Employee Spotlight – Meghan Ignatowicz:

Meghan Ignatowicz is an Electrical Engineer here at OLogic who specializes in cable harness design and assembly, and is working towards advancing her circuit design and layout knowledge. One of her favorite things about working here is, “the people I get to work with and be creative with.”

Meghan graduated high school in 2014. After high school, she attended Cabrillo College, a community college, in Santa Cruz, California. While there, she tested the waters in a few different majors such as: business, english, art and psychology, until she finally came to find a few Marine Biology and Oceanography classes that she loved. Through these classes she was learning so much that it inspired her to become a TA (teacher’s assistant) for both classes, twice!

While continuing on her associates degree, she found her love for STEM classes.

It was filled with students who worked hard and enjoyed the challenge of learning difficult problems, subjects, and concepts. Lots of students were on the path towards engineering, Space exploration, biology, and more.

Through the STEM center and classes, she made great relationships with professors who both encouraged and helped her apply for internships. She got her first internship at MBARI with Jared Figurski, an Observatory Engineer, where she got to construct and deconstruct the M1 mooring, which gets replaced once a year. 

Image of the M1 mooring. Source: mbari

She also got to participate in many different ocean outings for receiving and deploying AUVs (anonymous underwater vehicles). During this internship she got to learn about ocean safety, a lot about boats, ocean electronics, and measuring devices.

After she completed her internship, she was offered a student position at USGS Santa Cruz from a Cabrillo professor, Rob Wyland, where she spent a few months assisting the engineering team in research device deployments, retrievals, and metal machining projects.

While working at her internship and student position, she found her love for engineering, which inspired her to apply to ASU (Arizona State University)’s online engineering program! She will be graduating in Spring 2024, which is exciting!

[Left]: Meghan on the Paragon in front of the research vessel, Rachel Carson.  [Right]: Meghan trying to get photos of a Mola mola during her time at MBARI.

Once she started at ASU, she was offered an internship at OLogic. This happened one week before we were all sent home to quarantine due to the fears of the coronavirus pandemic. What a way to start a job! Happily, it all worked out!

When asked if she had any advice for any prospective engineers,  Meghan said that the most important lessons learned is starting personal projects. She advises that personal projects are the best way to get a better understanding of circuits and coding, at your own pace, and you get to make whatever you want. For those of you who are just starting out and are interested in engineering or robotics, she suggests working with a Raspberry Pi or even an Arduino to gain more experience and knowledge.

While Meghan had a fun and adventurous journey before arriving at her decision to become an EE, we asked what other industry she might have pursued had she not arrived there. Her response was, “Wow, I never thought of this….probably in the health industry or something along the lines of horticulture. But, what is really cool about the broad field of engineering is that I can still go into these fields with a stronger ability to make advancements.”

Living close to the coast in Santa Cruz, Meghan plays beach volleyball now, a sport she learned to love, first indoors in high school and then at community college where she moved to beach play. Surrounded by the Santa Cruz mountains, Meghan enjoys hikes with her two best friends, her fiance and her small Dachshund mix named Indie.

Indie, Meghan’s Dachshund mix!

Meghan brings her cheerful personality with her to work every day. When walking by the lab, you often hear her contagious laughter coming through. She plays an important role in organizing the work flow of the OLogic lab and consistently makes major contributions to OLogic client projects!

See more Employee Spotlight articles on our blog by clicking here.