If you’ve ever shopped for refrigerated food in a supermarket, you’ve encountered the work of Dr. Mark Shiflett. As a young engineer working for DuPont, he worked on the project that found a replacement for chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which were destroying the earth’s ozone layer.
“We cannot live on a planet without the ozone layer,” said Shiflett. “Can you imagine being at the start of your career and being tasked with figuring out how to solve such a complex problem?”
Luckily, he was up to the challenge, developing hydrofluorocarbons, a replacement refrigerant mixture still in use but targeted for replacement as efforts to reduce global warming continue.
That experience had a profound impact on Dr. Shiflett, and it’s one of the things that drives his approach to educating the next generation of engineers. Through the Wonderful Institute of Sustainable Engineering (WISE), he is providing undergraduate and graduate students with opportunities to solve real problems working with real world companies. More than that, he’s teaching his students to dream big.
“It takes big dreamers to solve big problems,” said Shiflett. “I was fortunate to have people support my dreams when I was in school and just starting out. I want my students to dream big. I dreamed big and my dreams came true.”
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