Glass blower supports scientific research enterprise

Aug 08, 2023

Kyle Meyer didn’t wake up one day with the goal of becoming a scientific glass blower.

He actually didn’t even know that was a thing.

But when he found out about a scholarship sponsored by a big chemical company in Wisconsin that would train him to blow glass in exchange for a couple years of labor after graduation, Meyer jumped at the chance.

He ended up spending over a decade with Sigma-Aldrich, producing and repairing glass labware for the company, before finding an opening for an in-house glassblower in the University of Georgia’s Office of Research.

Created in 1960, UGA’s Scientific Glass Blowing Shop sat empty when the previous glass blower retired in 2015. Meyer’s arrival the next year meant that researchers no longer had to schlep their designs to Georgia Tech’s shop.

Meyer works with a variety of researchers each day, constructing everything from basic beakers for holding chemicals to complex feeders for mosquitoes.