As many brick-and-mortar stores are seeing sales drift online and websites like Kickstarter are helping to decide where the market is headed, personal manufacturing has moved from the wave of the future to a tool of production. The “Now Economy” has produced consumers that expect their goods to be high-quality and arrive quickly, which can sometimes be a challenge for traditional manufacturers.

Adam Summers started his engineering education at a math and science public high school in New York City. He explains, “Stuyvesant offered wonderful opportunities for science, but for me the most important characteristic was there were enough shop classes that I could take two every semester for four years.” After getting degrees in mathematics and engineering in college, Summers changed gears and got a Master’s and Ph.D. in Biology.

Jon Gohr was a pack-a-day smoker for more than 20 years until he quit three years ago, thanks to electronic cigarettes. Gohr is a software developer by profession.  Several years ago, he discovered the Maker community and was hooked. “Electronics were the first thing that brought me into the whole world and idea of making things. It just seemed to fit with my technical background and software development experience. I’ve been doing small projects with Arduinos for quite a few years,” he explains.

In case you missed it, the old TV show that pitted highly-engineered machines against one another in a ring of metal-mangling death has returned – BattleBots. Robotics are one of the first elements of science and technology that comes to mind when discussing STEM and its benefits – and what better way to discuss robotics than to have the machines fight to destruction?

Prototype machinist uses Tormach Personal CNC Mills to help National Geographic researchers study shark behavior. Some of the best innovation is spurred from the simplest ideas.

As the technology used in medical research continues to shrink, so does the engineering surrounding it. Edmond Young, Ph.D., who is the director and supervisor at the Laboratory of Integrative Biology and Microengineered Technologies (IBMT) at the University of Toronto, focuses on developing technologies that rely on the flow of fluids at the microscale (a length scale of less than one millimeter – typically tens to hundreds of microns).