Ian Charnas

Chief Engineer, Mark Rober YouTube Channel

CrunchLabs

Ian Charnas is the chief engineer for the Mark Rober YouTube channel – the most popular science & engineering channel on YouTube with over 60M subscribers.

Previously, Ian was a director and a co-founder of Sears think[box], a 7-story innovation center at Case Western Reserve University with a world-renowned makerspace. He has been an invited speaker at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and The National Science Foundation, and has consulted internationally on makerspaces for over 200 universities and corporations. Ian was a founding member of the Higher Education Makerspace Initiative, the academic society that produces the annual International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces.

His personal work blends art and technology in creatively-themed exhibits and events, including the World’s Largest Twin Musical Tesla Coils, a real-life Mario Kart game, and a Waterfall Swingset. These projects have been featured on Wired.com and Wired Magazine, NPR online, Popular Mechanics, NBC’s The Today Show, IEEE Spectrum, Boing-Boing, Make Magazine, PitchFork, and Hack-a-Day, as well as advertisements and promotional events for Subaru, Honda, Swatch, and Ray-Ban.

Ian aims to inspire creativity and the belief that you can do anything.

Featured in: The Auditorium (SMPTE Student Keynote)