it’s really not fair to hear so many
stories about great projects overcoming
great odds and achieving great success
in the end and not talk about the rest
by simple statistics for every
successful project there there really
must be many more that have failed
that’s just the way that statistics work
so I’d like to ask why don’t we talk
about those projects and what about the
projects that succeeded but in ways that
nobody had anticipated I had the
privilege to fail as personally and
professionally on an elite team that was
pushing the edges of technology and what
I’d like to bring to you is that failure
is not an end but in fact a beginning
when I joined the MIT Micro Engine
project in 1998 the goal of the project
was nothing less than to create a jet
engine the size of a quarter this little
engine was going to provide an
alternative to batteries we were going
to bring a tenfold improvement over the
over the weight and the short life of
batteries this project had over 40
professors and staff and students
involved with a budget in the millions
of dollars and there was not one but
two labs on the main campus of MIT
involved the engine itself was going to
burn jet fuel and so it would have to
operate at temperatures that would melt
iron and would see internal pressures of
approaching a hundred atmospheres and in
addition the way that the scanning would
work taking a large engine to a small
one the the little turbines inside would
have to spin at a speed more than a
hundred times their large counterparts
that would mean that the tiny rotors
would have to reach a speed in excess of
1 million rpm so the engine was going to
have the same type of components as as a
as a as a large dead engine but
obviously the technology to build that
couldn’t be the same so at the time
there was a technology that was up and
coming a science called MEMS that short
for micro electrical mechanical systems
and mem suggested that we use an
existing technology that was already
making very small components but for a
different purpose and that technology is
the micro electronics industry so the
micro electronics industry already makes
and was making very tiny the very tiny
components called transistors which are
inside which are inside the computer
chips that we all know so a cell phone
for instance might have a billion of
them inside so the thing is that if we
were going to leverage and map this
technology from from the micro
electronics industry we were going to
have to start with the same materials we
couldn’t start with steel and nuts and
bolts so
the material that’s used to build
computer chips looks like this it’s a
silicon wafer and you can see that it’s
thin and it’s actually quite brittle and
it’s it’s the the starting point for
countless of transistors and the
computer chips that that that contain
them but it’s really something different
to start or the legend with so we were
trying to do something that no one had
ever done before with extreme challenges
from our specifications that we had that
this engine required and we were
starting with the most unlikely of
materials so many things could go wrong
and many things did but they changed the
way that I look at life and it worked
the first failure that I experienced was
was personal and I didn’t know that I
was walking into a pressure cooker my
confidence as a engineer who who had
worked on the factory floor was going to
run headlong into the realities of
working on a very high profile and world
class project I I found out that well
what happened was honestly the bottom
fell out when I found out that I was
going to I was trying to work I was
working and given factory like deadlines
but without the factory without the
factory to support me and this had taken
me totally unawares and to be honest I
really I really became what what what
could not be destroyed to describe any
other way as than a nervous wreck I was
having trouble doing basic duties and
the the stress
propagated to my to my personal life so
I was anxious all the time and I felt
that my ability as a father and as a
husband was starting to falter and I
couldn’t enjoy simple things like dinner
with my wife or an outing with my family
and I was ashamed because I I I could
see what was happening and I really
didn’t know how to do anything about it
my I was also failing my colleagues
professionally because I had lost I I
had I had lost focus
so in my previous job I had walked a
research project from its infancy into a
multi-million dollar product line and
now I could hardly move away from box to
when my colleagues had hired me they had
hoped that I would help them with wafer
production but instead they were helping
me and I hadn’t expected this and they
hadn’t expected it and one day I did
something I had never done before I got
into a unrestrained shouting match with
my colleague on a lab floor and I was
angry and shocked because honestly I had
never I had never used had to resort to
angry words before it that’s that’s just
so to top it off the micro engine
project was shut down before we could
achieve all of the goals that we had set
out to achieve the I I had been working
on the product the the program for seven
years seven years of my career and in
the end we couldn’t get the engine to
the last cycle to the to get it to have
it to spin on its on its own power on
its own power so the funding was cut off
before we could do what jet engineers
called closing the cycle but what if
within failure why the seeds of success
so the truth is the truth is that I
survived and I’m I am a better person
for it
I found out that I could work and
contribute at the highest level with the
most competitive teams and in the most
demanding environments I found out that
I could learn how not to take work home
and as a result stress run away not just
and I grew as an individual as I felt
great compassion from my colleagues and
