigan Tech. Megan is passionate about her work and I do hear she wants everyone else to find their career passion to welcome Megan to EYC. Welcome everyone to the next episode of engineer your career. I'm I'm I'm here. Thank goodness. Joined by Troy vallen.

Speaker 2: Hi, welcome everyone next episode glad you listening and hopefully you're having a great time listening to the stories of Sausalito be continually have on the show. It's a really really excited to get to New that I'm in this series

Speaker 1: problem solvers just like we had to do for the past like 30 minutes actually be able to record steps today at 7. Never an Easy Life by gas thing always building stuff, but that's who we have on her show today. Someone is a building some really cool things that were excited talk about we got Megan here with us. Megan will come on the show.

Speaker 3: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me

Speaker 1: really really excited to have you on I've been the one to have you on here for a little bit and I'm glad we had the opportunity cuz we Megan and I spent a little bit of time working on some stuff back in college and I'm sure we're both we'll talk about that a little bit, but that's why do some pretty awesome places.

Speaker 3: Call Pat so it's it's really what started basically my entire figuring out. What I wanted to do for a career.

Speaker 2: Give us your origin story. Make it hard to get to what you're doing

Speaker 3: today. so you liked it. They have a lot of experience with being in different fields. So you go based on what you like and I really like math. I took all the math classes. I possibly could in high school. I graduated a semester early and high school. Everyone said he should be an engineer I said, okay, that sounds interesting. Let's try being an engineer. So I ended up going to Michigan Tech which was quite a ways away from home cuz I grew up in Montana and at Michigan Tech the reason why I went, you know, as a kid one engineering good that's what I was going to do to they had a ski hill on campus that you can snowboard on. I really wanted to learn how to snowboard and aside from that Michigan Tech has a great program for all types of disciplines engineer's so I went in Michigan Tech as a mechanical engineer starting out. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I thought maybe I would go into Aerospace or something and Was really kind of Ewing undergrad as I was going to find my path and I went through did the first year as a mechanical engineer and then I went for the summer to go work at a company that specialized in Center Metallurgy in Wisconsin. And so I was actually working as a factory worker because it was a lot of money for working during the summer. Give me something like $11 an hour plus extra for because I work night shifts. And so I worked a really terrible job and it gives me perspective on how bad work environment could be. So like what we were doing was amazing like we are taking powder Metals turning them into car parts, but the conditions were like you were working in 105 degree factory settings for 12 hours straight with limited brakes and you're viewed kind. just as a grunt and so I ended up actually burning myself. I was reaching down to his part of the job that we were doing was to do inspection and quality for parts because that's part of the factory job. And so we had these gloves on with reach down and grab Parts inspect them put them in using tensile test on them. We do different other kinds of quality test and one day I reach down and grab the part and my wrist touch the park next to it and parts Come Out of the Furnace at several, you know at over a thousand degrees. And so honestly my experience there it it ended

Speaker 2: up being a

Speaker 3: memorable and I remember the the engineer's and the scientists that worked at the factory. They were like, well, we don't think theoretically essentially that you could have burnt yourself Yuma. Not even following protocol pulled out these gloves out of cabinet that no one has ever used before there was still like in the package. They said these are what you're supposed to use. They go all the way up to your shoulders. I know what kind of they offered me back for an internship for basically. I'm A Material Science internship and I didn't want to go back. I said I was I felt like a number and I said, I don't want to feel like a number anymore if engineer's view people as numbers than I have a problem with engineering which as we progressed to the story that's awfully ironic just because of where I am today, so I went back to school and said well, I know I love Matt why I came in I had different professors tell me over time. Like, you know, you can go into math and take a path down engineering if that's where you want to go or you can go into math and do a specific scientist type roll. And so Being Ian, you know, I I was like, okay, let's do math and math when you do it in college is much different than math when you do it in high school, so I kind of I'd it into like there's a practical level of mathematics that everyone should know and then there's the Step Beyond that which the people that really like math now and then there's a Step Beyond that which you're unlikely to ever use again in your entire life. And so that's where you go when you get a math degree

Speaker 2: questioning number systems in one plus one actually equal one or can it

Speaker 3: go through and do a geometrical proof as to why a squared plus b squared equals c squared like and then well beyond that into you know, calculating volumes of very complicated objects and basically abstract algebra. Comedy Tour X how many different combinations can you find for one specific thing and then well beyond that and so I went down that path and I've always had an interest in animals, which is an interesting thing. So I okay so make sure you know at 18 19 19 year old kid doesn't exactly know what they want to do. So they lean back on what they know they so I liked Matt I liked animals and I thought I like statistics. And so I decided I was going to kind of at least start moving in the direction of going into something like animal behavior. And and so when I did that there's lots of really cool things about animal behavior. There's everything from like how different medicines affect people to how animals behave Groups and how that can be explained mathematically all the way to the DNA that did people and animals have and how you can trace that and what you can predict from that and I got really interested in animal behavior through a mammal G course at Michigan Tech because the there were two professors that they specialized in the wolf and moose relationship on Isle Royale and so they go through and they would they would collect scat so wolf poop and moose poop and they would analyze how many different wolves were on the island as well as how many moose and and what the face is going to hell for the island was and a class really got in-depth on that as well as other topics. And so I kind of was was leaning towards. Okay. I'm going to go into animal behavior or something like Actuarial where were talking about Fixing probability, you know that the mask makes sense for most normal people I kept going and I I ended up getting a a bachelor's in mathematics with a minor in Psychology. And that's because Michigan Tech created a custom minor for me for animal behavior. So it was technically psychology but it's animal behavior. We're all the classes underneath scitech things like memology conservation biology in organic organic biochem, like some of it was pretty heavy others other parts of it were more like application space, but that's what I graduated with.

