[Yael]: Ok so maybe you need to put a delay between turning on the burst.
Have you guys looked at the data?
[Man]: How many of-
[Yael]: Its really fun to be able to touch something and
think of something and solve a problem that no one has ever
been able to solve before.
Do you have any way of plotting what the optimal
frequency is for each one of the positions?
MAN: I could track that.
My name is Yael Maguire and I am Chief Technology Officer at Thing Magic.
[ANNCR]: YAEL HAS BEEN BUILDING THINGS SINCE HE WAS A KID.
[Yael]: I remember when I was about 12 years old that I
really took an incredible interest in designing and
building radio controlled vehicles.
[Narrator]: And now, designing and building things is his job.
Like this little piece of technology,
that's starting to make a big difference.
[Yael]: This is a tag. This is an RFID Tag. RFID stands for
Radio Frequency IDentification. These are invisible waves that communicate
information from one point to another.
If you split this in half, and then add more -
[Narrator]: Yael and his team make the readers that take the information
stored on the tags and send it to a computer.
[Yael]: We can use this to identify objects uniquely and
have a computer understand what those objects are by just
sticking them on there.
The main problem that board was trying to solve was
people would have to travel a long distance to get to a
particular job site, and if they
got to that site and they realized that they had forgotten
you know their scroll saw or something like that,
they'd actually have to go to a local store and buy one.
And those things are really expensive.
[Narrator]: These tags will let a pickup truck know which
tools are in the back, and which ones aren't. But that's just the beginning.
[Yael]: Basically having access to information and more information
about objects allows us to be more efficient about how we
transport them, manipulate them, handle them.
[Narrator]: Produce travelling from the field to the store, for example,
can be affected by changes in temperarture...
RFID tags might just be the answer.
[Yael]: With special types of tags like this that can actually record temperature,
maybe it will mean that we can send this product out such that
when it actually reaches you it's fresher, and newer, and tastier.
[Narrator]: While electrical engineers are problem solvers,
using their high-tech understanding of circuitry and electronics,
it can take a long time for an idea to come to life.
[Yael]: Typically to make a product that can survive all
of the difficulties in the real world, it takes about a year.
[Narrator]: Which can mean long hours of meetings, designing, building, and lots of testing.
[Yael]: So I do a lot of walking.
I'm certainly not complaining because I have so
much fun having to pick and choose between these different things.
I just wish that there were more hours in the day.
[Narrator]: But Yael does have some time left over for other kinds of fun.
[Yael]: In fact it's actually I think a
good thing to be able to take a break from what I'm working on
and be able to focus on something, keep my mind focused
on one particular activity.
[Narrator]: Which helps him focus even better on the
projects that mean the most to him.
Like the one he's working on with a non-profit he
co-founded called, Design That Matters.
[Woman]: And this is really just to show that the concept is possible,
and then later on we'll develop things that we can
experiment with and test in the field and so forth.
[Narrator]: They design products especially for use in developing countries.
Like this prototype of a low-cost, infant incubator.
[Woman]: We want to make something that's easy to use
in developing countries and will save children's lives.
[Narrator: Using parts from cars and other common machinery,
Yael and his team developed a life saving product that's not
only low cost, but most any repair person or auto mechanic can keep it running.
[Yael]: I think part of why I'm excited about engineering and science always,
is to be able to look at a problem, spend some time with it,
work with colleagues, and then finally figure out how to
solve it. When you finally solve one of those problems, one of
those key problems, it's such an incredible feeling.
Life is too short to not pick exactly what you want to do.
If you can do it try to just work towards that and work as
hard as you can to realize that dream.
[Narrator]: And for engineer Yael Maguire, it doesn't get more exciting than this.
[Yael]: I chose a career that I knew I was going to be
passionate about and that I was going to love for the rest of my life.
Tag, you're it.