from my wife who showed me the depth of
love and understanding that one person
can show to another professionally I
grew because of my failure I learned
leadership as my my supervisor brought
the colleague who I’d had the argument
with together with me and a year later
we were publishing our first paper
together
I learned to communicate at the highest
level so that what I had originally
tried to bring into the lab the industry
experience that I had was actually
implemented not just in the project but
throughout the lab itself and I learned
I succeeded and grew as I experienced
the joy of seeing students take my
insights not just into the projects they
were working on but also into their
careers and I grew professionally as I
was later entrusted with wafers like
this one worth $80,000 a piece and then
and then more importantly the trust of
my own team and together we built some
of the most complicated micro structures
that have ever been attempted so the
project itself actually was anything but
a failures have turned out we designed
built and tested a trowel rotor that we
were able to get to spin to 1.4 million
rpm without breaking
we built a generator that used a
principle of electric power generation
that didn’t even exist before the
project and in fact we proved that every
part of the engine every aspect of the
engine could be made so that in the
future a fully functional jet engine
now the other successes were on an were
were not foreseen and perhaps the bigger
ones people outside of our of our
project saw what we were doing and
thought if they can almost almost build
the jet engine then we maybe we could
apply micro fabrication to our projects
and succeed because not everyone had to
make something as complex as a jet
engine so we provided the community a
community outside of ours
with 3d fabrication techniques that
didn’t exist before and more importantly
we provided them with with insights we
provided them with the with the idea
with ideas that they hadn’t thought of
before so 3d micro fabrication is now
spreading throughout the world you can
it’s in labs on a chip in medicine
biologists are manipulating cells using
mini tweezers and there’s micro robots
the size of insects insects that are
flying your smartphones by the way
contain mechanical components that
contain that allow you to sense motion
so in fact there were many unseen many
unseen successes and I’d like to
conclude by sharing with you and showing
you a
original component from the micro engine
it’s when you look at a jet engine it’s
the same components when you look at a
big jet engine you see the fan these are
usually ten feet across and I’ve mounted
the compressor on a ring on my finger
and I like to show it to you there it is
and I keep it as a reminder that I keep
it as a reminder of what I went through
and that I’m convinced that within
within failure is hidden success and I
hope I hope that you’ll think about that
– thank you [Applause]
stories about great projects overcoming
great odds and achieving great success
in the end and not talk about the rest
by simple statistics for every
successful project there there really
must be many more that have failed
that’s just the way that statistics work
so I’d like to ask why don’t we talk
about those projects and what about the
projects that succeeded but in ways that
nobody had anticipated I had the
privilege to fail as personally and
professionally on an elite team that was
pushing the edges of technology and what
I’d like to bring to you is that failure
is not an end but in fact a beginning
when I joined the MIT Micro Engine
project in 1998 the goal of the project
was nothing less than to create a jet
engine the size of a quarter this little
engine was going to provide an
alternative to batteries we were going
to bring a tenfold improvement over the
over the weight and the short life of
batteries this project had over 40
professors and staff and students
involved with a budget in the millions
of dollars and there was not one but
two labs on the main campus of MIT
involved the engine itself was going to
burn jet fuel and so it would have to
operate at temperatures that would melt
iron and would see internal pressures of
approaching a hundred atmospheres and in
addition the way that the scanning would
work taking a large engine to a small
one the the little turbines inside would
have to spin at a speed more than a
hundred times their large counterparts
that would mean that the tiny rotors
would have to reach a speed in excess of
1 million rpm so the engine was going to
have the same type of components as as a
as a as a large dead engine but
obviously the technology to build that
couldn’t be the same so at the time
there was a technology that was up and
coming a science called MEMS that short
for micro electrical mechanical systems
and mem suggested that we use an
existing technology that was already
making very small components but for a
different purpose and that technology is
the micro electronics industry so the
micro electronics industry already makes
and was making very tiny the very tiny
components called transistors which are
inside which are inside the computer
chips that we all know so a cell phone
for instance might have a billion of
them inside so the thing is that if we
were going to leverage and map this
technology from from the micro
electronics industry we were going to
have to start with the same materials we
couldn’t start with steel and nuts and
bolts so
the material that’s used to build
computer chips looks like this it’s a
silicon wafer and you can see that it’s
thin and it’s actually quite brittle and
it’s it’s the the starting point for
countless of transistors and the
computer chips that that that contain
them but it’s really something different
to start or the legend with so we were
trying to do something that no one had
ever done before with extreme challenges
