Materials Engineering Overview - Overview PDF - PowerPoint - Podcast

	1996 - BS Materials Engineering, Drexel University
	Research & Development
	"Lots of companies don't understand what materials engineering is. Apply for chemical engineering and mechanical engineering jobs. Be prepared to do it all! Target companies which specialize in Polymers, Ceramics, or Metals."

"I'm a quality assurance person. I work with quality control. It's very important any time you're doing any kind of production. You have a process engineer who's always creating a better way to make whatever it is that you're making. And then you'll have who knows how many else people working in R&D or new products, figuring out a better way to make the product you're already making. I am developing a quality assurance plan for a new product that's being developed and I'd say it's at least a three year task to really understand what we're doing, what we have and how to improve what we have. There's many steps involved. After that three year task, it'll be very interesting to see where our product is. I work a lot with fuel cells which are a new possible way to create energy. There's a big buzz in the media about fuel cell cars and it will be interesting. It's been difficult financially, economically to have them take off but now it looks realistically in the next five, ten years that it will."

Typical Day

7:00 AM - Get to work, check e-mails, answer any questions and ask some (via e-mail), prepare for the days work.
8:00 AM - Set up the test station for reproducibility or lifetime testing our products.
9:00 AM - Prepare samples for quality testing for the afternoon.
10:00 AM - Find an experienced associate to help me solve a statistical or technical problem.
11:00 AM - Check test station, run performance test. (Hopefully it's a high performance.)
12:00 PM - Go to lunch- hopefully somewhere healthy, but usually pizza.
1:00 PM - Travel to another (nearby) plant to use their equipment to do quality testing (characterization).
2:00 PM - Help another associate solve a statistical or technical problem.
3:00 PM - Travel back to my plant and do a quick analysis of my data.
4:00 PM - Check test station, run a performance test- shut down or leave overnight
5:00 PM - Check e-mails, finish analyzing data. Answer questions, ask some, prepare for next day's work.
6:00 PM - Go home, work out, cook dinner, watch the Simpsons, feed the cat.
7:00 PM - Go out to a club or over to a friend's house to watch a movie, or play rehearsal if I'm in a show.

Career Experience:

• 1W.L. Gore & Associates, Engineer

Internships and Coops:

• 1995: Engineer, W.L. Gore
• 1993-1994: Research Engineer, Rhone-Poulenc Rorer Pharmaceuticals

Best Preparation: "Coop exposed me to ion exchange materials, and my curriculum, (especially labs) prepared me for much of the characterization work I do."

Getting First Job: "I cooped with Gore and was offered a job at the beginning of my senior year of college."

Advice: "Lots of companies don't understand what materials engineering is. Apply for chemical engineering and mechanical engineering jobs. Be prepared to do it all! Target companies which specialize in Polymers, Ceramics, or Metals."

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