Celebrating National STEM Week
This week is National STEM Week and we’re taking the opportunity to celebrate our scientists and engineers, and their work supporting STEM with the next generation in these fields. For more than 80 years, MRIGlobal’s scientific and engineering research contributions have been advancing knowledge and shaping the world. These are but two of our many STEM advocates whom we celebrate.
Tyler O’Neil
From an early age, O’Neil played with Legos, was a bit of a pyromaniac, and made cool gadgets like Q did for James Bond. After high school, he joined the U.S. Air Force, serving 11 years in active and reserve duty. Upon completing undergraduate and graduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering, he joined MRIGlobal in 2021. Today, he manages a mechanical engineering capabilities group, which collaborates across the organization to provide expertise for our customers. Their work supports chemical detection testing, integrating sensors for chemical and biological threats, and even reverse engineering existing products to improve their performance – O’Neil calls this last point of expertise the ability to “MacGyver” things, referencing the 1980s television show of the same name. Many of the projects that the team works on are quite unique and the solutions they produce are very customized, primarily with the goal of supporting national security. Specifically, many of the devices supported by the team have very detailed specifications or strict limitations, requiring that they must be user friendly, fieldable, robust, contain no batteries, must weigh under a certain amount, and be usable in a short period of time. It is the team’s goal to innovate solutions to meet these important challenges. O’Neil shares his expertise in STEM by serving as the lead mentor for Paseo High School’s FIRST Robotics Team in Kansas City, MO. “We teach the students the intricacies of how a robot works, how to build one, how to drive it, and how to get it ready for competition. We usually have a young team, so timid freshmen often get put right to work,” says O’Neil. “Over time, sophomores and upperclassmen know enough that they can teach younger students, so to see their growth is really rewarding. There are a lot of schools from across the region that are involved, so as the stakes increase through the year, the more and more students get into it.” He says that the team gets better every year, with preparation going more smoothly and the team being more organized, which results in them having the robot ready to participate in more competitions. By fostering a culture of collaboration and learning, he says that the group sees continuous improvement throughout each school year.
Brittany Knight
Inspired by her grandfather and an uncle who were both engineers, and receipt of a microscope for Christmas one year, Knight enjoyed science from an early age. This interest propelled her to earn a degree in biotechnology and she is now pursuing her master’s degree in the same field. Knight’s work at MRIGlobal spans the diversity of our health surveillance and diagnostics capabilities, and also supports the Integrated Defense Solutions business unit. When she first started nearly two decades ago, she was focused on biosurveillance work, primarily working on sample analysis. Knight started out performing extractions and PCR, but quickly moved into Sanger sequencing, which was the start of her career in sequencing methodologies which transitioned into next generation sequencing using Illumina and Oxford Nanopore platforms. More recently, her work has shifted to focus on work that is more diagnostics related, such as variant analysis of SARS-CoV-2 clinical specimens using next generation sequencing, and even evaluating the use of CRISPR in plant biotechnology. “I’ve really loved the diversity of science I get to perform at MRIGlobal. There are so many applications to put our expertise to use, improving health and safety in so many different areas,” says Knight. “Too, I have opportunity collaborate with chemists, engineers, and other experts to further diversify the types of work that we do and the solutions we offer our customers.” Having competed in science fairs as a student, Knight now takes the opportunity to judge entries at the Greater Kansas City Science & Engineering Fair, where MRIGlobal is the platinum sponsor. “I love interacting with science fair students, sharing with them that science is all around us, and humanizing what a scientist is,” says Knight. “Judging for the fair is a long day, but it provides me the opportunity to engage those students and encourage them to pursue STEM careers.”