Meet Marcel
Principal engineer, practical approach.
B.A.Sc., Electrical Engineering
University of Waterloo
M.E.Sc., Mechanical engineering
Western University
Professional Engineer (P.Eng.)
Licensed to practice professional engineering in Ontario, Canada.
Making things work since 1983
I was eight years old and our VCR had mechanical buttons: when you pushed one button, the others popped out. I was curious. What would happen if all the buttons got pushed at the same time? I got a wooden ruler, covered all the buttons, and pushed. Sure enough, they all got stuck.
And now I was stuck. Mom would be home from work soon and my little brother was taunting me, “You’re going to be in so much trouble!” I had an hour to make it work.
I found a screwdriver in the basement. I had no idea what I was doing, and my brother was stressing me out, but I opened up that VCR and poked around until all the buttons were released. Mom came through the door just as I was putting the tools away, but she never found out. My confidence grew, and so did my curiosity.
I’ve been making things work ever since.
Publications
Engineering Degrees
Successful Flight Tests
Marvel Movie Credit
Principal Engineer
Technical Leadership = Theory + Practice
Theory is a prerequisite to design, but so is practical knowledge gained from years of hands-on testing, validation, and troubleshooting. Marcel instills this principle in the engineers he coaches and mentors.
- It’s not enough to solve equations and check constraints if the design breaks the laws of physics.
- It’s not practical to design small asssemblies on a 30” monitor without tolerancing and a ruler handy to check the actual size of the part.
- And it’s not feasible to design solely in CAD without thinking about how it will be built.
Marcel helps technical teams make things work.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the toughest thing you've ever tackled?
Designing the mini-Eclipse, because we were simultaneously developing a platform and a product. I was the lead systems engineer. Managing platform and customer requirements was tough; many design tradeoffs were required. But supporting the product in the field during its first commercial job (filming Marvel’s Black Panther) was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Which project are you most proud of?
Restoring As Yet Untitled. This 20-year-old robotic art installation had a broken, obsolete robot controller. To revive it I upgraded the hardware, wrote software, and spec’d the commercial components. The new controller was capable of smoother, and in my mind, ‘better’ movement. But I learned that restoring a piece of art is about preserving the artist’s intent; it’s the opposite of continuous improvement.
Why are you so good at making things work?
I’m curious, methodical, and I think about things as systems:
- Curiosity is important, because that’s where questions come from.
- Being methodical matters, because following a logical, orderly process gets me the answers I need. A scattershot approach to testing rarely works.
- And systems thinking is critical. As a systems engineer, it’s my job to see the big picture; to think about how all the pieces mesh together.
Do you screw up, ever?
Yup. I’ve learned from experience. As a co-op student I shut down the line at Honda when I dropped my screwdriver across the terminals of the e-stop circuit. The breaker flipped and shut down the door line. It was my 4th week on the job. I found the breaker and had the line running again before the electrician arrived, but still, the production log said “Stupid co-op kid shut us down.”