Mark B. Rober is an American
YouTuber
A YouTuber is an online personality and/or influencer who produces videos on the video-sharing platform YouTube, typically posting to their personal YouTube channel. The term was first used in the English language in 2006.
Influence
Influe ...
, engineer, inventor, and educator. He is known for his YouTube videos on
popular science and
do-it-yourself gadgets. Before YouTube, Rober was an engineer with
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
for nine years, where he spent seven years working on the
Curiosity rover
''Curiosity'' is a car-sized Mars rover designed to explore the Gale crater on Mars as part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. ''Curiosity'' was launched from Cape Canaveral (CCAFS) on November 26, 2011, at 15:02:00 UTC and lan ...
at NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States.
Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA an ...
. He later worked for four years at
Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...
as a product designer in their Special Projects Group, where he authored patents involving virtual reality in self-driving cars.
Early life
Rober was raised in
Orange County, California
Orange County is located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in Southern California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,186,989, making it the third-most-populous county in California, the sixth-most-populous in the United States, a ...
. He became interested in engineering at a young age, making a pair of goggles that helped avoid tears while cutting onions.
Rober earned a mechanical engineering degree from
Brigham Young University
Brigham Young University (BYU, sometimes referred to colloquially as The Y) is a private research university in Provo, Utah. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-d ...
as well as a master's degree from the
University of Southern California
, mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it"
, religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist
, established =
, accreditation = WSCUC
, type = Private research university
, academic_affiliations =
, endowment = $8.1 ...
.
Career
Early career (NASA)
Rober joined
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
’s
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States.
Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA an ...
(JPL) in 2004.
He worked there for nine years, seven of which were spent working on the
Curiosity rover
''Curiosity'' is a car-sized Mars rover designed to explore the Gale crater on Mars as part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. ''Curiosity'' was launched from Cape Canaveral (CCAFS) on November 26, 2011, at 15:02:00 UTC and lan ...
, which is now on
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin at ...
.
He designed and delivered hardware on several JPL missions, including AMT,
GRAIL
The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) was an American lunar science mission in NASA's Discovery Program which used high-quality gravitational field mapping of the Moon to determine its interior structure. The two small spacecraf ...
,
SMAP
SMAP was a Japanese boy band, composed of Masahiro Nakai, Takuya Kimura, Goro Inagaki, Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, and Shingo Katori. The group was created in 1988 by music producer Johnny Kitagawa, founder of Johnny & Associates, originally as a six- ...
, and
Mars Science Laboratory
Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is a robotic space probe mission to Mars launched by NASA on November 26, 2011, which successfully landed ''Curiosity'', a Mars rover, in Gale Crater on August 6, 2012. The overall objectives include investigati ...
.
While at NASA, Rober was one of the primary architects for "JPL Wired", which was a comprehensive knowledge capture
wiki
A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...
.
He published a case study about applying wiki technology in a high-tech organization to develop an "Intrapedia" for the capture of corporate knowledge.
YouTube channel, science communication
During his time at NASA, Rober began making viral videos.
[ His videos cover a wide variety of topics, sparking ideas for ]April Fools' Day
April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is an annual custom on 1 April consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fools!" at the recipient. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which may ...
pranks and teaching about tricks like beating an escape room
An escape room, also known as an escape game, puzzle room, exit game, or riddle room is a game in which a team of players discover clues, solve puzzles, and accomplish tasks in one or more rooms in order to accomplish a specific goal in a limite ...
and filming primates in zoos non-invasively. He advocates for science, making videos testing the ability for sharks to smell blood in water, fluidized sand and water purification
Water purification is the process of removing undesirable chemicals, biological contaminants, suspended solids, and gases from water. The goal is to produce water that is fit for specific purposes. Most water is purified and disinfected for hu ...
.
In October 2011, Rober recorded his first YouTube video. It shows a Halloween costume that used two iPad
The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating ...
s to create the illusion of seeing through his body. His video of the "gaping hole in torso" costume went viral, receiving 1.5 million views in just one day. The following year, Rober launched Digital Dudz, an online Halloween costume company that specializes in Halloween costumes based on the same concept as the video (to which Rober holds the patent). The company took in $250,000 in revenue in its first three weeks of operations, and by 2013 his app-integrated costumes were sold in retail stores such as Party City. The costumes were widely featured on news channels such as CBS News, CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
, ''The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
''The Tonight Show with Jay Leno'' is an American late-night talk show hosted by Jay Leno that first aired from May 25, 1992, to May 29, 2009. It resumed production on March 1, 2010 and ended on February 6, 2014.
