Celebrating National Engineers Week

From designing the next generation of fuel-efficient cars or creating advanced prosthetics to enable an amputee to walk again, to inventing novel ways to provide clean drinking water in developing countries, engineers find innovative solutions to the challenges people around the world face every day. National Engineers Week (February 21 – 27) celebrates the accomplishments and contributions of engineers across the United States who strive to improve the lives of people around them using creativity and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills.  Each year, this week helps to spark the interest of the next generation in tinkering, making, and exploring, and serves as a reminder of the incredible things all Americans can accomplish in the pursuit of discovery and curiosity.

This week, some of OSTP’s resident engineers have shared their thoughts on being an engineer, including what inspired them and how they have used engineering in their own lives, as well as advice for young people around the country on how they, too, can pursue a career in engineering as a way of solving the problems that most inspire them.

Why did you become an engineer?

As an undergraduate at MIT and then as a masters-degree student there, I studied space science and aerospace engineering because of their connection to my interests, from childhood, in aviation, rocketry, space exploration, and how the universe works.  My summer jobs at Lockheed during this period provided opportunities to work on hypersonic-flow studies, analysis of satellite orbits, rocket-motor design, and more.  For my PhD at Stanford, I worked on theoretical plasma physics, which is a key element of space science (every star in the universe is a ball of plasma—gas so hot that its constituent atoms have been ionized).  Plasma physics is also, in combination with various engineering disciplines, the key to harnessing hydrogen fusion as a terrestrial energy source.  The combination of science and engineering in my training turned out to be a good foundation for the interdisciplinary focuses on which I spent most of my subsequent career:  energy technology and policy, causes and consequences of global climate change, nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, and, finally, science and technology advice for President Obama.  Among all the exciting things I have been able to do as a scientist and engineer, this last role has been the most interesting and most rewarding!

John P. Holdren

Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy

I became a computer engineer because I loved computers.  I enjoyed using them in school and playing games on them after school.  At some point I realized I liked figuring out how to make computers do what I wanted done; after some research, I determined becoming a computer engineer would allow me to design computers and systems to help myself and others. 

Afua Bruce

Executive Director of the National Science and Technology Council

Based on childhood inspirations such as Han Solo and the Millenium Falcon, stargazing with the family, Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, Tintin’s rocket trip to the Moon, and of course astronauts and the NASA space mission, I grew up addicted to all things space and wanting nothing more than to build rockets and be a space explorer myself. It wasn’t until my senior year in high school that I learned what engineering was about and decided to pursue engineering at the first possible opportunity (college) to become an aerospace engineer. Eight years later I completed my engineering Doctorate in Aeronautics and Astronautics!

Noel Bakhtian

Executive Secretary for the Arctic Executive Steering Committee and Senior Fellow

What does it mean to be an engineer?

Engineers use science to solve societal problems. We bring the full STEM toolkit to bear in making the world a better place, from designing and building the bridges we cross every day to researching and developing next-generation therapeutics inspired by biology.

Megan Brewster

Senior Policy Advisor for Advanced Manufacturing

The Oxford English Dictionary defines engineer as “a person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or public works.” That’s true, but it’s too narrow—engineers work on financial systems, on pharmaceutical production, on environmental assessments, and so much more. I’ve also heard people define engineer as “a person who applies basic science to practical benefit.” I think that’s better, but it focuses too much on what an engineer does as opposed to what an engineer thinks. A big part of being an engineer is about taking a systematic approach to solving problems, whether those problems have to do with building a bridge or informing public policy.

Hannah Safford

SINSI Fellow

Simple: making things better!  Building better bridges, building bigger and better space ships, building better and smaller nanotechnology, synthesizing better chemicals and compounds to treat disease, or creating better policies.  I see engineering as my tool and my way to give back to a world and community thirsty for solutions on how to make things better.

Marvin Carr

Policy Advisor

What is the most exciting engineering project you’ve been a part of?

In college I was on a team of students from different majors.  We worked together to define the software needs of a local organization that served as a halfway home for men in the community.  It was interesting to see how different people brought different perspectives to the project, and it was rewarding to see how using my engineering skills could really simplify the lives of people in my community. 

Afua Bruce

Executive Director of the National Science and Technology Council

I did my undergraduate and graduate work at Princeton, and one of the coolest engineering projects going on was called Flock Logic. Flock Logic was a collaboration between an engineering professor and a dance choreographer (seriously!) who wanted to explore what happened when humans were instructed to move according to rules used to model the movement of animal groups such as schools of fish and flocks of birds. It turns out that these kinds of rules can produce beautiful and fascinating patterns of collective motion, which you also see in the natural world. Lots of people think that engineers can’t be creative, and that artsy types don’t have a head for science, but this project was a truly inspiring proof of how false those assumptions are. I wasn’t involved in the project itself, but I was inspired by it to pursue thesis research on computer-based modeling of the dynamics of collective motion.

Hannah Safford

SINSI Fellow

What advice do you have for future engineers?

Identify a grand challenge to inspire your work: whether it be providing access to clean water or exploring the next frontier in space, engineering solutions are required. While you study to fill your engineering toolkit with the latest knowledge and research to hone your skills, always remember the big picture of why you are doing this good work. 

Megan Brewster

Senior Policy Advisor for Advanced Manufacturing

The really fun projects happen at the intersection of fields – don’t be afraid to “go rogue”…I mean go interdisciplinary.  And second, teamwork is the key to success! 

Noel Bakhtian

Executive Secretary for the Arctic Executive Steering Committee and Senior Fellow

Never give up.  Though it’s a cliché, I’ve found this mantra gets me – and other engineers – to push past the seemingly impossible parts of defining the problem, coming up with a solution, and implementing the solution. 

Afua Bruce

Executive Director of the National Science and Technology Council

What about engineering do you wish more people knew?

Engineers and our fields of expertise are hugely diverse—we are people from all walks of life, working in areas from aerospace and biology to computer science and design. This big tent is essential to solving the most pressing challenges of our time.

Megan Brewster

Senior Policy Advisor for Advanced Manufacturing

Anyone can be an engineer.  It’s not necessarily reserved for those who build something.  Being an engineer is about engineering things, both tangible and intangible.

Marvin Carr

Policy Advisor

Not every engineer is a math or science genius. Anyone—really, anyone—has the capacity to understand enough math and science to do the fundamentals of engineering, and once you have those down, a lot of other skill sets come into play. Maybe math and science don’t feel like your strong suits, but you’re a great writer. Guess what…you’ll be a great engineer! Maybe you’ve got a creative bent. Did you read the description of the Flock Logic project? That’s right, creative people make great engineers! Love economics? Financial engineering is a thing! Really, anyone who wants to can be a great engineer.

Hannah Safford

SINSI Fellow

Want to learn more about engineering and how you can pursue a career in engineering?  Check out the new video from the National Science Foundation, “What is Engineering?” You can also share your stories and insights about engineering with the hashtag #EWeek2016.

Meredith Drosback is the Assistant Director for Education and Physical Sciences at OSTP.