- Howard Mendlovitz
- Research Engineer
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
mendlovitz@unc.edu
Born in Chicago, some of my earliest and fondest memories are of hanging out on Lake Michigan, enjoying the environment and my surroundings. I loved going beach combing and getting lost in the dunes for hours at a time. I was always bugging friends to spend time at the lake. From these childhood experiences, I learned to love the outdoors and the environment. At the same time, I was also always curious about how things worked, and as a kid I was always taking things apart to see what makes them tick… although I couldn't always put them back together!
I entered college as a computer major (another interest of mine), but one semester of staring at a screen in a small dark room was enough for me. I missed the sunshine and the tinkering. After my first year at North Carolina State University (NCSU), I fortuitously ran into a Marine, Earth and Atmospherics professor who was looking for a summer student to work on various projects in his laboratory. I started by running samples, but by my senior year, I had progressed to improving and building new equipment.
My senior year of college, as I started interviewing for jobs, I realized that my chemical engineering degree might potentially land me in a factory somewhere. After the fun of working in marine sciences, I couldn't see myself in a traditional chemical engineering position. At the same time, while trying to decide what to do with my future, I was invited to work in a Marine Sciences Laboratory at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). The work at UNC-CH was supposed to have been a temporary gig, but here I am, over 10 year later. Working in Marine Sciences has given me a chance to enjoy the two things I like best, building things and being outdoors. During my time at UNC-CH, I have designed and built a variety of environmental equipment, from underwater sampling apparatus to atmospheric gas sensors for the research in our laboratories. I’ve worked in and around the Aquarius habitat for the past three years, including a stint as an aquanaut in 2005. Our sampling instrumentation has come a long way in that short period of time and to take it even further, my focus for this next mission will be using our new Underwater TETHYS Mass Spectrometer to continuously monitor (24/7) the chemical signals emanating from various types of sponges.
I've had quite an assortment of adventures along the way… from treetops of Brazil to bottom of the ocean via the Johnson Sealink… it's been a blast, so I've kept doing it and I can't imagine doing anything else.