Speaker 1: Really you eat an interesting combination

Speaker 2: like

Speaker 3: was I graduated in 2009 which was the worst year possibly to graduate ever and graduating with a bachelor's in math was was not a good year to graduate with a bachelor's in that so during 2009 was during the recession when a lot of people who had a lot of experience we're looking for work and we're taking jobs at lower salaries just have a job. Also. There are a lot of young people who had no experience that we're getting pulled into internships to steal the role of more of the long-term job. And so the newly graduated Bachelor students in 2009 were kind of out of luck. And so I went and and spent a year off of school looking for work as did my husband. We applied to hundreds of jobs. And basically everyone was either looking for someone with lots of experience or you were an intern and you had to have like a a student status to be an insurance. So it didn't really work. And so I kind of had a hard year trying to find work and thought well, what do I actually want to do? What's interesting? And so I started thinking about plastic bags and how plastic bags create a lot of waste which will because Brennan kind of went into an area similar to that when he was in college in interesting and so I was thinking about how could you like compressed plastic bags to make a fabric type thing that you can recycle to use for something else and so my husband decided he was going to go back to Michigan Tech for a masters in structural engineering and I decided I would go back and try out Material Science. So because I got a Bachelor's in math that basically meant I had I had to take postgraduate courses in order to get into the engineering program. And so during that time I kind of used it as well if I take some classes in Material Science, and if I don't like it, then it's just a postgraduate class. I haven't committed to anything yet. And so I started taking the introductory-level materials forces and I absolutely loved it. What ended up happening was. I was older than most of the other people that were in the introductory level materials course cuz at that point I was something like 22, you know and most people going into introductory materials are are 18. And so when I went in I was like, why did I switch from mechanical engineering from the beginning because I had actually just started taking the required introductory materials course when I switched on an undergrad, so I think if I would have if I would have probably stayed in that class I may have given it earlier but who knows it's kind of almost random. So I fell in love with Material Science and decided I was going to choose that as a master's degree. And so then I went about trying to find a professor that would take me on and like I said, I was interested in kind of the recycling of post-consumer materials. And so one Professor was interested in me and discuss me working with them on floatable text and I started to go down that path but there was another professor that came along. Dr. Joshua Pierce who had just started at Michigan Tech and was looking for students. He was also interested in. So I went and talked to him as well since I was interested in basically things that are good for energy savings. And so, dr. Pierce decided to take me on as soon as my thesis advisor and I was I was his first student at Michigan Tech When I started talking with him, he had asked what I was interested in. So we started working through like a floatable tax course and I took I took one of those courses and I did a paper on the recycling of seiling gas for foldable tax because we had discussed it as a master's degree. You can do a couple different options. You can either do or you write a series of papers and squish them all together to make a master's thesis or you can just do one big topic and so we did the piecewise meal. So we took we took this first section that would be on recycling styling gas which is a volatile material and it will explode, you know, if you treated wrong, so it's it's an interesting things to think about recycling but When I started working with with Doctor pierced, he had just kind of started forming the Michigan Tech version of the open source Technology Group. He had previously at his other university started a group like that and had it well formed and was starting it at Michigan Tech as well. So we started getting in 3D printers. And so this is really where I would say my my career actually started to take shape. And so this is like, you know five years into trying to figure out a career

Speaker 1: that I can take like that that long to figure something out like you talked about, you know, before you going to the college thing like I don't know what to do. I guess I'll do this men experience switching switching switching and then it's not until you're like later on to go out of college your fat out of undergrad and try something like this might be what I actually want to

Speaker 3: do. Yes,

Speaker 2: I mean there's an infinite number of paths you can take right and you have to you have to one get exposure to the idea that the path exists but you also to have to be in a place to understand like you can't like for example, you can teach a child calculus because they're not in a place to understand it in the same is true with croup at you can't show someone a career path if they're not in a place to accept it is Alex knows that you work a job and you were excited about Matthews other things until even I you know that your point about if you took the material science class at that point would you have got excited about it? Who knows? You know, who knows if you would have been in a place to accepting be excited about it. And so it's it's a it's a hard thinks you have to not only realize it's a possibility but also being a place to acknowledge its power and its its potential influence on you, but it sounds like I started to really take form here. Once you start looking at these 3D printers,

