Marna Eckels is a physics teacher at Dearborn STEM Academy in the Boston Public Schools. Before becoming a teacher, she earned a bachelor’s of science in electrical engineering at Boston University and worked as an engineer on technical projects including an implantable artificial heart, satellite communication systems, and airfare search engines. She then earned a master’s of education. through the Boston Teacher Residency program, and has been teaching physics, math, and engineering since 2010.

Her proudest moments in the classroom are usually when students are building engineering projects using their physics knowledge. Some of her favorite projects include cardboard pinball machines to demonstrate forces and acceleration, light bulb powered cupcake ovens to demonstrate heat transfer, and “electric art” paintings with embedded lights of different brightnesses for series and parallel circuits.

Eckels is an enthusiastic bicyclist, riding her bike to work when the weather is good and sometimes when it is not. With her husband, she has taken a dozen bicycle tours traveling by pedal power across chunks of the United States, Canada, and Europe. She recently learned to balance on her bike without hands.