What happens when engineering meets health equity? In our latest episode of The Engineering Communication Podcast, we sit down with Ashley Taylor, Ph.D., MPH, a powerhouse in interdisciplinary research and inclusive education.

Ashley brings a unique blend of expertise—holding degrees from Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering, Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, and Virginia Tech Engineering Education—and is currently a Collegiate Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics at Virginia Tech. Her work centers on community-based partnerships that aim to reduce educational and health disparities, and she’s passionate about amplifying the voices and lived experiences of marginalized communities.

Tune in to hear how Ashley is reshaping engineering education and global health through equity-driven research, and why centering community voices is essential for meaningful innovation.

#EngineeringCommunication #HealthEquity #InclusiveEducation #STEM #Podcast #VirginiaTech #BiomedicalEngineering #GlobalHealth #CommunityEngagement

Ever wondered how an octopus or a snake could inspire the future of robotics? In our latest episode of The Engineering Communication Podcast, I sit down with Noel Naughton, Assistant Professor in Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering department, to explore his fascinating research in soft robotics—designed for hard-to-access environments.

We dive into: 🔹 How nature’s movers (like octopuses and snakes) are shaping robotic design🔹 Why data visualization isn’t just pretty—it’s powerful (shoutout to University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign!)🔹 And the most important section of a research paper (spoiler: it’s not the conclusion 👀).

Whether you're into engineering, communication, or just love a good interdisciplinary convo, this episode is packed with insight and inspiration.

In this season's final episode of The Engineering Communication Podcast, Aleem Ahmed talks with Eszter Anna Varga, a graduate of both Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering at Virginia Tech and Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering. She's currently an Aerospace System Safety Engineer at Honeywell. This episode has it all: working as an Aerospace Engineer in Europe (an uncommon field in Hungary); dealing with success, rejection, and failure as an engineer; and the importance of writing in engineering. Bonus feature: hear her behind-the-scenes story about her recent Ted Talk (hosted by TEDxDebrecen)!

We have another episode ready for you! In this episode of The Engineering Communication Podcast, we talk with Jim Hess. Jim has an impressive resume, holding management and leadership positions at companies like Stanley Black & Decker, Inc., and Saft. He now spends his time as an Instructor for Engineering Capstone Programs in the Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering department. If you're interested in how to be an effective mentor over the course of your engineering career, you'll want to listen to this episode.

We're back with another episode of The Engineering Communication Podcast! In this episode we talk with Yedhartha Sai Chinnasani, E.I.T, a Rolling Stock Engineer at Mott MacDonald. Tune in to learn more about effective documentation skills and the benefits of volunteering for FIRST Robotics Canada!

In this episode of The Engineering Communication Podcast, we talk with Walter Lee, an Associate Professor in the Virginia Tech Engineering Education Department. Dr. Lee is also the Director for Research in the Virginia Tech Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity and serves as the Interim Associate Dean of Inclusive Excellence in the Virginia Tech College of Engineering. If you're looking for great research, publication, and writing tips (especially about professional correspondence and grant writing endeavors), this is the episode for you!

In this episode of The Engineering Communication Podcast, we talk with Gurbinder Kaur, PhD, a Senior R&D Engineer at Mitra Chem. Dr. Kaur earned her doctorate at Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology and was a post-doctoral fellow in the Virginia Tech Materials Science and Engineering department. A prolific writer, Dr. Kaur has published numerous journal articles and three books (and edited four more!). Join us to learn more about the differences between short-form and long-form STEM publications, particularly when it comes to framing your argument. And, as an added bonus, you’ll get to hear us geek out over the importance of writing outlines.

In the Season 3 premiere of The Engineering Communication Podcast, we talk with Durgesh Chandel, Ph.D., a Software Research Engineer/Scientist at Intel Corporation. Join us to learn more about Durgesh's career path that led her from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur to NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration to Massachusetts Institute of Technology to becoming the founder of WeLEAP Aerospace - Global, a nonprofit that supports women in Aerospace Engineering. Along the way, we learn not only about her engineering research but also the communication required in each position.

