As an engineer or in any role that I have had, I always looked at my job as doing two different tasks:

1. Increase Yield (Product Output)
2. Increrase Efficiency (Decrease Cost)
   • OR the combination of the two for a blockbuster project.

I add this equation to my frontpage because it was used at a seminar during my junior year in college by a guest lecturer who was originally from DOW Chemical. There was nothing complicated about the seminar but the concept presented was incredibly insightful and concise. The topic was about Design Principles and here are a couple heuristics that I remember vividly:

• Good designs avoid needless complexity
• Good designers do the least amount of work possible
• AND the quality of a solution is proportional to the number of scenarios it solves out all the potential problems that exist.

What I am about to write should be Part II of my Philosophy post because it had a pretty profound affect on how I thought about my career.
If my memory serves me, all this occurred in one week near the beginning of my senior year at Purdue University.

Well this is a difficult question. I think if I really knew I would have been doing that job years ago. For me, I originally went into chemical engineering because I enjoyed the types of problems I was presented and over time I used more and more technology. It’s quite amazing to me when I think about how I went from a rural area with little internet and computer needs to programming Distributed Control Systems.

I think I can say I have had a very broad range of experiences thus far in my career but the common theme is that I have always done a little bit of everything at the places I have worked.
This is not exactly what I had envisioned when coming out of college - I thought I would become a specialist but due to the nature of what was needed, I shifted roles every couple months and adapted to new technologies so by default I think that makes me a generalist. I’m beginning to doubt that thought after meeting multiple data scientiests and am starting to think I would fit well in a data career.

I LOVE CHICAGO. Just plain and simple - its a city and neighborhoods with traditions that make me feel proud and energized.

I have lived in many different areas - Indiana, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Illinois, etc - but despite how hard I work, I am always able to find something to do in Chicago that refreshes me.