Speaker 3: absolutely. So Doctor Pierce was all about 3D printing and so they were trying to develop like, you know of a 3D printer that could operate off of photovoltaic other things like that. And you said I'm trying to remember how it how it ended up happening. We had talked about recycling polymers and printing with them and he had mentioned that One of his previous students at his other university had started what they called a recyclebot, which would take shredded materials and turn it into a plastic the 3D printers can use called filament. Basically the long Strand and I started working towards that and wrote another paper about distributed Recycling and in this process. Do I decided to get a graduate certificate and stain ability since that really was was the thing that tied a lot of this together. And so I learned out how did you like life cycle analysis in school and be able to assess how much carbon emissions greenhouse gas how much history something associated with it? And then from there I did more research working with Brennan as well on basically 3D printing so is 3D printing isn't green. Is it something that we should be doing to save energy and save material and so we went through and printed a number objects and printed pencil bars and did tensile testing on and 3D printing back then that was in that was in 2011/2012 3D printing in 2011-12 was it was only for the biggest of Geeks? Honestly, it was like every single time you print something you're going to be there for hours trying to troubleshoot like the film it would clog because there were no good still emit manufacturers back then, you know, it was just a bunch of obvious doing it just to do it and all of those struggles of troubleshooting. Made me fall in love with 3D printing because it it was constant. It was like a love-hate relationship of man. I just need the level to bed, but I need to tighten for bolts to do it and do it with this other independent action and that you got Rick everything up. So that works just right for printing and I learned so much about just how to fix things how to troubleshoot all of the different things that can go wrong and

Speaker 2: the best career advice find a job where you love the struggle

Speaker 3: if it's always good. How do you understand that it's always good

Speaker 2: when you when you realize you're in you're doing something and getting paid for it and it's hard and you're enjoying it like boom

Speaker 1: gold. You're learning a lot, too. I definitely member being there in those times and it was very frustrating in a lot of ways but you also felt like because it was new you're like creating content for things of like we solve this problem. We can go share it somewhere. Can we learn something that no one else knew at that time? He was all like a lot of people going to hacking stuff together and I think it in General on any terms like, you know, if you're breaking stuff and learning and the only person there to solve the problem is you that can be really awesome. If you love it. If you don't like it then then that might be the worst job for someone but when you do with awesome,

Speaker 3: nobody else was thinking about printing Temple bars. I remember we reached out to the big the big 3D printer companies with the time which they're only like there was only the one really except for the open-source ones and they they sent us cancel bars to test but if you could tell it was like why are you doing this it it it was so Print 3D printing was really ready that but it was it was interesting and end just like the things like if you print with yellow filament, it might be different than if you print with red like all of that kind of stuff was just really intriguing from both the mask one of you as well as science and engineering and so, you know and Brandon was working on trying to basically iron pieces of plastic together.

Speaker 1: I was welding garbage bags together and that was yet. I was another interesting time. It didn't actually was like a laser welder. It was it was it was very interesting system. It was that was the first time I feel like optimize I would like my own manufacturing like but anyway

Speaker 2: and the structure of your Masters research for his coursework. Where you 50/50 research 50/50 coursework, I

Speaker 3: guess. So what I did is I ended up taking the post grad courses before I started research and then I was taking I believe I was taking 50/50 coursework and research and I graduated after the post grad courses. I did my masters in one year, so it was very

Speaker 2: fast. Yeah, sounds super fast. Okay, so that's great. So you're starting your getting your approaching graduation. You got this new excitement for 3D printing you you're getting of a master. The job outlook is I guess I would have been what 2012 swing 11 so it's getting better. So I guess help me understand how you approach his idea of how do I find the job in the area that I know that I love so excited about the man that I know that he's really excited about

Speaker 3: getting a PhD and you know by that point. If it would have we probably would have enjoyed getting a PhD and going that route but we decided that we wanted to get some experience and so I got pregnant and right that was near graduation. So that was not exactly the best timing. I feel like life always throws you like these these little curveballs just to see what you'll do

Speaker 2: a huge huge curveball and there's never a good time for them. But their blessing be the females of dealing with with kids. Is there just constantly testing you but you're loving every minute of the struggle.

Speaker 3: What is the second kid? So I guess I did have a kid. Actually I completed my Master's Degree with a child a baby. Because I yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean most efficient time of my life I guess. So second kid pregnant right before graduation. So that was a graduated in December of 2012 and I was I was due in March of 2013. There's no way I'm going to get a job because I'm going to have a baby in like 3 months. And so honestly, I was like, my husband just needs to find a job will figure out a job for me after we get over just the last part of pregnancy and I went to a conference to present the work before graduation in in about November. I went to the conference to present the distributed manufacturing as well as the distributed recycling papers that I had put in my thesis. And there was a little job fair booth there. And I I figured I'll just walk over there. I'll see what the job postings are. It was one where I usually have all the little flyers in the in a bunch of little compartments and you just pull them out and then you apply to him later. So I went there and I was like, okay, I'll grab I'll grab some things for my husband and I'll grab some things for myself if I see anything and I grabbed a number of things and as I was walking back, To the conference. There was a table that said arise on it. I had no idea what that was. I walked over there because the lady had said hey come over here. Come here. Come talk is like, okay sure random occurrence, right I went over and talked to her and she said You know where the O'Reilly's program and what we do is basically we find we connect people who are looking for work usually post grad students that are looking for work with various different agencies around the u.s. And so I had no idea what she meant. So I talked to her more and she said, you know, there's this place in Champaign that is looking for someone who knows about Energy Efficiency and kind of like the life cycle analysis approach and so I was like, well, okay and she said up and we're also looking for, you know, a structural engineer types tool engineer background for doing Building envelopes. So I was like, okay, I'll I'll give you both of our resumes right thinking that nothing was going to happen because of it and we got a call from from of the engineer research and development center construction engineering research lab and it was for my husband and it was a day is like a day after I gave him the resume and he had an interview and If you have like an interview like a day later and was basically accepted

Speaker 2: your husband job

Speaker 3: and he was chosen for doing like it was like Windows studies for creating like it was like thermal bridging problems with Windows and how do you create the structure to prevent thermal bridging and so I didn't get a call until a week later and then a week later. I got a call I interviewed and then they hired me to so we were we are hired on as a

Speaker 2: week later like all men like amazing.