The fourth incarnation of the ...
'', Fox, Yahoo! News
Yahoo! News is a news website that originated as an internet-based news aggregator by Yahoo!. The site was created by a Yahoo! software engineer named Brad Clawsie in August 1996. Articles originally came from news services such as the Associate ...
, Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Channe ...
, ''The Today Show
''Today'' (also called ''The Today Show'' or informally, ''NBC News Today'') is an American news and talk morning television show that airs weekdays from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. on NBC. The program debuted on January 14, 1952. It was ...
'' and '' GMA''. He sold the company to UK-based costume company Morphsuits
Morphsuits is a company in Edinburgh, Scotland that distributes branded spandex costumes, based on the existing skin-tight garments, which cover the entire body. The company offers over 80 different designs. The company was founded by brothers A ...
in 2013.
In December 2018, Rober posted a video showing how he tricked parcel thieves with an engineered contraption that sprayed glitter on the thieves, emitted a foul odor, and captured video of the thieves. The video went viral, receiving 25 million views in one day. Rober later removed two of the five incidents caught on tape after discovering that two of the thieves were actually friends of a person he hired to help catch the package thieves. Rober posted a follow-up in December 2019, teaming up with Macaulay Culkin
Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin (born Macaulay Carson Culkin; ) is an American actor. Often regarded as one of the most successful child actors of the 1990s, he was placed 2nd on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Kid-Stars". Culkin rose to prom ...
and featuring an improved design. Rober would post another follow up a year later, featuring a third edition of the bomb. During the process of building the third bomb, Rober collaborated with Jim Browning, ScammerPayback, and various state and federal authorities to use the glitter bomb bait package as a tactic to track and arrest money mule
Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are as ...
s and their supervisors, who were working with scamming
A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers have de ...
call centers
A call centre ( Commonwealth spelling) or call center ( American spelling; see spelling differences) is a managed capability that can be centralised or remote that is used for receiving or transmitting a large volume of enquiries by telephone ...
in India to rob elderly people of thousands of dollars. Some of the investigations are still ongoing. This was in conjunction with a multi-Youtuber movement to get back at and shut down scam callers, while raising awareness to prevent other people from being scammed in the future.
Rober has contributed articles to ''Men's Health
''Men's Health'' (''MH''), published by Hearst, is the world's largest men's magazine brand, with 35 editions in 59 countries. It is also the best-selling men's magazine on U.S. newsstands.
Started as a men's health magazine by Rodale, Inc. ...
'', and gave a TEDx
TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...
presentation in 2015 ''How to Come Up with Good Ideas'' and another one entitled ''The Super Mario Effect – Tricking Your Brain into Learning More''. He has also made numerous appearances on ''Jimmy Kimmel Live!
''Jimmy Kimmel Live!'' is an American late-night talk show, created and hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, broadcast on American Broadcasting Company, ABC. The nightly hour-long show debuted on January 26, 2003, at Hollywood Masonic Temple in Hollywood, Los ...
''.[ In 2018, it was reported that Rober had been secretly working on virtual reality projects for ]Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...
, including the company's on-board entertainment for self-driving cars, for which Rober wrote two virtual reality-related patents. Rober worked as a product designer in Apple's Special Projects Group from 2015 to early 2020. In 2020, Rober will star in a Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Channe ...
hidden-camera show alongside Jimmy Kimmel
James Christian Kimmel (born November 13, 1967) is an American television host, comedian, writer, and producer. He is the host and executive producer of ''Jimmy Kimmel Live!'', a late-night talk show that premiered on ABC on January 26, 2003, ...
.
In October 2019, the YouTube community released a project labeled #TeamTrees, organized by MrBeast
Jimmy Donaldson (born May 7, 1998), better known as MrBeast, is an American YouTube personality, credited with pioneering a genre of YouTube videos that centers on expensive stunts. His MrBeast YouTube channel had 112.2 million subscribers a ...
and Rober following a tweet that suggested that MrBeast should plant 20 million trees. MrBeast and Rober worked with YouTubers across the globe in an effort to make this come true. The goal of this project was to raise $20,000,000 for the Arbor Day Foundation
The Arbor Day Foundation is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization dedicated to planting trees. The Arbor Day Foundation has more than one million members and has planted more than 350 million trees in neighborhoods, communities ...
by 2020, and in exchange, the Arbor Day Foundation would plant one tree for each dollar raised. Notable YouTubers who took part in the project were iJustine
Justine Ezarik ( ; born March 20, 1984) is an American YouTuber. She is best known as iJustine, with over one billion views on her YouTube channel. She gained attention as a lifecaster who communicated directly with her millions of viewers on ...
