When Matt Weirich joined the QUEST program as a freshman, he had already started two of his own businesses and was in the process of getting two patents. How did he do all of this before even starting college? I had the chance to sit down with Matt and learn more. 

Matt Weirich (Cohort 39) is a sophomore electrical engineering major on the Pre-Law track. This might sound like a weird combination, but he has a plan. Matt wants to be a patent attorney and follow in his father’s footsteps. You must be an undergraduate technical major (like engineering) to become one. He is already beginning to understand the process that a patent attorney goes through because of his own patents, which he is in the process of applying for. 

Matt with his Chevrolet Camaro

Since Matt was a child, he has always been surrounded by cars. His dad owned a Chevrolet Camaro that he first bought when he was 16. It was his dad’s prized possession and as Matt grew older, he became obsessed with cars too. When Matt was a freshman in high school, he told his parents that he also wanted his first car to be the same. They were reasonable parents so they told their 14 year old son that there was no way that his first car would be a sports car. This lit a passion within Matt. That night he went to his room and made a flier, asking his neighbors for any freelance work they could offer him. The consensus? Landscaping. Matt worked around the clock for two years, mowing lawns, mulching, weeding and shoveling snow. The business was so successful that the day he got his driver’s license he was able to buy himself a used Camaro as his first car.

Matt adored his Camaro and did everything he could to personalize it to fit his needs. One day, he was putting fiber optic cables in his car when he came up with the idea to use them in the tread of his tires. As he looked more into it, he realized that using them to illuminate his tires could be something that he could make into a patent. In addition to aesthetic purposes, they also have a practical use; as the tread of your tires begin to wear down, you will be able to see the side of the fiber optic cables and know it is time to replace your tires. He was able to sit down with his father to draft a patent application. He loved the process and just one week ago he finally got the notice of allowance for his first patent application which means his patent was granted. He will be sent the officially granted patent in the next few weeks.

Matt’s patent application for his fiber optic cable invention

When Matt came to the University of Maryland, he was walking around campus and noticed that all the construction in the area used a lot of traffic cones. They were a large waste of a lot of plastic and not very environmentally friendly. He wanted to find a way to change that. To do this, Matt is looking towards the future with driverless cars. The new cone will essentially be a much smaller version of a traffic cone and will have a microprocessing chip on the inside that will alert autonomous vehicles of where it is on the road so that driverless cars will avoid lanes that are under construction.

Matt’s traffic cone patent application

It was so great to sit down and talk with such an outgoing and unique QUESTee. Congratulations to Matt on all of your success!