Katelyn Lichte

I grew up in a small town in rural Minnesota and recently graduated in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. While attending school, I completed two internships and a co-op. My first internship was with Buhler (Plymouth, MN) where I was a mechanical engineering intern. I worked on process flow drawings and some small capital projects. My second internship was with the UMN - Medical Devices Center as a medical device intern. I worked through the entire design process (brainstorming all the way through clinical trials). My co-op was with Cargill at their Charlotte, NC plant. I worked as a production management engineer and helped with day to day maintenance and capital projects. While in college, I was also highly involved in the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and held the role of Team Tech Director for two years. Through this position, I led a group of student engineers to work on technical projects given to us by local engineering companies (Medtronic, 3M, Ecolab, etc.). I have continued my membership with SWE at the professional level and am now the K-12 Outreach Chair for the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City areas. I also hold two positions at the larger society level for SWE. I just started my first full-time (post graduation) job in rural Iowa for DuPont Pioneer as a plant operations engineer. I solve problems within the plant to ensure that it runs smoothly and most efficiently. In my free time, I'm an avid sports enthusiast (I play softball, volleyball and tennis) and I enjoy doing STEM outreach at the local schools.