{"id":61763,"date":"2021-11-10T04:19:32","date_gmt":"2021-11-10T10:19:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/news\/ben-longmier-2021-early-career-award-recipient\/"},"modified":"2023-12-26T14:42:06","modified_gmt":"2023-12-26T20:42:06","slug":"ben-longmier-2021-early-career-award-recipient","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/news\/ben-longmier-2021-early-career-award-recipient\/","title":{"rendered":"Benjamin W. Longmier: 2021 Early Career Award recipient"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignleft size-full wp-image-46440\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Longmier-jpg.webp\" alt=\" Ben Longmier\" class=\"wp-image-46440\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Ben Longmier<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Benjamin W. Longmier (BSEP\/physics \u201904, MSEP \u201905, PhDEP \u201907)<br>CTO and co-founder, Swarm Technologies<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We are honoring Ben as a nuclear engineer whose expertise in aerospace engineering has enabled him to found three companies focused on high-altitude\/low-earth-orbit communications to accelerate the Internet of Things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How did you choose engineering?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Engineering chose me. From a very early age, I was always tinkering around in the basement. My dad had a woodworking shop and was always building something. I minored in physics, and I think that offered the best synergy and intersection between physics, applied physics, and engineering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">And how did you choose to attend UW-Madison?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Growing up in Madison, going to UW-Madison is a natural extension. I had applied to a number of other schools, and I think UW-Madison had a really good offering. As an undergrad student, I had started working in Noah Hershkowitz\u2019s lab, and when it came time to think about graduate programs, it was just a really nice extension into continuing that research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Any professor or class that made a big impact on you?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>I don\u2019t think I can pick a single professor. I had a lot of good instructors who really cared about how students were doing and learning. I felt very fortunate for that. To pick two classes: My favorite classes were nuclear physics and ionizing radiation. They really caught my interest about learning about the natural world, but in a way that could be useful for a number of applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How did your experience in the College of Engineering influence your career path?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019ve always been a really hands-on person. Madison had a lot of opportunities for getting involved in extracurricular clubs, working in machine shops, and as a student, working in labs. A lot of universities don\u2019t necessarily have that many offerings on that front. When I was 16, I worked with Professor Riccardo Bonazza\u2019s lab and learned a lot about engineering, experimental research, machining and experiment design. That was a really nice start to my professional career. When I enrolled as an undergrad, I sought out research activities in other labs and participated in organizations like the Zero G student group. We built the entire experiment from scratch, won the NASA proposal, and operated the device in microgravity on NASA\u2019s Vomit Comet down in Houston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Who played the greatest role in your achievements?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>My PhD advisor, Professor Noah Hershkowitz, who unfortunately passed away in the last year, was by far the biggest influence for professional growth, personal growth, how to run a lab, how to run experiments, how to think about the universe, how to find meaningful results that can help the community and the profession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What advice would you give students today?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Try to balance the academic work with hands-on professional development, either becoming involved in extracurricular clubs in engineering or elsewhere on campus, or doing an internship. The classroom setting is a good place to learn, but the real world is another step, and getting as much hands-on experience when you\u2019re really young is probably the most helpful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Any hobbies?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>I have an airplane out here in California and we fly around to neighboring airports in Napa and Sonoma, Santa Monica, and along the coast. So I have a blast. I actually learned to fly in Wisconsin, out over the Wisconsin River practice area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Anyone you\u2019d like to mention?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>My dad was ever-present, and growing up, he did a really good job of fostering my love for education and love for spending time in a lab.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":61764,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"_mbp_gutenberg_autopost":false,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","footnotes":""},"department":[2389],"focus_area":[],"news_category":[36],"news_tag":[],"class_list":["post-61763","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","department-nuclear-engineering-engineering-physics","news_category-alumni"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/61763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/61763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93312,"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/61763\/revisions\/93312"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"department","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/department?post=61763"},{"taxonomy":"focus_area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/focus_area?post=61763"},{"taxonomy":"news_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_category?post=61763"},{"taxonomy":"news_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_tag?post=61763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}