Jim Bickford's Cool Tech Job

What is your current title?
Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass.

If you had to write an ad to fill your job, what would it say?
Wanted: Engineer willing to tackle any challenge. The candidate should be willing to step into any role and leverage knowledge from many disciplines to solve the problem at hand. He/she should be willing to learn about new areas since the next problem posed probably won't be anything like the previous.

What's the coolest thing about your job?
Sometimes I feel like I hit the jackpot in the engineering lottery. I've had the chance to do things that I've wanted to do since I was a little kid.

The problems that I've worked on span the energy, space, biomedical and other fields so things always stay interesting. The great thing is that I've been able to work with some of the brightest and most creative people to solve these problems together. While doing all of this, I've visited and met some very interesting places and people. I've gone to a oil drilling platform in the gulf of Mexico, crawled through the inner workings of a huge power generation plant, and met with insightful people from industry, academia and government.

What are at least five duties you have as part of your job?
1. Identifying important problems that our customers want solved.
2. Thinking up very clever ways to solve these problems.
3. Demonstrating to the customer how we can do this.
4. Forming and/or managing a team to tackle the problem.
5. Actually solving the problem.

What's the coolest thing you've done so far in your current job?
The coolest thing is that I've been able to actually pursue some of the engineering problems that have fascinated me since I was a little kid. I remember reading about the predecessor of today's modern digital computer that Charles Babbage built in the Victorian era with mechanical components. At Draper, I was able to design my own mechanical computer that I built with modern MEMS technology where the mechanical components were just microns in size.

I also always dreamed of spaceflight as a child and at Draper I've been able to work on systems for exploring the moon, Mars and beyond. I even got to explore some really far out concepts related to antiparticles and how they might be used.

Does your career ever get dull or routine? How do you rekindle your love for it?
One of my high school teachers used to say that life is like a pendulum -- it always swings back and forth. I guess what that means here is that there is always a natural variation in how interesting something is. However, I've been fortunate in that it seems like there is some giant magnet that keeps pulling the pendulum to one side where things are the most interesting.

I think one thing that has helped is the very broad array of important problems I've been given the chance to pursue. For instance, lately I've been working with power companies to develop a sensor that will improve the efficiency of power plants. Not only is this technically interesting, but it is also incredibly important from an environmental and national security perspective. I've never gotten bored because I've been given one problem like this after another to solve.

Did you ever expect to have the career you have?
I've always wanted this career path though I never dreamed that I'd be given the opportunities that I have.

What was your career path?
I studied mechanical engineering at Tufts University and started at Draper after receiving my BS and MS. I started as a analyst where I optimized tiny micromechanical systems by simulating them on a computer. However, my role increased with time to encompass other technical areas and duties. I still occasionally will run these simulations though now I'm often responsible for managing projects and interacting with customers.

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