Julian Leland Bell

IF YOUR CHILD SLEEPS with a spark plug and chooses The Way Things Work as a favorite bedtime story, they could be destined for an engineering career. In Julian Bell’s case, that certainly proved to be true. “But I didn’t know that I wanted to be an engineer until I got to college,” Bell said, sharing that his struggles with math in high school almost swayed his career path. “I’m a much better writer than I am a mathematician.”

Bell deliberately applied to schools where he could study either engineering or journalism so he could decide on a major after trying classes in both areas.

After his first undergrad engineering class, Bell was immediately convinced. “Yes, I am, in fact, an engineer, and I’ve never looked back,” he said. For most of his decade-long career, Bell has worked in academic contexts or startups, developing rehabilitation robotics, metal additive manufacturing systems, and robotic construction systems. But in 2019, he joined the Advanced Technology Group at UPS—a big corporate shift from his prior experience. Although smaller, more fast-paced environments are his preference, Bell values the time he spent in an environment that was not primarily engineering-focused.

Learning to better communicate highly technical concepts with non-technical audiences and thinking about the business case before the technical were great lessons that he’s taken into his current job at Atlanta-based startup, JTEC Energy. At JTEC, Bell is helping to develop a device for converting low-temperature waste heat into electrical power at very high efficiencies—the Johnson Thermal-Electrochemical Converter.

“It’s fascinating technology and one of those problems where a mechanical engineer can have substantial impact,” he said. “Hydrogen is a heck of a gas to try and work with.”

Alongside his work, Bell actively advocates for minoritized groups within engineering. “Mechanical engineers are largely male, and we are overwhelmingly white,” he said, explaining that his time at UPS made this issue apparent to him, being his first experience having peers and leaders from diverse backgrounds. “If we’re not seeing equal representation of humans in a given environment, that means there’s some sort of force preventing those folks from getting into it.”

Outreach at the school level—such as at events and science festivals—is a way to give back and invest in the engineers of the future, he added.