In our final podcast of the season, Johan J. interviews Dr. Jonathan Boreyko, a graduate from Trinity College-Hartford and Duke University, is an Associate Professor in Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering. Tune in to learn all about the innovative research he and his grad assistants are conducting in his Nature-Inspired Fluids and Interfaces Lab at Virginia Tech and how they translate their lab work into published journal articles (teaser: it involves intensive writing workshops!). 

Thank you to everyone who supports this podcast! We’ve received a lot of great accolades from you all, and we have a great line up of guests for our upcoming episodes. We’re going on a summer hiatus, but we’ll return for our next season of The Engineering Communication Podcast in September 2024, so stay tuned!

In this episode of The Engineering Communication Podcast, we talk with Jared Wicker. Jared is a graduate of Clemson University and currently works at X-energy as an Environmental Licensing Engineer. If you’re an engineer who needs to write for a variety of audiences, this is an episode you don’t want to miss! 

The Engineering Communication Podcast is continuing its Start-up Series for this episode with David Alsippi, a Penn State University and University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate and founder and owner of ScanTek Solutions, a company that provides precision 3D inspection, reverse engineering, engineering design, and training services to maximize efficiencies across business manufacturing. Tune in to learn all about how Dave grew a very successful business based largely on his interest in a portable Coordinate Measure Machine (CMM) arm!

In this episode of The Engineering Communication Podcast, we talk with Caitlin Chamberlain. Caitlin has an Engineering degree from James Madison University and now works as a Junior Systems Engineer at Leidos. We cover everything from senior design projects to #technical #documentation (which Caitlin has to do a lot of!). This is a great episode for your morning commute.

As part of our new #AI series, this week’s episode talks with Dr. Dylan Losey, former post-doc at Stanford University and current assistant professor in the Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering department. Dylan runs the Collaborative Robotics Lab (Collab) at Virginia Tech where he focuses on human/robot interactions by creating learning and control algorithms for robots to help them interact better with their human counterparts. This episode covers everything from the ethics of AI to effective #datavisualization to the importance of approaching #technicalwriting writing as a #storytelling endeavor. 

As part of our Start-up Series, we talk with David Mackanic, a graduate from both Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering and Stanford University and founder and owner of Anthro, a start-up that specializes in flexible batteries.

In this episode, we talk with Emma Walker, a graduate of Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering department and current graduate student in Virginia Tech Civil and Environmental Engineering department. Emma is working on an impressive research project right now that studies what new ideas look like in the brain to determine how people can increase their performance. This episode is filled with invaluable insights into civil engineering and neuroscience, communication, and mathematics (the latter of which Emma cleverly describes as “poeticism”).

For this episode of The Engineering Communication Podcast, we thought we’d introduce you to Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering student and Technical Communication Program undergraduate assistant, Johan Jallah. Johan is a senior in mechanical engineering, where he is focusing his interests on renewable energy. This episode offers a glimpse into what it’s like to be an engineering undergraduate student, so if you know of anyone looking for college and major options, you’ll definitely want to check out this episode. 

The Engineering Communication Podcast is continuing its Start-up Series for this episode with Michael Fleming, graduate of the Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering program and founder and former CEO of Torc Robotics (purchased by Mercedes Benz Daimler in 2019). If you’re looking for management and leadership advice or want to learn more about self-driving technology, look no further. Michael covers all of that and more in this episode.

In this round-table episode, Kelly sits down with three first-generation mechanical engineering students to learn more about their college experiences and why they chose Virginia Tech's Mechanical Engineering Program.

In this episode of The Engineering Podcast, we talk with Dwight Jones, who graduated from Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering program in 2023 and is now a Product Design Engineer at Amazon. This episode is filled with a ton of advice about job applications, public speaking, and writing, because Dwight has had to do it ALL between his internship at Trane, his work with Virginia Tech’s  Center for Vehicle Systems and Safety, his role at Virginia Tech’s Chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers | NSBE Professionals, and his time spent at the Summer Venture in Management Program at Harvard Business School. This is one episode you don’t want to skip.

In our first episode of Season 2 of The Engineering Communication Podcast, we talk with Laura Demetrion, who offers a lot of insights into writing for your audience. Formerly a Lead Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton, Laura now works as an Operations Lead at Carbon A List (although she hadn't yet started her new job when we recorded the podcast episode). She has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to helping engineers communicate their research to various audiences, so this is one episode you won’t want to miss.