Speaker 3: Being a a postgraduate Fellowship is what it's called. So you're not really an employee. You're you're paid a stipend and you do research and it's a it's a great way to get in the door to learn. Basically how the workplace Works what kind of tasks there are there what the priorities of the place are and so it's kind of like it's a transition point I would say so lots of people do like arise positions for working with all kinds of government agencies and some people do it for a few months other people do it for a couple years. So so

Speaker 2: I'll rise is not a recruiting firm if there are 400 grams through the government to give people trials in government

Speaker 3: organization exactly as we are able to get fellowships which basically meant we had a stipend to do postgraduate research.

Speaker 1: Both with deconstruction engine research laboratory, which is a a part of the army itself or how does that fit in

Speaker 3: I didn't understand it because in the government there's a lot of acronyms and people just fed me acronyms and that's fine. I work for the US Army Corps of Engineers engineer research and development center construction engineering research lab. So what that means is that we are the research arm of the Army Corps. So the Army Corps typically does a lot of like the big projects that you typically associate with the Army Corps. For the engineering research and development center. We do a lot of basic research as well as applied research trying to dig in deep and and solve The World's problems. So, you know, if you have for State disaster relief if you want to find a better way to do disaster relief, that's something that we would work on so different kinds of buildings different kinds of logistics type pass in order to accomplish some kind of goal. And so a lot of our projects end up dealing with the military as well as the as well as civil work. So doing a lot of disaster relief and flood relief. So I didn't know any of that when I graduated I was happy to have a job, you know and then about so I worked there as a post-grad for a little over a year before this 3D printing project came up and in my first year, I really I was trying to take kind of doctor Pierce you at at work. I was trying to say we need 3D printers Guys. These are going to change the world. Like let's buy some. Let's see what we can do. Let's let's create these little Mark thermal Bridge setups with 3D printing to be able to show people that were talking about and says his modeling it and so I convinced some folks to buy 3D printers and started a 3D printing lab at

Speaker 1: so that they were doing this and you were like I want to do this with to do and they're like, all right, Meghan we weave Leaving you at do it. They

Speaker 3: said you seem so passionate about this. Let's try it and so like a year into that. So I've got I've got a printer that I'm able to create little models with urine to that. There is a a person who started a research program called the automated construction of expeditionary structures program, and that was created by dr. Mike case who is retired now, but when he started it he thought I need someone who knows 3D printing because the whole Foundation of this program is 3D printing concrete.

Speaker 2: That's what it was called. I got

Speaker 3: it. And so I had said Sure, I would love to do that. I want to do 3D printing I never in my wildest dreams would imagine I would be 3D printing in concrete, but overall it it ended up being quite ironic because my husband did concrete all throughout his master's degree in so I constantly hurt all the things about how to mix concrete how to test concrete as well as my original pass was down, you know, potentially Material Science realm and so they hired me as a as a full-time civilian employee to be a research mechanical engineer despite the fact that I'm a materials engineer degree and be a mechanical engineer. That's that's how things Works

Speaker 2: podcast is that titles are horrible. I just

Speaker 3: got

Speaker 2: even though they're the main thing people search when looking for jobs, they're really Most irrelevant,

Speaker 3: you know, I started in this this 3D printing concrete program and I was a newly-hired employee. I was very very excited. And so the doctor Mike case told me said treat this three or four-year program like a two-year program try to get as much done as fast as you can so I said, okay, let's do it and I worked with a number of awesome people early on like Bruce McAllister and Russ Northrop and they worked with me to build the first large-scale printer at the facility. And so we just like we did the whole What's home reprap type mentality is you just buy stuff and you put it together and you make it work. And so we we even had like super hot like a Gantry crane frame and put it up there and put wheels on it like rack and pinion on it and got some stepper Motors and they were doing a remodel on the building and they had some spare window frames. We took some of that down and use that for like mounting a rack and pinion on the printer and so it was crazy and we we basically create an entire large-scale printer over a couple months and and

