Jeff Mekler’s “lightbulb moment” arrived while taking 11.168, “Enabling an Energy Efficient Society.” “The question came up, why are we worrying about creating energy in a clean way while it’s cheaper simply to use less? I went, ‘Huh’— I hadn’t thought about that before.” Mekler says this insight made him “realiz[e] you limit yourself when you become anchored to one perspective on engineering.”
In a way, this episode captures Mekler’s academic journey, one open to change and continual evolution. From childhood, he had his eye on a life in aerospace engineering, and came to MIT intent on this path. But a “confluence of events” put the energy challenge front and center for him. As he was participating in experimental research on a more efficient wind turbine, gasoline prices hit $4.00 a gallon, and “many were beginning to question the long-term sustainability of the world’s energy and transportation systems.” Also, as an outdoorsman in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, Mekler found the issues of global warming and environmental degradation deeply relevant. When MIT introduced the Energy Studies Minor, Mekler was one of the first to sign on.
As a result of undergraduate classes that brought a variety of perspectives to bear on energy, Mekler came to reject the “narrow focus” engineers traditionally bring to problems. Now a master’s student in the Technology and Policy Program, he is investigating uses of social marketing to spur entire communities to invest in home energy conservation. He relishes “integrating competing and alternating demands and perspectives” in his studies. He is even considering a return to aviation, possibly studying its impact on climate change. Whatever he decides to do next, Mekler will be sure to apply not just engineering skills, but “a more complex understanding of how the world works.”