FINDING CAREER INSPIRATION VIA ALGORITHM

Participation in collegiate engineering competitions can reveal untapped talents and interests. Just ask Ohio State grad Katherine Bovee.

WHEN I FIRST CAME to Ohio State University as a freshman majoring in mechanical engineering, I didn't have a good idea of what I wanted to do when I graduated. From designing assistive devices that could improve a person's quality of life to finding environmentally friendly ways of cleaning up oil spills, everything sounded interesting to me.

The one thing I swore I would never do is enter the automotive industry, as cars had never interested me and I have suffered from motion sickness most of my life. Yet now, ten years later, I've just finished my doctorate at Ohio State's Center for Automotive Research (CAR) and have already accepted a job offer from General Motors.