THIRTY UNDER THIRTY PROFILES
Ryan Sekol Age: 29
General Motors Rochester Hills, MI
UNDER THIRTY R
yan Sekol got the engineering bug early, do- ing maintenance on cars with his father and grandfather. “I changed the head on my first car,” he said. “That’s when I first got inter-
ested in engineering.”
During a visit to the North American International Auto Show in Detroit with his father and grandfather, Sekol saw fuel cells as part of a General Motors display and knew that he wanted to work in the automotive industry. Sekol received his bachelor’s degree in chemi- cal engineering from the University of Michigan, and graduate degrees, including a PhD, from Yale Univer- sity. Along the way, he had jobs as an engineering aide, an engineering intern and research assistant. “I realized I wanted to get into manufacturing in my PhD work,” Sekol said. That work was related to making catalysts. He joined GM in 2013 as a researcher in advanced propulsion manufacturing at the automaker’s technical center in Warren, MI, outside of Detroit.
EV that’s cheap. A lot of technology needs to be in place to make it happen.” It’s also a job with a lot of variety. “One of the nice things about research is every day
is different,” he said. “It’s really hard to describe a typi- cal day. It could be some days you spend a majority of the day in the lab. Some days it’s a mixture of lab work and meetings. Some days, people have run into a roadblock” on a project and need assistance. “Some days I’ve run into a roadblock but the fun part is work- ing through the problems.”
“We’re looking at things pretty far out into the future,” he said. “People wish you could have a 200-mile EV that’s cheap. A lot of technology needs to be in place to make it happen.”
Another influence for Sekol was participating in science competitions starting in grade school through high school. “I’m a fairly competitive person,” he said. “You learn the fundamentals of science….It makes science and math more real. One of the things I
regret is not taking shop classes in high school. It’s making science more hands-on and makes it more real than a textbook.”
“I picked chemical engineering because I wanted to get involved with fuel cells,” Sekol said. “I knew one of the fuel cell leaders was GM.” He is not currently work- ing on fuel cell technologies. Sekol works as a researcher. His duties include ad- vanced propulsion manufacturing processes, primarily focused on future generations of advanced battery manufacturing. “We’re looking at things pretty far out into the fu- ture,” he said. “People wish you could have a 200-mile
Sekol also said working at an automaker is important.
“I think the biggest thing about the automotive industry is it provides something that is almost a necessity in most places,” he said. "It’s not something you think about until your car dies. If you don’t have a reliable car, it makes your life more difficult. It's a necessity for people to travel, to do work.” Also, he said, in regard to vacations and road trips, “There are a lot of memories that happen in cars.”
July 2015 |
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