3/31/2023 Helen Chang
Written by Helen Chang
Alumna Samantha Knoll (BSEM 2011, MS TAM 2013, PhD TAM 2016) has been named a MechSE Outstanding Young Alumni Award recipient of 2023. She was honored at the department’s awards banquet March 24.
The award recognizes alumni who have graduated from the department fewer than 10 years ago and who have embodied the department and university’s values in their professional careers.
Knoll is employed with Bayer where she is the Customer Experience Director for New Business Models within the Crop Science Division. Previously, she served as Global Product Lead for Intelligence and Analytics at Climate LLC, a digital agriculture company and subsidiary of Bayer Crop Science. Prior to her work at Bayer, Knoll co-founded a company aimed at optimizing farm operations through drone imagery.
As an undergraduate student, Knoll was a Class XV graduate of the Hoeft Technology and Management Program at Illinois. She is a longtime advocate of inclusion and diversity in STEM. As a graduate student – her research advisor was Professor Taher Saif – she co-founded the Graduate Society of Women Engineers (GradSWE) student organization and its flagship annual conference, “Women Empowered in STEM (weSTEM).” During her time at Illinois, she was also a two-time participant and finalist in the Cozad New Venture Competition.
Knoll said her degrees in engineering have not limited the types of jobs in which she is able to succeed. Indeed, at Bayer, she has worked in both the engineering and business domains, and has held roles in Digital Product Management, Open Innovation & Strategic Partnerships, and Science R&D, where she led the company’s initial drone imagery and analytics program.
“The degrees I earned in MechSE at Illinois equipped me with the skillsets that transcend far beyond the classroom or a lab,” she said. “They trained me to be a lifelong learner.”
Chris Nobre (BSME 2015) and Bryan Petrus (BSME 2005, MSME 2013, PhD ME 2014) were also winners of the 2023 MechSE Outstanding Young Alumni Award.