Meet MicroEra Power Design Engineer Molly K. Over

Our team is dynamic. What has made us and continues to make us successful in our commitment to innovation, resilience and impact. As we feature our team, we hope our ecosystem learns more about the heart of MicroEra Power.?

Meet our Design Engineer Molly K Over

I went to the University of Rochester in Mechanical Engineering and I graduated in 2020. I also received a Masters in Technical Entrepreneurship and Management from the University of Rochester as well with a focus on energy and the environment.? My first experience with MicroEra Power was during a senior design project in the spring of 2020. I started working as an technical business intern where I had my hands in almost everything.??

We are at the design concept phase and I'm working on building our prototypes in the lab. There is a lot of design work going on as well. We have several new team members including co-ops from both University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology. I am working with a diverse team of electrical, chemical, and computer engineers. It is a self-directed team all working on different aspects of our building decarbonization solution. I have a birds-eye view of our work and strive to coordinate our collective outputs to ensure progress. The pace is going very fast and exciting as there are a lot of new ideas. It is also inspiring to work with Ellie Rusling as our CEO.?

As far as an engineering origin story, both of my parents are engineers. I knew from them and extended family members it was a good career choice. I would say that my first engineering project was making a gingerbread house as a kid. I sketched out the house including what the dimensions of each panel needed to be and where windows should be cut. Then I built it to scale, using peanut butter as glue, and decorated it. One of the challenges was fitting all of the panels on gingerbread sheets so that pieces could be cut appropriately.?

I graduated in 2020 in the middle of a pandemic from college. I applied for a ton of jobs and nothing was working out. It took an enormous amount of resilience to figure out what was next. I knew that I wanted to do a master's eventually and I found the program that was half business, half engineering. I wasn't really interested in going into a fully technical masters and this program provided a broader set of skills. My design project and a later entrepreneurial competition with MicroEra Power led me here and it is a great place for both my skills and my personality.?

My senior design senior design professor, Professor Muir, believed that his students could make things work out before he knew they would work out. He taught us to try often and to look for creative solutions. Since much of what we are doing has not been done before, solving the problems along the way to the overall solution with faith the product will work is the best way to achieve our goals. Many problems and failures have made me a better designer and our team more resilient.?

I started my undergrad in biomedical engineering because I thought that was where we needed the most people in healthcare. As I learned more, I realized I could make a bigger impact in green technology.?

Learn more about MicroEra Team members.