What do you think the next big scientific or engineering advancement will be, and how will it affect society globally? I believe it will be the development and proliferation of nuclear fission power plants. This fall, I will be attending Oregon State University and majoring in Nuclear Engineering. Nuclear power plants have always fascinated me. At a basic level, it’s incredibly simple: use atomic-scale chain reaction to boil water. Yet in practice, it is incredibly precise and challenging to perfect. This challenge and feeling of charting an untamed territory of physics is what drew me to nuclear engineering. I believe that when nuclear fusion is mastered, and usable for widespread energy production, it will be the most important achievement of human history. We’re right on the cusp of developing this technology with companies around the world, one of which being Helion Energy here in Redmond, WA. Our current trajectory as a species and a planet is not sustainable. We’ve been burning the candle from both ends since the start of the industrial revolution when we started using absurd amounts of coal and oil. We’ve already pumped so much CO2 into the environment, and with our current means of producing energy, it’s not getting much better. The rise of data centers and artificial intelligence have created extreme demand for clean energy production, and the industries’ futures rely completely on the access to large quantities of electricity. Widespread use of nuclear fusion for energy production would slash global emissions. This is one of the only large-scale clean energy sources we have. Switching to such a clean method of energy production would allow us to stop or possibly even reverse global warming, while still providing enough energy to progress as a species. As well as clean, renewable energy, it has the incredible benefit of producing helium as a byproduct of hydrogen fusion. The world may soon face massive helium shortages, which will heavily impact the semiconductor and medical industries. These industries are backbones of the world, relying heavily or fully on helium for chip production and MRI machines, respectively. If many countries around the world produced even a fraction of their energy with nuclear fusion, we would have more helium than we could ever need. My greatest dream is to be a part of making this a reality. The number of people this technology could help is unfathomable. It would change the course of human history, powering and protecting our planet for generations. Humans have always had a drive for conquering unknown frontiers, and what if we could say the next one we conquered was the Sun? Both of my parents have worked at Bio-Rad, and my mother, Ellen Steen, still does. A little over 20 years ago, my parents met at Bio-Rad through a volleyball team. My father, R. Perry Steen, resigned to become a stay-at-home parent for my brother and I. He has recently gotten a master's degree in teaching biology and is looking to become a high school teacher.

What do you think the next big scientific or engineering advancement will be, and how will it affect society globally? I believe it will be the development and proliferation of nuclear fission power plants. This fall, I will be attending Oregon State University and majoring in Nuclear Engineering. Nuclear power plants have always fascinated me. At a basic level, it’s incredibly simple: use atomic-scale chain reaction to boil water. Yet in practice, it is incredibly precise and challenging to perfect. This challenge and feeling of charting an untamed territory of physics is what drew me to nuclear engineering. I believe that when nuclear fusion is mastered, and usable for widespread energy production, it will be the most important achievement of human history. We’re right on the cusp of developing this technology with companies around the world, one of which being Helion Energy here in Redmond, WA. Our current trajectory as a species and a planet is not sustainable. We’ve been burning the candle from both ends since the start of the industrial revolution when we started using absurd amounts of coal and oil. We’ve already pumped so much CO2 into the environment, and with our current means of producing energy, it’s not getting much better. The rise of data centers and artificial intelligence have created extreme demand for clean energy production, and the industries’ futures rely completely on the access to large quantities of electricity. Widespread use of nuclear fusion for energy production would slash global emissions. This is one of the only large-scale clean energy sources we have. Switching to such a clean method of energy production would allow us to stop or possibly even reverse global warming, while still providing enough energy to progress as a species. As well as clean, renewable energy, it has the incredible benefit of producing helium as a byproduct of hydrogen fusion. The world may soon face massive helium shortages, which will heavily impact the semiconductor and medical industries. These industries are backbones of the world, relying heavily or fully on helium for chip production and MRI machines, respectively. If many countries around the world produced even a fraction of their energy with nuclear fusion, we would have more helium than we could ever need. My greatest dream is to be a part of making this a reality. The number of people this technology could help is unfathomable. It would change the course of human history, powering and protecting our planet for generations. Humans have always had a drive for conquering unknown frontiers, and what if we could say the next one we conquered was the Sun?