Student Voices: Out of the frying pan, into the gas tank

« Washington Engineer - May 2005

Materials science and engineering senior finds inspiration in biodiesel

Read a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article quoting Mikkelsen about his biodiesel work

Unlike most members of his June graduating class, Ravi Mikkelsen hasn’t been sending out resumes. The University of Washington materials science and engineering senior already has a job – as president of TruDiesel Fuels, a company he founded last September.

Mikkelsen may be starting at the top, but he and his business partner, a Princeton graduate and financial analyst in Los Angeles, are building their alternative energy company from the ground up. More specifically, the pair wants to help wean people from dependence on fossil fuels drawn from the depths of the earth. Of much greater interest to them is what grows from, blows across, and shines down on our planet’s surface.

This engineering-as-environmentalist mindset took hold early on, right at the start of his college career, Mikkelsen says.

Just before enrolling at the UW, he learned about the UW-Sichuan University educational partnership. It meant committing to three years of intense Chinese language study, cross-cultural seminars, plunging into research as a freshman, and spending the junior year in Sichuan – plus the usual rigorous science, math, and engineering coursework.

“I thought this sounded amazing,” Mikkelsen said. In his first semester on campus he joined a team of MSE and ME faculty and graduate students studying ways to improve the efficiency of PEM (polymer-electrolyte-membrane) fuel cells.

“That was it,” he recalled. “I knew right then what I wanted to do with my life – work to improve the environment.”

Experiencing the severe air pollution in China and studying the technical, resource, and societal challenges of developing eco-friendly industrial parks there reinforced that goal.

The next “eureka” moment came when Mikkelsen returned to Seattle. His dad was talking about buying a truck that runs on biodiesel. Intrigued, Mikkelsen did some Google research and quickly realized that the market was ready to take off now, whereas fuel-cell-powered vehicles were still 20 years into the future.

As a fifth-year senior, Mikkelsen has juggled classes with launching TruDiesel, volunteering with the Breathable Bus Coalition, a community group of biodiesel advocates, and serving as president of an MSE honor society. He also founded a UW student group, French Fry Fuel Fools, so named because the members collect waste oil from fast-food restaurants and run it through a biodiesel processing system they built in the garage of a UW alum. The growing club has more than 50 members and holds educational events, including an April 1 Fossil Fools Day.

Mikkelsen believes his engineering training has prepared him well for the problem-solving and technical aspects of running TruDiesel’s operations. His passion for his mission, his excellent communications skills, and contagious confidence should help him catch the wave of the biodiesel boom, or even be a force in propelling it to new heights, say faculty and friends.

But Mikkelsen says it best:

“It’s the right time, the right place, and I’m the right person,” he explained. “A lot of other people are interested in biodiesel, but don’t have the motivation to do anything serious. I really connected with this idea and am putting all my energy into it.”