Speaker 2: what

Speaker 3: is minimum bar of large-scale says like 4 foot by 4 foot by 4 foot. Designing the next printer immediately after that. Some students in from U of I like Jacob Wagner and we like we pulled everything together and desire decided when we designed these things were going to design them or large-scale like most people look at like construction 3D printing like, oh, it's just a 3D printer that's big. I wanted to take it and say I want something big what does the 3D printer have to look like and so we'd designs are printers fully around the idea of we're not going to have Precision threaded rods. And because he can't have that out in a expeditionary setting out the dirt and out in the sun like those things will just bail don't like I have that much problems in a lab environment in grad school trying to get an extruder to go. There's no way I'm going to take the same stuff and put it out in you know. Free environment is just not going to happen. And so we took all this stuff and just you know, we went with the second version we ran through a lot of models and and decided that we were going to take this approach of let's make it durable. It's make it Harden. Let's make it easy to replace stuff on and a lot of those things are really tied in closely with the military's priorities, which is when you have soldiers on the ground, if something breaks, they're just going to fix it with what they have. So you don't want to have something that they can't replace. So we took that whole model and applied it to the military. And basically we within a couple years we were able to produce the the first full-scale 3D printed concrete building in the Americas and it's a 500 square-foot building and And we did that all of us researchers who had only really conceptually talked about building houses before and so like we were able to do something on a massive scale with what was hard labor. Then then what you would traditionally do it with and we saw all kinds of problems along the way and it was just like the reprap mentality was good. If something breaks fix it fix it better and if you're going to do something fail early fail often, you know learn from your mistakes and really that has been kind of the whole concept of the early project and because of the role that I took, Through the many years of of accelerating this kind of Technology now. I'm a I'm a program manager for additive construction. So 3D printing concrete and other materials and really I mean when you listen to that whole Spiel all of that was by chance, honestly it was, you know from a encounter with dr. Pierce if I never would have met. Dr. Pierce. I don't know if I would be in the field that I am today because he was so influential on my life. And so it's it's one of those things where you have to be in the right state of mind with the right people around you and the Chance opportunities more to get there. So

Speaker 2: we're so just listening to your story one. Big are changed email that I really love. I mean, it happened to X critically but this idea of following what you love. I mean whether it was your first year the mechanical engineer same bag like, okay, what do I love? I love me. I'm going to go into math. And then once you're done with that, they okay. What like what am I interested? What is plastic bag thing that you kept in moments of struggle of of thinking about your past? Like you always went back to what do I enjoy doing and you created opportunity around the information from that were able to come into your old today. So I love that. I love I love that. I mean it's always hard many people people. I think we'll tell people all the time like you what you love. I think I see me books and do what you love and the money will follow in It's A Hard rhetoric at face value because I mean there's obvious contrary to that of like I'm trying to do what I love but I can't find a job. And so this isn't working you like I get that like that's that it sucks if it's going to happen to me, but I know people that like they have something they want but they can't make money doing it and that's got to suck and I don't I don't mean to belittle that situation but in general it's it is a good seem to have when you started to try and look at what you love and create APA Turn me around that and hard work. But I mean also creating a patina round that to take to create your path. I mean you do that whether it's you know going to the Grand and booths at at at at the conferences and menu you were making opportunity around what you love and you might as well start there. I mean cuz it worse case, you know, you have to go do something that you don't like leaving for a while. I don't know. I just I'd love that really struck out to me in your house or what. I really really want people listening to just think about that. And if you don't know how much you love I guess that's that's that's that's kind of hard because I think there are some people out there that if you ask him. Hey, what do you love anime say, I don't know but you even added that you would like that. I mean, I think there's people out there that are even in high school that can probably at least say like what general subjects that they're interested in to help lead them cuz it's cuz I mean I'm wrong but I mean when you say before like I I love math like it's not it's not like a burning sensation when you're sitting down at dinner at night like Problem. It's just you sitting there thinking. Okay, what are the things? I generally enjoying? Okay math is up there. Right? I mean, it's the it's here for those things. We know it doesn't have to be like this Burning passion that keeps you up all night, which is generally what are you more interested in? Yeah, maybe I like chemistry more than geology. Okay, so I'll lean that way in the opportunities that I try to create myself

Speaker 3: point to is look to your hobbies. High school was you know, I'm going to take every single math class. I can I'm going to try to learn it academic letter and and get this special award for taking the most math classes. Like how nerdy is that? But when you know what to even when I look at other people like when I look at people's resumes kind of thing when I see things on there like on the side, I've built a robot to sweep. My father's like Workshop, you know, like I've built a laser etcher kind of thing or I've done this thing just in my spare time just because I wanted to do it. Those are the things that that I think that People tend not to realize that there's actual jobs in those things. You know, when I see someone that has on their resume o I took a class and we 3D printed something I go. Big deal everybody has that on their resume, but for the person who says I have a 3D printer at home that I built from scratch and I use it to make PPE for covid-19 that to me says something way bigger than just taking a class in something and that that I think is where the where you can find those little passion points as if you can what do you do in your spare time when you can do anything else? And those things are the things that you should look at to where maybe you should kind of view your career heading cuz a lot of people do it like, oh I have my hobbies and then I have my job, but why don't you make your hobbies your job. I mean and I use them but I also do 3D printing for a job as well

Speaker 1: in we tend to think about like I got a degree in Acts. Therefore I am that and that's what I have to do is a job. Where is your story says like I got a math degree, but I'm not a mathematician. I was interested in animals and I got some knowledge in that but I'm not in so doing that right now and then I found 3D printing and I went down that road, but I think a lot of people who get stuck in the mindset of I identify myself as being like I got a mechanical engineering degree therefore, I am mechanical engineer and that's what I have to do. But what I'm really excited about doing on the side is doing XYZ, even if that's not In like a technical area that could be in something outside of engineering but they're still could be an opportunity go down that and end and we talked with with other people on the show with me. I've got an engineering degree but then moved into marketing there are lots of things you can do not necessarily just as an engineering degree, but the fact of like think outside the area but your education is because you don't have to be stuck on that path I or you can you can change it anytime you want to I guess it's easier when you're younger when you're still in that college before you have some bigger commitments in life, but I still don't think that means that you can never you can never make that that pivot into something else and like you said, I totally agree like paying attention to what you're doing for your hobbies for your side projects like those can be really areas of interest to to pursue in your in your career

