In honor of Engineering Week 2026
Mark Tucker didn’t set out to become an engineer. He set out to skip a day of high school. Thirty years later, he’s one of the sharpest minds in digital signal processing, and he still hasn’t gotten bored. In honor of Engineering Week 2026, we sat down with Chief Scientist Mark Tucker to talk about accidental beginnings, the thrill of failure, and why a woodshop is the best place to clear your head.
Q: You didn’t exactly plan to be an engineer, did you?
A: Not even a little. In high school I was a hardcore band geek. Saxophone at school, self-taught guitar at home, could fill in on drums if needed. Math and science? Honestly, a bit boring to me at the time. I only visited Georgia Tech because my dad offered me a day off school to go. While I was there, someone offered to submit my application on the spot and waived the application fee. I still hadn’t gotten around to filling out UGA’s five-page essay when a Georgia Tech acceptance letter showed up in the mail. My mom started screaming “Mark’s going to Georgia Tech!” and honestly, there wasn’t much debate after that.
Q: So what is a Chief Scientist doing day-to-day?
A: Honestly, I’m still figuring that out and I mean that in the best way. It’s a mix of system-level analysis, architectural trades, algorithm work, and technical leadership for our FPGA and DSP development efforts. I also work with our Technical Director and Business Development team on our product roadmap and engage with potential customers and partners. It’s a bit of a whirlwind, but the work is interesting and fast-paced. It’s never boring.
Q: How did you go from band geek to hooked on engineering?
A: Somewhere along the way I landed in a course on digital signal processing, and we started writing code that used math to make music. That was it; I was absolutely hooked from that moment on. That was almost 30 years ago and I’ve never gotten bored with it since.
Q: What’s the project you’re most proud of?
A: The craziest one, honestly. It was a maritime-based program that spanned about eight years, but the first two were the best. Nearly every subsystem was new, cutting-edge technology, and due to some very specific classification rules, only a handful of us had the right clearances. That meant a tiny team. We built prototypes, tested our understanding, validated feasibility, and learned all the hard lessons that you only discover in the field. But the best part was I was never there alone. It was shared craziness with an equally dedicated team that made it genuinely fun. Years later, I still consider those guys some of my closest friends. That’s the kind of adventure I hope every engineer gets to experience at least once.
Q: What’s the best advice you’d give a young engineer?
A: Two things. First: engineering isn’t about having all the answers, it’s about asking the right questions. What do I want? What do I need? What are my options? Repeat those enough times and you build real intuition.
Second: Get comfortable with failure. Engineering is about 90% failure and 10% success, and the sooner you embrace that, the better. Every new subject will trip you up, every new software routine will crash before it works, every new system will break in ways you didn’t expect. Think of it like working out. If you’re not pushing yourself right up to the failure point, you’re not pushing hard enough. Embrace the chaos and celebrate the wins when they come. Just don’t ever rest on them.
Q: And when you’re not solving problems at work – what does unplugging look like for you?
A: When I really want to unplug, I head out to my garage woodshop. I built my own custom kitchen cabinets and various other projects around the house. The hand tools are therapeutic, and I’ll fire up the power tools when something needs to get done.