from our specifications that we had that
this engine required and we were
starting with the most unlikely of
materials so many things could go wrong
and many things did but they changed the
way that I look at life and it worked
the first failure that I experienced was
was personal and I didn’t know that I
was walking into a pressure cooker my
confidence as a engineer who who had
worked on the factory floor was going to
run headlong into the realities of
working on a very high profile and world
class project I I found out that well
what happened was honestly the bottom
fell out when I found out that I was
going to I was trying to work I was
working and given factory like deadlines
but without the factory without the
factory to support me and this had taken
me totally unawares and to be honest I
really I really became what what what
could not be destroyed to describe any
other way as than a nervous wreck I was
having trouble doing basic duties and
the the stress
propagated to my to my personal life so
I was anxious all the time and I felt
that my ability as a father and as a
husband was starting to falter and I
couldn’t enjoy simple things like dinner
with my wife or an outing with my family
and I was ashamed because I I I could
see what was happening and I really
didn’t know how to do anything about it
my I was also failing my colleagues
professionally because I had lost I I
had I had lost focus
so in my previous job I had walked a
research project from its infancy into a
multi-million dollar product line and
now I could hardly move away from box to
when my colleagues had hired me they had
hoped that I would help them with wafer
production but instead they were helping
me and I hadn’t expected this and they
hadn’t expected it and one day I did
something I had never done before I got
into a unrestrained shouting match with
my colleague on a lab floor and I was
angry and shocked because honestly I had
never I had never used had to resort to
angry words before it that’s that’s just
so to top it off the micro engine
project was shut down before we could
achieve all of the goals that we had set
out to achieve the I I had been working
on the product the the program for seven
years seven years of my career and in
the end we couldn’t get the engine to
the last cycle to the to get it to have
it to spin on its on its own power on
its own power so the funding was cut off
before we could do what jet engineers
called closing the cycle but what if
within failure why the seeds of success
so the truth is the truth is that I
survived and I’m I am a better person
for it
I found out that I could work and
contribute at the highest level with the
most competitive teams and in the most
demanding environments I found out that
I could learn how not to take work home
and as a result stress run away not just
and I grew as an individual as I felt
great compassion from my colleagues and
from my wife who showed me the depth of
love and understanding that one person
can show to another professionally I
grew because of my failure I learned
leadership as my my supervisor brought
the colleague who I’d had the argument
with together with me and a year later
we were publishing our first paper
together
I learned to communicate at the highest
level so that what I had originally
tried to bring into the lab the industry
experience that I had was actually
implemented not just in the project but
throughout the lab itself and I learned
I succeeded and grew as I experienced
the joy of seeing students take my
insights not just into the projects they
were working on but also into their
careers and I grew professionally as I
was later entrusted with wafers like
this one worth $80,000 a piece and then
and then more importantly the trust of
my own team and together we built some
of the most complicated micro structures
that have ever been attempted so the
project itself actually was anything but
a failures have turned out we designed
built and tested a trowel rotor that we
were able to get to spin to 1.4 million
rpm without breaking
we built a generator that used a
principle of electric power generation
that didn’t even exist before the
project and in fact we proved that every
part of the engine every aspect of the
engine could be made so that in the
future a fully functional jet engine
now the other successes were on an were
were not foreseen and perhaps the bigger
ones people outside of our of our
project saw what we were doing and
thought if they can almost almost build
the jet engine then we maybe we could
apply micro fabrication to our projects
and succeed because not everyone had to
make something as complex as a jet
engine so we provided the community a
community outside of ours
with 3d fabrication techniques that
didn’t exist before and more importantly
we provided them with with insights we
provided them with the with the idea
with ideas that they hadn’t thought of
before so 3d micro fabrication is now
spreading throughout the world you can
it’s in labs on a chip in medicine
biologists are manipulating cells using
mini tweezers and there’s micro robots
the size of insects insects that are
flying your smartphones by the way
contain mechanical components that
contain that allow you to sense motion
so in fact there were many unseen many
unseen successes and I’d like to
conclude by sharing with you and showing
you a
original component from the micro engine
it’s when you look at a jet engine it’s
the same components when you look at a
big jet engine you see the fan these are
usually ten feet across and I’ve mounted
the compressor on a ring on my finger
and I like to show it to you there it is
and I keep it as a reminder that I keep
it as a reminder of what I went through
and that I’m convinced that within
within failure is hidden success and I
hope I hope that you’ll think about that
– thank you [Applause]
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