Faces of GM

Lucy: engineering fuel cell vehicles in Honeoye Falls, NY

May 24, 2010 at 3:42 pm

Mary Ann Brown, recently started working as a communications manager at the Honeoye Falls Fuel Cells Facility. She met Lucy and wrote this short post about her new friend. – Jordana

 Lucy Boulatnikov Wilke , senior project engineer 

Married to: Burkhardt (Burk for short) for almost two years
Listens to: Tons of audio books as she travels 25,000 miles/yr to visit Burk in Canada – mostly historical fiction
TV junkie: House, So You Think You Can Dance, Bones, Family Guy, South Park, Simpsons
Music junkie: Classical when she’s with Burk, pop when she’s alone
Hobbies: Loves spending time with friends and doing outdoor stuff like camping and hiking
Interesting fact: Leads GM Friends & Family Ski Club
Education: Has a BS in Industrial Engineering from the University at Buffalo (UB) and a Masters in Manufacturing Management & Leadership from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)

As a fourteen year old, Lucy came to the U.S. from Ukraine and jumped feet first into all things math related. She tutored math and was one of the team leads of her high school math team that competed against other Rochester, NY high schools.

So it’s not surprising that as an engineer, following in her mother’s footsteps, Lucy runs mathematical equations in her mind (silly stuff as she calls it), as she travels 4.5 hours to see her husband who is completing his Chemistry PhD in Ottawa, Canada. She tries to figure out if she increases her speed by one mile per hour, how much faster she will get there. What takes you by surprise are her funny sayings.

“Burk and I were married on the 4^th of July and on the Save-the-Dates I wrote: “…we are losing our independence to each other on Independence Day!” What can I say; I love to be corny.”

Lucy is a manufacturing engineer who works with Design Engineering, Operations and Quality functions to set up processes to build and test the next generation of fuel cells. “You have to plan not just for the short term – that’s easy – but for the long term when we go into the actual fuel cell vehicle production.”

She came to GM six years ago when a manager of the Honeoye Falls, NY Fuel Cell facility who was trying to woo her away from a job she loved in Buffalo, NY, asked her if she wanted to work at a job that would change the world. “Corny, but Gary totally had me at “change the world.”

When she started at Honeoye Falls, the production floor was pretty empty. She had the opportunity to plan for the building of the first 120 Chevy Equinox Fuel Cell vehicles that would be used in the largest test marketing program for a fuel cell vehicle of any manufacturer. “These vehicles were going to be driven by regular drivers and had to meet all the stringent safety and quality metrics of any other Chevy vehicle. There was a lot of calculating and running of many algorithms to learn what to expect from the innovative designs. The beauty of working with so many smart people is that the problems always get solved with creative new ideas.

“I am so motivated by what I do and how it will affect our planet in the future. After six years I am still so excited about my job. My parents gave up a lot for my future, and I know they, as well as my brother are extremely proud of my work.  My friends also think it’s ‘wicked cool’ that I get to work on the cutting edge technologies.”

She puts the technology into perspective for us. “Think about if you lived in a crowded city. With fuel cells, there is no pollution or smog, no worry of health issues – just a release of water vapor. There would be no catastrophic events that come from off-shore drilling because hydrogen can be safely produced anywhere. There are opportunities to use a variety of methods to produce hydrogen. For us locally we could use the electricity that is generated from Niagara Falls, others could use solar, wind and even thermal energy to get their car fuel.”

Three years ago Lucy was teased by a colleague about not running at the annual Corporate Challenge 3.5-mile run. Always up for a challenge, Lucy started running and has kept it up doing 3-mile runs 2-3 times a week.  “There are a lot of runners at the Honeoye Falls facility, it’s a great group.  Running helps me stay fit and gets me outside getting fresh clean air – just like the air from the exhaust of a Chevy fuel cell vehicle.” J

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