By: Tyler Miller
Engineering can help with
a lot of different things in today’s world that most people don’t even realize
that it helps out with. Engineering played a big part in producing the vaccines
for COVID-19 that are being distributed all over the world. Some people do
extensive research on stuff like vaccines, especially Laura Rives.
Laura is a chemical
engineer that works for a company that helps ship out some of the vaccines in
coolers. She said that she really doesn’t do much research since she is always
working, but when she gets free time, she does research on how engineering
helped play a part in producing the vaccines. “I do work a lot and help ship
out some of the vaccines in our coolers, and don’t get a lot of time to do my
own research on things. But I do some research on how engineering has really
helped produce the vaccines that people get today,” Rives said in an email. She
also said that since her and the people she works with have to go through the
process of putting the vaccines in coolers to ship them out to be distributed,
it always interested her to research how engineering played a role.
“Engineering plays a huge role in a lot of things today, especially vaccines
and it always interested me to do some research on it,” said Rives.
She said her extensive
research includes finding out how much chemical engineering has done for
vaccine distribution and making of the vaccines.
Even students at Georgia
Southern University who are engineering majors, don’t realize how much
engineering plays a part in vaccines and the role it has in helping make and
distribute them.
Peyton Iturrian, an
engineering major at Georgia Southern, said that even he didn’t realize till he
thought about it, how much engineering helped when it came to the vaccines.
“Students like myself don’t realize how big a role engineering plays in the
world. Especially when it comes to the pandemic that we’ve been in for over a
year now. Once you think about it, you’re like oh yeah engineering does play a
big role in the world especially when it comes to the vaccines,” said Iturrian.
Iturrian also said that
once somebody does research on what role engineering plays, you realize how big
of an impact you’re having in today’s world by being an engineering major. He
said that engineering always interested him and when the pandemic hit, he
realized after a while that he picked the right major because of his interest
in it, and how much engineering really does for the world.
Clay Hester, also an
engineering major at Georgia Southern, said that he had interest in being an
engineering major back when he was in high school. He also said when it came to
the role it plays with the vaccine, “When I first started being an engineering
major at Georgia Southern, I had thought about what the impact was on the real world
when it came to what I was doing. And recently with this pandemic and how
dangerous COVID-19 really is, you start to research how much engineering has
helped with the vaccines.”
Hester also added that he
thinks that engineers don’t get enough credit for how much they helped with the
vaccines and how much work they had to put in for it. “Those of us who are
engineers I feel like don’t get enough credit for how much we’ve helped with
the vaccines. All the work we’ve done to help make them so they can get distributed.
We deserve more credit for that.”
Until somebody starts
researching how much of an impact engineers have had on the COVID-19 vaccines,
they don’t realize how much their work has helped.