Brent’s Story
Growing up in Phoenix, I could see the stars – city lights hadn’t yet washed them out – and that’s where I wanted to go. I was a rocket kid, fascinated by space travel. I believed humanity’s destiny lay Out There, and I was determined to be part of it.
My obsession took me to Caltech, then to the tiny town of Mojave, a hub for American civilian experimental aerospace. Long before SpaceX, my team built and tested three generations of rocket engines in two years — but you can’t build a new launch system on a mere $50 million raise.
I moved to Sonoma County to design specialized machines and manufacturing systems. The work was interesting, but my efforts felt misdirected. Caltech had given me more than world-class engineering education; it had exposed me to ecology as both a science and a personal experience of living nature. I saw our technology driving us toward catastrophe but had no idea what to do about it.
I needed to understand “sustainability”. I studied permaculture and regenerative design – how technology can work with living systems rather than against them – and discovered Buckminster Fuller’s idea of Spaceship Earth. We were already living in space, and our life support system was in dire need of care!
I left machine design to join the early 2000s California solar industry ($15/watt!). I taught myself to design PV systems and sell them, created software tools for other salespeople, and joined the co-op’s board to help shape strategy.
I also became fascinated by a different energy system. My wife and I built extensive gardens and eventually ran a small farm. We learned that growing food is the most satisfying, worst-paying job there is. But the hands-on experience with living systems gave me insights no book could provide.
As I learned more about the impacts of our infrastructure and energy systems, I knew I needed to do more. We left the farm, moved to the city, and found work in the green building industry.
I worked with some of the best engineers on the West Coast, designing and commissioning mechanical (HVAC) and control systems in new and existing buildings. I learned how these systems were conceived and executed, and how they fared over time under varying degrees of maintenance or neglect.
These were the early days of Architecture 2030, with the goal to zero out operating carbon emissions from buildings. Ambitious and utterly necessary, I threw myself into every unconventional project I could find, particularly focusing on controls and automation, where the potential for impact was greatest.
The toughest part of these projects was not any single innovation, but the fact of novelty itself. Design is narrowly specialized by discipline and builders prioritize predictability and consistency, making innovation fundamentally fraught – doubly so for clients unfamiliar with the industry or designers unaccustomed to green projects. Yet it remains essential – for even as efficiency improves, energy use keeps rising.
That’s why I founded Eubanks Engineering Research. I want to use my years of experience to help people who are working to solve the same problems that compel me. We both know the stakes are high, and there’s no time for false starts or stumbles. Intuition and foresight borne of experience can save time, energy and money – and make the difference between obscurity and adoption at scale.
Unexpected solutions to your unique challenges
You need a partner with big-picture vision and hard-core technical skills, who knows how to think outside the box and knows when it is appropriate to do so. I can deliver the strategic insight your team needs to navigate the path ahead — and to see what lies over the horizon.