Speaker 3: path. Absolutely, like along that point to is people view, you know education as like this is an investment you're making and you don't you don't divert from it. Like it's it's you bought this so you need to commit to it for your whole life, but the world is interdisciplinary and there's a lot of gray area between different types of jobs. Like the fact that a material scientist can be in a mechanical engineering job simply because of the interdisciplinary role that the different kinds of Engineers play and the education. I you know, that's really only the backbone to engineering it's not it's not the meat of it. It's it's a lot of the classes that you take in undergrad and graduate school. You'll never use again and that's not something to say. Why do we have to take it? It's something that gives you that like foundational backbone so that if you go into a situation You're prepared for it so that you don't watch him go. What's a differential equation when you know differential equations. Let me pull that book out and read and refresh my memory, you know, and I think a lot of people think that engineering use those classes that you take and it it really isn't engineering is something entirely different which is different every single job that you would ever take, you know, it's it's being able to solve the problems of today using the solutions that you know and creating new ones.

Speaker 2: Yeah, there's definitely a disconnect. I mean, yeah between Edge engineering education and in what you actually do in the field. I think I mean what how do you approach and I think I mean teaching critical thinking and we talked about in supposing that you're not so great an idea. After hours on getting your Masters it be one of interest for you. If you if you think about what you gain from that and it more thinking along the ass, but while we have you have your time Megan, I think what would be awesome for for me and for listening and then just don't understand this idea of what a non engineering bachelor's degree can give you some in terms of these guys. I really am more asking this from your current point of now that you are a program manager Yuri mean you're an engineer by all attributes into your current work looking back and reflecting on what you got from your bachelor's degrees. Like when you look at students who are getting a non engineering bachelor's degree, I guess. Can you help me in the listener's understand when it where is that a good fit for a person like I

Speaker 1: guess

Speaker 2: I give you the maybe even just giving yourself advice when you were making the switch from mechanical to math. I'm just really curious as to your thoughts and Reflections on that choice in any advice. You give to people who are maybe thinking about doing a core science is bachelor's degree as opposed to an engineering bachelor's degree when they have an interest in engineering.

Speaker 3: I think you can go either way with getting a math degree. I felt hesitation with just a bachelor's trying to go towards engineering. But when you're looking at getting a master's degree after you've had kind of a the mathematics degree people kind of expect that when you go to a master's degree, so you're just going to get that degree and then you're going to be done or that you're going to go and get a masters and then a PhD and then stay there forever before you're done. You know, it's when you have a core like I'm a math degree or a Physics degree and you go into engineering you need to understand that there's more of The Upfront catch up then there is the behind trail. So a lot of people that you catch these beauteous I'm going to be here for six years, you know and eventual Get my degree for people with the math and physics. It's more of I'm going to be here for a semester or two before I start my degree. And so it's kind of you can do that as a pivot point so I get if if you get into it and you say oh oh, oh, I don't know if I really like these classes. Maybe you can change but honestly looking back a lot of my decisions were made on I don't like this class. I'm not going to like this career and I think that while it has led me to where I am today, I think that's not a good mentality to have I think it's even if you don't like the classes, it doesn't mean you're not going to like the field and I think internships and anything that you can get in the summer or taking a year off. Just to try jobs, even if it's only for a semester, you know, I think that gives a lot of perspective to on whether you like a career path because when I switch from math to Material Science, it was different. So I'd say that I may have even had it easier going from math to Material Science then if say I would have done Material Science and then gone to a material science master's degree. And the reason I say that is that I basically crammed every single class that was required for prerequisites for Material Science and Engineering. With my Master's Degree courses. It's the one I did that it was just a continuous trail of material science related coursework semester after semester, you know, so when you go and get a material science undergrad as opposed to that you would be going in and you take your couple of Material Science courses here a couple may be a year later a few, you know a year later and it kind of gets sprinkled in to the engineering program. Where is I kind of had like the material science bootcamp, you know, here's everything you're going to need to know then here's the grand courses and you're going to have to learn everything in basically a year-and-a-half and I feel like It all made a lot of sense. As a field as opposed to when you get it sprinkled in is in a undergrad degree. So it's it's kind of like It's not for everybody I would say but it really it really was I guess that's very interesting because things like I remember taking a thermal dynamics course as one of my early courses and I don't know Brandon might have even been in that class. But when I took the Dynamics course it was for Material Science. Not not the thermodynamics that made Mechanicals are the others take Material Science when it's very different and I remember it all just making sense and then all the classes at the same time. The material characterization class is all of it slowed together really well because it was just so compact. You know, when you take an undergrad you're taking you taking chemistry classes in the math classes and stuff that sets the foundation. For all those coursework that you take towards the end of your undergrad degree, but because I had a math degree. I had all of that coursework required from a side and because I was interested in animal behavior. I had most of that course work already done from the the science side. So for the physics in the chemistry's and so I had pretty much everything fundamentally there and then just had to take the really engineer classes all at once and I honestly think it slowed really well. I think if you would have asked me at the time I probably would have told you never do it again, but looking back at it. I I do think it was it was very efficient. And that's one of the things that I love about being an engineer his efficiency. And so I feel like I I may have taken a inefficient pass at first. But in the end, I feel like it was very efficient near the end.

