Graduate Student Spotlight: Joe Keller

Joseph Keller came to Virginia Tech from Charlottesville, VA where he lived with his family and three sisters. He was a competitive swimmer and has run half-marathons. Joe came to the SBIO department in 2017 for a Packaging Systems and Design degree. In the spring of 2021, as he was almost done, he was convinced to pursue a graduate degree after speaking with Dr. Laszlo Horvath about the Masters research topics that were currently available to him. Joe told us that “after talking with Dr. Horvath and the other graduate students, I decided to join the program and not looked back since!”

When asked to simplify it, Joe explained the subject that he chose for his graduate research this way: “I am investigating the stiffness of a wooden pallet when using lag screws and carriage bolts to hold them together.  Most pallets have nails holding them together but some companies need stiffer pallets or stronger fasteners like lag screws and carriage bolts.  I am testing the exact values companies should expect from these fasteners.”

We asked Joe what he felt would be one of his greatest benefits from attending graduate school, he told us, “I am hoping to gain a better understanding of the research process from writing research papers, to all of the different steps involved in research.  I find it very fascinating starting out with a hypothesis for an unknown question and then through hard work finding the answer. I am currently analyzing my results that I have gathered from my research, and the results will be put into PDS which is a software owned by my sponsor NWPCA.”

When asked about what other classes he felt may be helpful in his graduate curriculum, Joe initially felt “there was a big hole for me in the use of accelerometers and shock sensors, but now that I have taken Dr. Horvath’s new packaging dynamics class, that gap has been filled, and I am more confident in using those devices and the analysis that goes along with them.”

Regarding his future career plans, and whether working in the pallet lab has helped him prepare for a career, Joe said “I am hoping to get a job with a large company working in a lab or as a packaging engineer. I think working in the pallet lab has set me up to go into either of these positions with a great foundation of knowledge that I can bring to a company. Learning all of the different testing standards in the lab and testing a lot of different products has prepared me well for work in the industry where I know I will be designing and testing similar products and to the same standards that I’ve used in the lab.”