WKU News

Kyle Moss, Project Manager at the Engineering-Manufacturing-Commercialization Center   (EMCC), attributes his interest in engineering to a childhood curiosity and strong desire to     understand how things work.  A habit of tinkering, taking things like walkie talkies and     electronic toys apart, naturally led him to pursue a Bachelor of Science in Engineering at   Western Kentucky University.  He says that the WKU undergraduate program, with its     emphasis on hands-on, project-based learning, honed his problem-solving skills.

 After graduating from WKU in 2008, Moss worked at the Applied Physics Institute (API), which included heavy grant work to secure research and project funding.  It was this experience that prompted Moss to pursue a graduate degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Louisville.  But he wasn’t away from the WKU community long.  After obtaining his master’s degree, Moss made a natural transition back to Bowling Green and WKU as an employee of the EMCC, where he currently works.

The three things that Moss most enjoys about working at the EMCC is the variety, continued learning opportunities, and collaborating with and mentoring students. For legal reasons, Moss was unable to elaborate on any specific project, but the center never knows what types of projects they will be asked to work on and “some of the strangest turn out to be the most useful.  Every project that the EMCC works on includes a student on the team, and Moss enjoys mentoring students and helping them develop their communication and collaboration skills.  Because of the variety of projects and the need for cross-discipline collaboration, Moss is always learning something new about engineering.

According to Moss, engineering is “taking everything we know about the physical world…and applying it to create something new.”  This definition supports the broad reach that engineering has across fields.  Moss is particularly inspired by the entrepreneurship of Limor Fried, an electrical engineer and owner of Adafruit.  For Moss, creativity and adaptability are just as important as the technical skills in the engineering field.