Mark Rober is a well-known American YouTuber, engineer, inventor, and educator. His YouTube channel features videos about popular science topics and DIY gadgets. During his engineering career, he contributed to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, working on the Curiosity rover and other projects. Additionally, he had a covert role at Apple Inc. as a product designer, where he authored patents related to virtual reality in self-driving cars.
Early Life
Mark Rober was interested in engineering since he was a child, and as a five-year-old, had fetched a pair of swimming goggles before chopping onions to avoid eye irritation. After completing his school education from Brea Olinda High School in 1998, he earned a mechanical engineering degree from Brigham Young University in 2004, followed by a master's degree from the University of Southern California in 2014.
Career
Mark Rober had started his career as an engineer with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2004, and from his next nine years there, spent seven working on the Curiosity rover of the Mars Science Laboratory mission. He also designed and delivered hardware for missions like AMT, GRAIL, and SMAP, and was one of the primary architects for "JPL Wired". While he eventually left NASA to focus on his YouTube career, he worked as a product designer in Apple's Special Projects Group from 2015 to early 2020. He reportedly secretly worked in the company's virtual reality projects, including on-board entertainment for self-driving cars.
While still working at NASA, he began making videos about a wide range of topics, which sparked ideas for April Fools' Day pranks, taught about beating an escape room, or filming primates in zoos non-invasively. He created his YouTube channel and started uploading videos in October 2011. In his first video, he showed a Halloween costume that used two iPads to create the illusion of seeing through his body, which immediately went viral. He holds patent for the concept and launched the online costume company Digital Dudz, which specializes in Halloween costumes, the following year. The costumes started selling in retail stores in 2013 and were widely featured on news channels.
One of his videos from December 2018 went viral after it showed how he tricked parcel thieves with an engineered contraption called “glitter bomb” that emitted a foul odor. He teamed up with Macaulay Culkin the next December for an improved design and also made a third follow up video a year later. He also collaborated with other YouTubers to shut down scam callers. However, he is best known for his series called Backyard Squirrel Maze in which he built elaborate obstacles to deter a group of squirrels, Phat Gus and friends, from stealing food from his bird feeders.
Family Life
Mark Rober is married to a woman named Lisa Nicole Earl with whom he has a son. They are very protective about their son who has an autism spectrum disorder, but often speaks up advocating for autism awareness. He and Jimmy Kimmel hosted a live-stream in April 2021 to raise money supporting NEXT for AUTISM.
