Engineers!
Mike Soltys is an engineer, educator, and data scientist. He has a diverse skill-set focusing on product design and prototyping, including CAD, Arduino microcontrollers, Raspberry Pi, Basic Manufacturing (Lathe/Mill), 3D printing, Laser cutting, and JavaScript web programming. He is also an expert in experimental system design, statistics and data analysis, laser induced fluorescence, and image processing.
Dr. Soltys is an instructor for the Engineering Plus degree program at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he serves as part of the Teach Engineering team to develop engineering-related curriculum targeting K-12 students. Mike holds a Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Colorado and has an extensive background in research and experimental design. During his time in graduate school, Mike worked for three years with an NSF-funded program to teach engineering design at the high school level. He is passionate about engineering education at all grade levels, and is a leader in bringing engineering education research into practice at CU. He is also interested in broadening participation, and in addition to other outreach he conducts lab demos 2-3 times yearly for the BOLD (Broadening Opportunity through Leadership and Diversity) Center targeting women and minority students.