Research is: not stubbornness or perfectionism, but people.
January 14, 2025 – Edmonton, Canada
Hope Walls with Jakob Brandl
When I pick him up, Jakob Brandl does not erealize he is going to be talking about the RGP2N pressuremeter in a cat café.
While he has lived in Alberta for over two decades, he was completely unaware that there was a cat cafe right here in Edmonton. After we order our beverages, put on our new matching cat socks (no bare feet allowed), and head into the cat lounge, it’s hard to carry on a normal conversation – we are both distracted by the four-footed residents and fosters. For Brandl, the setting itself is quietly astonishing.
“I’m really surprised by how organized it is,” he says, watching a staff member carry out the simple task of wiping down play structures. “And by how much opportunity it gives the cats — space, structure, enrichment, and human contact, all without chaos.”
One of Jakob’s greatest strengths is his self-awareness and introspection. The café struck him as a small but elegant system: carefully designed, thoughtfully maintained, quietly functional. In other words, not entirely unlike the research environment he helps build every day.
When I finally get around to asking [RG]2’s resident mechanical engineer what he does in a geomechanics research lab, you might expect a technical answer about stress tensors or pressure vessels. Instead, Jakob offers LEGO. “Except you have to draw it first. You have to think about temperature, pressure, fluids, chemical reactions — and the LEGO isn’t plastic. It’s fancy metal.”
He provides the technical version as well anyway: “…the creative engineering process of developing functional, safe, and efficient mechanical parts, assemblies, or systems, applying physics and material science principles to turn concepts into tangible solutions, using tools like CAD and simulation for analysis and iteration with detailed planning, material selection, and prototyping to meet specific requirements like function, size, cost, and performance, often collaborating with other disciplines, like electrical-instrumentation
That blend of imagination and rigor has defined Jakob’s work since he joined [RG]² in 2012 as a research assistant and mechanical engineer. What drew him in back then still holds true today: the rare chance to work in a student-driven research environment, design one-of-a-kind scientific equipment, and turn ideas into physical objects.
“For me, it was a dream job,” he says. “And honestly, it still is.”
Unlike industrial engineering roles focused on mass production or optimization, research engineering lives in uncertainty. Nothing is off the shelf. Every experiment requires something new: a new instrument, a new assembly, a new way of measuring something no one has measured quite this way before.
That freedom is both the reward and the challenge.
“Every design has to balance three things,” Jakob explains. “It can’t be too expensive. It has to be good quality. And it has to actually work — often on a very short timeline.”
One project captures that tension perfectly: RGP2N, a 20-centimetre-diameter, two-metre-long geomechanical pressuremeter built to be lowered nearly a kilometre underground into a borehole in Switzerland. Equipped with twelve caliper arms, the device was designed to measure formation displacement and pressure deep within the subsurface.
It was a technical marathon. The small team had a narrow window to design, assemble, and test the instrument before shipping it to Europe, which happened amidst the chaos of COVID-19 and under all the constraints that came with it.
“Countless hours,” he recalls. “About twelve months of intense work.”
The deployment itself ended in disappointment: a cable entanglement deep underground prevented recovery of the instrument — while valuable data was collected, the tool itself was lost.
But the project remains his favourite.
“Even though we didn’t get it back, building that tool was incredibly exciting. It pushed us technically and creatively. That’s what research is like. Sometimes success is the process itself.”
That process is powered by tools like Autodesk Inventor, his favourite design software, which allows him to model complex assemblies and run finite element analyses to understand how parts will behave under stress and strain before they ever turn into physical objects.
Still, software is only part of the story. What Jakob values most is the environment — physical, social, and intellectual — in which the work happens.
“There’s room for creativity here. Room for trial and error. Room to learn,” he says. “I manage my own schedule, my own priorities. I get to realize my designs physically. And I get to help students learn how to work with specialized tools and materials.”
What keeps Brandl motivated when things go wrong is not stubbornness or perfectionism, but people.
“There’s always someone willing to help,” he says. “Staff, students — someone who will think through the problem with you when you feel stuck or overwhelmed.”
Back in the café, a cat leaps up on the bench beside Jakob and hides behind a plant. Jakob watches, amused, and chats with the staff.
“This place,” he says. “It’s designed well. It gives everyone — cats and humans — what they need.”
Outside the lab, his advice is simple: walk or jog for forty minutes a day. “Un esprit sain dans un corps sain,” he quotes — a healthy mind in a healthy body.
And if he could talk to his younger self?
“Rest when you’re exhausted. Stop thinking about the problem for a while. Do something you enjoy. And don’t hesitate to talk to a good friend.”
Even his favourite dinosaur reflects his blend of scientific curiosity and gentle humour: Nyasasaurus parringtoni, one of the earliest known dinosaurs — possibly a bit furry, definitely funny-sounding, and standing at the very beginning of a long evolutionary story.
It’s a fitting symbol for someone whose work is rarely visible, often buried deep underground or hidden inside experimental apparatus — yet foundational to discovery.
Because long before scientists can observe the Earth’s hidden processes, someone has to build the tools that make observation possible.
And for Jakob, that work — like a well-run cat café or a precisely built never-before-in-existence piece of equipment — begins with thoughtful design, quiet care, and the courage to make something new.
His goal for 2026? To reconnect with those things that made him join [RG]2 in the first place – the people he shares a lab with.