Speaker 2: What is the core Science degrees as a step to allow you more options. I mean, I didn't ever have a core science degree at at bachelor's you have a lot of option to where you could go. But if you use it as a stepping stone into grad school is a very very effective tool and I need the people that I've interacted in grad school have a core Science Background are usually very very strong and our are not usually lacking in any respect relative to anyone else has been my experience curious as to your thoughts for those thinking about it though who plan to only stop at the bachelor's degree do you think is I mean, it's hard to be I was in 2009 graduate with a bachelor's degree was a different situation. But for those that think that they really want to stop at a bachelor's degree you do would you recommend the core science degree still or would you say that as it as a base bachelor's degree? Yeah, I miss you thoughts there.

Speaker 3: better to go Follow it with a master's degree because a lot of times with the core Sciences you are not as okay. So it depends on what your priorities are, right if if you are, okay, making a low salary and just doing what you love like if you love math and you just want to do math all day and you maybe want to be something like a math teacher you still have to go and do all the education related stuff to become a math teacher in order to do something like if you want to just be a statistician. They generally don't want people with bachelor's degree is for anything more than like an internship. I'm so what I've noticed is that in the field. Even though I have a master's degree, there's a huge pole for a PhD. So people really want for research people with doctorates and I imagine that if you have a bachelor's that pull is even stronger that it's like it's almost like you're missing out on something. And so if you just have a math degree getting a job as a mathematician is a thing, but I think it's it's going to set you back in life. I do think that there is there is opportunity though, cuz there's different ways that you can get degrees that I didn't know of when I was going through school, like for example, the opportunity I had is a post-grad there's opportunities like that for for people that are interested in pursuing master's degrees. And so you can have like a job and try it out while you're getting a master's degree and end up getting your education paid for Yeah, so I mean when I think about that, I think about how There's an opportunity to go and get a job when you have a bachelor's degree and then get someone else to pay for your Masters instead of instead of trying to go through and get a bachelor's then get a PhD or Masters. There's this middle step wear if you know the right people at the right time, you can get a pretty sweet deal which is getting other people to pay for your degrees and a lot of people think that it's it's like a o you have to apply for that kind of thing but really comes down to connections. So if you reach out to the people that you know and say hey, do you know of any programs that pay for masters degrees? You might find someone who does and so at least for our organization we have We have a lot of people that that work on our projects that are pursuing degrees. And so like I've got one person right now who is pursuing a master's / potentially a PhD and he's doing his research on just 3D printing controls, you know, and so he comes into work he does the research and then he gets a degree out of it which to me sounds way better than going through getting a research program as a thief like for your thesis and figuring out that holds hat. There's this whole other world of like everything just makes sense and you can go down it and I think that people don't realize that that really exist but you don't have to separate your thesis your Masters your PhD from work you can do it. For your work and I think that's kind of like a a life-changing realization. So everyone that that, you know approaches me about it. I always am trying to encourage that you know, hey, if you apply to this job and you have a bachelor's why don't you pursue a master's because if your work will pay for it or if your work has programs to cover that then you can base with me to get a free education.

Speaker 1: That is some really good advice that bit a lot of people don't think about with your current job that I can see what time a little bit but I really want to ask you this is because you're kind of getting to do some really cool novel things that haven't been done before what what is the most rewarding aspect of your finding of the job you're doing now and like the career path you find yourself on.

Speaker 3: So a lot of my work ends up being very focused on the military, which as I was working through my my degrees, I really didn't have at the front of my mind. But when when I got involved with this kind of research and the whole idea of it is to basically reduce logistics for construction. And applying that to the military just takes it even further because of how far you are away from everything and I think honestly the most rewarding part of this job is directly working with both active duty military as well as students who are just kind of Paving their own path. Both of them have interesting aspects when you work with a marine that Marine is going to take Your directions and do it more efficiently than you could have ever done it they're going to do it better and faster. Then you could have imagined it being done. So when you apply that to something like automating construction like that that just goes to a whole nother level and people are so engaged and passionate about the work that they're able to do things far beyond what you would have predicted. It would go towards. So like I really enjoy getting people to realize their passions and that sounds strange right like I when I meet somebody I tend to ask them instead of What do you do? You know a lot of people are like, where do you work? What do you do? What's your degree in? I don't care. I don't that's not the first thing. I think the first thing I think is what are you love? What do you want to do? If I was to ask you on this? Like if if I was a say Brennan, what is the thing that you love to do more than everything else in the world? And where do you see yourself going? What's the next step? What do you want to do? That's the question. I want to ask people and a lot of times people have never been asked that before which is a crazy thing to realizing and I didn't even realize it myself until you know. I was working on that passive 3D printing right? So when I meet somebody new Ask him. What is your passion? What do you want to do? And usually you will get the most honest answer you will ever hear out of anyone some people say, I don't know. I'm not okay. Other people say, you know, honestly, I don't really like doing materials. I would rather do this other thing and I say, okay, let's do that other thing. If you are materials degree, it doesn't mean you need to do materials. You means you have the experience of being a materials person. It means you have that backbone, but that doesn't mean that you can't design printers or do some other things that you're interested in doing and and I think because I'm able to take that all the way down to the students that haven't even gotten their degrees yet. I don't think they quite understand the gravity of that but I at least hope that it it helps them to move through their path instead of confining them to a box. I try to open their box and tell them where do you want to go and because I do that It ends up bringing a lot more success because if you have happy people that are passionate about what they're doing. It doesn't matter if they don't know what they're doing in the very beginning because they will learn it better than someone who is dispassionate and has an education in it. And and that is honestly the thing that I love most about my job is being able to bring that out in people through research. So what we do is research and development, right if we have someone who's passionate about the material properties of concrete and how to make it flow. That's what that's what I'll ask you to do. You will learn everything about it because you're passionate the same thing as when were talking about if someone has a 3D printer at home that they've built themselves and they program themselves and if they've printed something for somebody that means something completely different than if you say I had a class in it that was required. So that is like the foundation of me. I guess it just goes all the way back to you. Follow your passions, even if you don't know what your passions are and ask those questions because nobody else asked them