, the Slow Mo Guys, Marques Brownlee, Hannah Stocking
Hannah Stocking-Siagkris (born February 4, 1992) is an American comedian and internet personality who first gained recognition from the social media platform Vine. She later became known for her comedy videos on YouTube. , PewDiePie
Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg ( , ; born 24 October 1989), better known as PewDiePie ( ), is a Swedes, Swedish YouTuber known for his Let's Play videos and comedic formatted videos and shows. Kjellberg's popularity on YouTube and extensive media co ...
, The Try Guys
''The Try Guys'' is an American online entertainment group and media production company which produces content for their YouTube channel. The group was founded by Keith Habersberger, Ned Fulmer, Zach Kornfeld, and Eugene Lee Yang. The Try Guys ...
, AsapScience
AsapScience, stylized as AsapSCIENCE, is a YouTube channel created by Canadian YouTubers Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown. The channel produces weekly videos that touch on many different topics of science.
AsapScience is one of the largest ed ...
, Smarter Every Day, How Ridiculous, Half as Interesting, Life Noggin
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy t ...
, minutephysics/minuteearth, It's Okay to be Smart, and HowToBasic. Then, in 2021, he founded #TeamSeas along with MrBeast, which aims to raise $30,000,000 for cleaning up beach
A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological sources, such as mollusc shel ...
es and sea
The sea, connected as the world ocean or simply the ocean, is the body of salty water that covers approximately 71% of the Earth's surface. The word sea is also used to denote second-order sections of the sea, such as the Mediterranean Sea, ...
s, along with removing 1 pound for each dollar donated, using help from The Ocean Cleanup
The Ocean Cleanup is a nonprofit environmental engineering organization based in the Netherlands, that develops technology to extract plastic pollution from the oceans and intercept it in rivers before it can reach the ocean. After initial test ...
.
In 2020, Rober launched a 30-day Creative Engineering class on the online-class platform Monthly.
In August 2020, during a video filming sharks in the Bahamas
The Bahamas (), officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic. It takes up 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and is home to ...
, Rober revealed that he tested positive for COVID-19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...
, delaying the production of his video.
On July 14, 2022, Rober guest hosted the late-night talk show ''Jimmy Kimmel Live!
''Jimmy Kimmel Live!'' is an American late-night talk show, created and hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, broadcast on American Broadcasting Company, ABC. The nightly hour-long show debuted on January 26, 2003, at Hollywood Masonic Temple in Hollywood, Los ...
'' on the ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
television network.
Awards
In 2021, as part of the Institution’s celebrations, Mark Rober was awarded a one-off prize as STEM Personality of the Year, following nominations from across the globe. Later that year, Rober was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Institution of Engineering and Technology
The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) is a multidisciplinary professional engineering institution. The IET was formed in 2006 from two separate institutions: the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), dating back to 1871, and ...
in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the engineering profession. This Honour was granted during the Institution’s 150th anniversary year.
Personal life
Rober moved to Sunnyvale, California
Sunnyvale () is a city located in the Santa Clara Valley in northwest Santa Clara County in the U.S. state of California.
Sunnyvale lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101 and is bordered by portions of San Jose to the nort ...
, in 2015, where he lives with his wife and son. Rober is an advocate for autism
The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...
awareness, as his son lives with it. In April 2021, Mark Rober and Jimmy Kimmel announced they would be hosting a live stream in support of NEXT for AUTISM
NEXT for AUTISM is a non-profit organization founded in 2003 to address the needs of autistic people and their families. The organization was founded by Laura and Harry Slatkin and Ilene Lainer. One of NEXT for AUTISM's most well known accompl ...
. The event was met with criticism due to the organization's endorsement of Autism Speaks
Autism Speaks Inc. is a controversial autism advocacy organization and the largest autism research organization in the United States. It sponsors autism research and conducts awareness and outreach activities aimed at families, governments, an ...
and applied behavior analysis
Applied behavior analysis (ABA), also called behavioral engineering, is a psychological intervention that applies empirical approaches based upon the principles of respondent and operant conditioning to change behavior of social significance. ...
.
Notes
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rober, Mark
1980s births
Living people
21st-century American inventors
American mechanical engineers
American YouTubers
Apple Inc. employees
Brigham Young University alumni
Charity fundraisers (people)
DIY YouTubers
NASA people
Online edutainment
People from Orange County, California
Science communicators
University of Southern California alumni
Education-related YouTube channels
Autism activists