Tech Talk: From Imagination to Insight – Leveraging Computation and Storytelling to Affect Change

Overview

To fully realize the potential of new technologies and industries discussed at the Mountain West Competitiveness Conversation, advancements in materials science are essential. Today's students and researchers benefit from powerful computing tools, enabling significant breakthroughs that were previously unattainable. However, attracting individuals to this critical field necessitates a reevaluation of how engineering is communicated and a redefinition of who can be considered an engineer.

Key Session Insights

Materials education is essential to reindustrialization, innovation and competitiveness. According to Associate Professor & Director of the Micron School of Materials Science & Engineering at Boise State University Dr. Eric Jankowski, any discussion about moving towards an innovation economy in the Mountain West based on semiconductors, clean energy, or nuclear power will require enormous materials science work. To him, it is a way to make a big impact by paying attention to small details. But for this critical work to be done, a new generation of materials scientists needs to be attracted to the field and trained in cutting-edge techniques, a task that is easier said than done.

For Jankowski, there are two crucial elements to making this new materials workforce a reality: computational skills and storytelling. The ever-increasing capabilities of supercomputers has opened possibilities in materials design, with researchers discovering useful and interesting molecules in a virtual environment, rather than relying solely on slower and more expensive real-world testing. This dramatically scales the possibility of discovery, allowing for possibilities that may have gone unrealized due to resource restrictions to suddenly be on the table. As just one example, Jankowski brought with him a sample of a flexible solar panel that used polymers designed on a supercomputer to create electricity. Flexible, robust, and easily manufactured, this product could not have taken shape without these computational processes. For him, this was a powerful demonstration of the need for engineers of all types, not just materials scientists, to be computationally literate. Not only would it increase their job prospects, but it would sharpen their creative problem-solving skills. In his eyes, anyone can learn to love programming, so long as they are given a meaningful problem to solve. An accessible introduction to programming with quality professors will be a necessity for engineers of all types in the years to come.

However, just as crucial as the “hard skill” of computational literacy is the “soft skill” of “storytelling.” To him, this means both connecting with the people that you work with and building trust with them. Jankowski identifies two components of trust: competence and warmth. Competence, the belief that someone can deliver on their promises, is the easier of the two to create, through rigorous coursework, academic standards, and the reputation of previous graduates. Warmth, defined by him as the belief that a person has our best interest at heart, is too often missing from large organizations, leading to a dearth of trust, hampering cooperation and collaboration. To help build that “warmth,” he argues that storytelling, or building a narrative around one’s career, interests, and desire to work with a specific partner, are just as critical as any other more traditional engineering skill. By helping students learn how to relate to their colleagues through storytelling, Jankowski believes that they will ultimately be more productive, successful, and innovative than by focusing purely on traditional engineering training. As engineering disciplines are rigorous and demanding, it is often easy to become discouraged and detached, leading to a drop in productivity and motivation and, potentially, to a withdrawal from the field overall. By more closely relating to their career path, students have a better chance of thriving in it. In one example, he explained how a study where students were asked to relay a personal narrative around their chosen career path led to better identification with their field, an effect even more pronounced in historically disadvantaged groups.

Jankowski identified, as one of the themes of the overall Conversation, that everyone across the innovation ecosystem in Idaho, from industry to education to government, is committed to providing opportunities for students to succeed in high-tech industry. One part of that is undoubtedly providing them with the high-tech tools, job opportunities, and ability to grow professionally. But just as important is giving them the chance to fully identify with their field and become therefore a more confident and capable practitioner of it. By teaching them the value of computation and storytelling, they will be, in his view, in a far better position to do both.