Speaker 2: going to hiring managers and managers just in general like you can't teach passion. You can't pay someone for passion at such pains along with everything. You said they may have been fantastic. It really really appreciate your time on the show giving you advice given your story and I'm sure many people will appreciate it and learn from it and hopefully really get excited about what their passion about cuz it's a huge just a huge piece of to take away. So with that. Yeah, like say thanks for being on the show and appreciate your time.

Speaker 1: Megan story is way deeper and more amazing than I thought. So I knew Megan for a little bit in college. We overlap for Fears doing some research stuff, but there's so much I didn't know in and it's amazing to hear it. Like she's she's fought such a unique path in his letter to place where she really wants to be an amazing

Speaker 2: the long form that we go into a meeting right people people. Wonder why should I give you 15 Minute Podcast should do an hour podcast and part of this app for The Joe Rogan Experience wasn't out there. One of the things I love about history hour format. Does he really brings in people for an extended. Of time? Would you get to learn more than what you think you would have learned from them? And this is a great example of that with without this hour long episodes Megan is that I think we're able to pull out a lot of great things that that we wouldn't have had. We just asked her five questions in a 15 minute format cuz we really got to hear a lot about her story and wash to the things that you did and I really enjoyed it and you know her big inseam of Follow Your Passion I mean That's hard to to do in it. And in what does that look like use a story here? You can see it. I thought it how it played out for her and how it me know. It didn't work on this early initially for her and you could you could argue 2009. She said they're 2009 Ballon d'Or passion. You might think well that didn't really work out for her cuz it got her to a struggle point of what to do, but look at it if it's not necessarily A short-term saying it's a life philosophy that eventually get you there. And yeah, it may take a few turns. But if you continue to follow it gets you to a great place and I think that's that's one of my big takeaways from that says, you know what the follow your passion thing is at a general philosophy and sometimes it's it it still means they're struggling really hard struggle as with anything else, but why not aim for that like why you know, why it why would you not a name for that fine? And I think she gives him great information about you. How do you how do you think about what your passion is? What are your hobbies? What do you like to do with their if you had time, how can you turn that into a career?

Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally agree. I think for me a big fan of her story is that you don't start off on One path and you're always stay on that path. Like things are going to Twist and Turn you might go backwards and coming back around again to where you are and go somewhere else. I need cheap. She start off an engineering worked in at like a factory job and said, I don't want to do this move the map. I want to work with animals learn psychology Material Science 3D printing like like so many different things that at least for me like what I start out in college. I thought I'm going to be school to be a mechanical engineer. I'm going to follow that path and that's what it's going to be cuz that's what I'm doing right is not always the best of the best course for everyone and I think for her like taking a core science path initially of getting a math degree and then like taking that to do something completely out completely different engineering is a good application of seeing where you go out at 1 past, but you can still do that somewhere else and you can still learn all these different things along the way and if you don't experiment with different things, Interested in your not going to find anything you like because if you stay on a kind of a one-track course, you might think like this is what I like doing. So I'm going to keep doing it but then you might find yourself 5 10 15 years down the road being like this isn't really what I wanted to do, but I never explored anything else and now I feel stuck and I think like when she ask someone what are you passionate about and I never thought about that before like that something really important to take it out early. Not that your passions won't change. But if you're not in tune with that you might be going down a path. That is an ultimately what you want to be doing for 30 years of your career or whatever. So they don't people understand think things can always change

Speaker 2: anything wrong with the mentality of I'm just going to go to work to work in like live outside of work. I I guess my my question to you though, if that's your mindset is why not at least try to have a job that's related to your passion. Like yeah, if it if it ends up being that you know, you just got to get have a job to to get the money so that you can live your life outside of work like Okay, but you have opportunity to at least try to the working in your and what you enjoy so why not? Like

Speaker 1: if you're going to spend the majority of your waking hours for a good part of your life doing it, you might as well be trying to find the one thing that you want to do.

Speaker 2: So Thai Manuel hey, thanks for time.

Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Everybody. Let go let us know what you think about the up Stone. Feel free to reach out and I will see you next time

Speaker 2: that I kiss the people thoughts on the the format do people like the hour format to do you like you would you like a shorter one? But yeah, let us know your thoughts on the the time for my tooth that be

Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this episode of engineer your career with Troy Bauman and Brennan tymrak. For more information about the show visit our website at UIC podcast.com there you can find show notes for each episode. I get in touch with Troy and I if you or someone, you know are an engineer with an interesting or even not so interesting career journey, I would like to be on the show go on the website send us a short bio and we made it to invite you to come on and share your story. And finally if you want to show your support, please rate review like or subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice.