Nate Ball Inventor and Host of Design Squad is the Key Note Lunch Speaker
Nate Ball brings a multitude of talents to Design Squad. He's a mechanical engineer, an entrepreneur, a pole-vaulter, a jazz pianist, and (get this!) a grandmaster beatboxer. As the chief technical officer and co-founder of Atlas Devices, Nate has designed the Atlas Powered Rope Ascender, which enables military personnel and rescue workers to reverse-rappel up buildings at high speeds. (It can lift a 250-pound load more than 600 feet into the air at nearly 10 feet per second, all on a single battery charge!). This life-saving invention helped Nate earn the prestigious 2007 $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize.
Originally from Newport, Oregon, where as a kid he built go-karts, scooters, and even a Tesla coil, Nate got his B.S. and master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in mechanical engineering. As an undergrad, he designed everything from robots to portable vaccine refrigerators (for rural delivery). He also served as captain of the track and field team, breaking MIT's indoor and outdoor pole vault records two years in a row. In his spare time, Nate was a product design instructor at his alma mater, hard at work training the latest generation of young engineers, and served as the MIT track team's assistant coach (aptly named "The Engineers") where the pole vaulters fondly refer to him as "Old Man Ball."
Design Squad, which is currently airing its second season, will premiere its third season on PBS on October 7, 2009. The show features two teams of teens charged with brainstorming, designing, building, testing and re-designing before putting their products to the (sometimes hilarious, often triumphant) test. Keeping their eyes on the grand prize - a $10,000 college scholarship from the Intel® Foundation - and their cool when things get hot, Design Squad-ers soon discover that engineering can make anything possible!
Headshot Anthony Tieuli
What companies are attending the 2009 MassTEC conference? Click here to see what compainies are attending and please consider them when you do your purchasing
