Do Good Spotlight: Bryan Quinn '01

Quinn in Sierra Leon in 2017.

In his office in the A.V. Williams building, Bryan Quinn ’01 sits facing a wall of Legos. His impressive collection of Star Wars kits is made up mostly of pieces he built with his daughter.

“We built a lot together when she was growing up, and it just became an addiction,” he recalls.

Quinn, who serves as technical director for the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) and the Institute for Research in Electronics & Applied Physics (IREAP), ended up in his role after studying electrical engineering at Maryland, working at a small particle accelerator on campus, and then transitioning to more practical engineering.

“I went for an opportunity to grow a little bit and learn some different things, as far as research goes,” he says. “Also, it gave me the opportunity to concentrate on more of my personal goals.”

Those personal goals include a range of service activities: Quinn has served with Engineers Without Borders for more than 16 years and mentored countless students through Gemstone teams, Solar Decathlon and other experiential learning opportunities.

“Whenever [a student] comes to me asking for help, I jump both feet in without reading the details first and then figure all that out later,” he says.

Currently, he’s devoted to a Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) project with students taking the lead on developing an app that uses GIS to create innovative ways to navigate campus (keep an eye out for TestuGo’s beta launch on Maryland Day!).

“Every time we talk to the students about [the app], they come up with more ideas,” he says.

One of Quinn’s most meaningful experiences has been traveling the world to take part in development trips directly for communities in need, building mostly solar or clean water systems.

“I'm impacting people's lives, which I think is what an engineer should strive to do,” he says.

The project is a collaboration between NGOs, where the team rebuilds abandoned buildings and installs solar panels so local, registered mutual aid societies can repurpose them.

“They make them community centers, sometimes apartments for displaced people,” he explains. “There's one that has an incubator for people to start businesses.”

In a quiet corner of his office just past the Legos, Quinn keeps the flags from each country he’s visited for the project. And while his Lego collection is quite popular among community members, for Quinn, the star of his office decor is a printout of Paul Robeson's cancelled US passport from 1950. It serves as a reminder, he says, that there are good people in the world, despite the hardships they face. It’s an ideal Quinn himself aspires to, as an alum and faculty member of the nation’s first Do Good campus.

“We've gotten the gift of education and the gift of being able to grow up in a place with decent infrastructure,” he said. “We owe it to the world to make it better for other people, too.”