Young Professionals Profile: Anthony Chyr
Karl Phipps | TLT Careers June 2017
Automating data analysis comes naturally for this aerospace systems engineer.
Anthony Chyr graduated from the University of Utah in 2014 with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering. He is a 2013 recipient of the STLE E. Richard Booser Scholarship, which funded his research designing an orthopedic knee implant friction and wear testing apparatus.
Anthony also has published three refereed journal articles in Wear and Tribology International and two proceedings papers at the STLE Annual Meeting and Orthopedics Research Society Conference. He is a systems engineer at Orbital ATK.
Anthony Chyr
TLT: What led you to apply for the STLE E. Richard Booser Scholarship?
Chyr: I applied for the STLE E. Richard Booser Scholarship after being prodded by my advisor, Dr. Bart Raeymaekers, a professor in the department of mechanical engineering at the University of Utah. I had recently finished an internship at Los Alamos National Laboratories and was searching for a project for my master’s thesis. We were low on funding at the time and came across the STLE scholarship. We figured that it wouldn’t hurt to apply for the scholarship using the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) proposal we had written earlier.
After working on the research proposal and rewriting it to apply for the STLE scholarship, we submitted it for consideration. We were surprised to learn a few months later that I had received the scholarship. It helped alleviate my financial burden on the project, allowing us to focus the rest of the funds on improving the test apparatus and creating additional test specimens that would later be worked into the papers we published.
TLT: What got you interested in engineering?
Chyr: I was interested in engineering for a long time. In high school I took science, technology, engineering and mathematics classes before finally deciding to major in mechanical engineering.
Early in life, I found that I like to build things. It’s the joy of having built something that motivates me. As I discovered at a young age, engineering requires long periods of intense, focused, detail-oriented thinking. This isn’t easy, especially if one doesn’t get a kick out of it (like finishing a motor control program or verifying a power screw calculation). I love problem solving and building cool things, so that probably is what eventually led me to looking at career opportunities in engineering.
TLT: Tell us about your job.
Chyr: I work as a systems engineer at Orbital ATK—the system being the factory and the engineering being making it run smoothly. I work mainly on automating reporting and analyzing quality and production data. When a part is made in the factory, it’s entered into the database where I watch for key events (for example, a defect report being filed for a particular part). When this occurs, I then search back in time looking for what operations were performed on the part and how similar parts faired while passing through that operation.
TLT: What do you love most about your job?
Chyr: I love the automation. While working on my master’s degree, I focused on automating the tribotester and analyzing the data that came out of it. While working in my current job, I focus on automating the analysis of the data going into the factory.
TLT: What gets you excited about going to work every day?
Chyr: Automation frees me from the monotony of almost any job. This gives me the opportunity to focus on building cooler automation tools and learning new technologies. It feeds into my ability to automate even more work that I find monotonous, which gives me even more opportunity to focus on building even more automation tools. I find this positive feedback deeply exhilarating, but I don’t know how long it will last.
What I do know is the skills that I learned while working on programming the tribotester in my master’s thesis and the skills that I learned while working on automating data analysis and reporting at Orbital ATK are problem-agnostic.
TLT: If you were starting your career again, would you do anything differently?
Chyr: Right now I am returning to the University of Utah to obtain a degree in computer science. I’ve found that understanding how to make the computer solve my problems pairs well with just about any career path. The synergy between computer science and another field—be it mechanical engineering, tribology or manufacturing—is something I realize now to be extremely rewarding. An effort multiplier. If I were starting my career again, I would certainly make more room for computer science.
TLT: What advice would you give to high school or college students who might want to pursue a career in tribology?
Chyr: I have only been out of school for two years, but as I mentioned earlier, engineering requires long periods of intense, focused, detail-oriented work. I remember my college experience being extremely stressful; if it weren’t for the frequent
eureka moments I got after finishing a motor control program or a power screw calculation, I’m not entirely sure I would have completed my degree.
After graduating from college, I’ve found that work tends to be less stressful, but the knowledge that I gained while in school acts sort of like a bank account. While I did not always know whether the knowledge that I learned will be used in a future job, just having it now makes me feel a lot more secure knowing that I can draw from it when the opportunity arises.
You can reach Anthony Chyr at tony.chyr@gmail.com.