Careers in Engineering: Summer Edition
With a focus on addressing climate challenges: This class will help you understand how engineers work to help solve some of humanity’s biggest challenges. We’ll cover some of the main disciplines and industry fields in which engineers work, and give some pointers on how to plan your academic life to set yourself up for success.
Program Dates:
July 12-August 3.
Core lectures: Wednesdays for one hour at 5 PM Pacific (8 PM Eastern)
Guest Lectures: Thursdays for one hour at 5 PM Pacific (8 PM Eastern)
- Includes 4 Zoom sessions with engineers (live or recorded)
- Weekly Office Hours with Ratio 21 Instructors (optional)
Our instructors and guest speakers come from elite universities and companies.
Our expert speakers come from elite universities and medical schools
The Ratio 21 Difference
Dr Leslie Field
Dr. Leslie Field earned BS&MS degrees in Chemical Engineering from MIT, MS&PhD degrees In EECS from UC Berkeley, and recently completed her 13th year of teaching on climate and engineering at Stanford University. An inventor with over 60 issued patents, Leslie’s industrial R&D work has made three billion-dollar impacts for her employers. Dr. Field has founded successful small businesses and climate-focused nonprofits, and her work over the past decade has focused on solving some of the world’s most urgent problems in climate. She is deeply committed to innovation, inclusive collaboration and perseverance applied to the challenges of preserving a habitable world, and in 2022 she was awarded the inaugural Mark Shannon Grand Challenges Award from the Transducers Research Foundation for her long-term work addressing humanity’s urgent challenges.
How engineers use science, math, technology, rigorous testing, and understanding of people’s needs to create valuable solutions to humanity’s challenges.
Chemical engineers are sometimes almost like the alchemists from old tales of magic - using catalysis to change molecules of low value to molecules that can be used for what people need. Think of how to transform harmful chemicals and pollutants to non-polluting energy and fuels, and what a catalyst would have to do to make that possible. There are limits, of course - much of the joy in learning this field is to learn how to find out what is possible, given the laws of physics, and to ask questions that might lead you to what might be useful - and possible, through some of the considerations that will help you determine what just might work.. and what will not.
Electrical engineers work with circuits and sensors and measurements that tell us important things about our world. MEMS engineers work with microcircuits that make measuremts of tiny signals more accurate and more affordable than the previous sensors of earlier times. This means you can find out the temperature of your fishtank, whether your cat has eaten out of the feeder that senses his microchip, how much power your rooftop solar cells are generating, how much CO2 is in the air, and how much pollution is near the freeway.
OK - here’s a secret - in the initial thinking, invention is a lot like theater improvisation. It’s more fun working with a partner or two, and coming up as a group with "what if" thoughts, and keeping it going with "yes and" further possibilities. Remember in Week 2 where we started to think about what catalysis could do for us, if only we knew what was really possible? More generally, that’s what invention is like. You need to learn and test your assumptions in a very safe and very inexpensive say, and then test again and again, to get it right, and at the end you may have invented something new. It’’s good to start with thinking about trying to create something to solve a problem or need that people have.
Expert Speakers
Adjunct Lecturer, Stanford University
PhD in Mechanical Engineering
PhD in Physics
Program Outline
What People Are Saying
Reserve Your Seat
Program Dates:
July 12-August 3.
Core lectures: Wednesdays for one hour at 5 PM Pacific (8 PM Eastern)
Guest Lectures: Thursdays for one hour at 5 PM Pacific (8 PM Eastern)
Live Zoom Sessions. Sign up for any 6 live 1-hour Zoom sessions with engineers.
