Jorge Cham, an Mechanical Engineering alumnus and cartoonist, recently visited campus to talk about a variety of topics relating to post-grad life.  The 35-minute interview, accompanied with a sample of Cham's cartoon work, is uploaded on the College of Engineering's YouTube channel.

He may have graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech in 1997, but Jorge Cham is now making a name for himself in the comics and at the bookstore. Cham, who began cartooning by accident, is the brains behind the comic strip “Piled Higher and Deeper” (PHD for short). More than 4.7 million visitors a year visit his website and his fourth book, Academic Stimulus Package, was published in April.

Cham’s strip deals with the everyday frustrations of life in the lab for a graduate student. He got into cartooning by accident following graduation from Georgia Tech. A lifelong doodler, Cham began drawing a comic strip for the Stanford Daily while working on his Ph.D. From the beginning, Cham’s strip has focused on graduate engineering students and their advisers. Following his graduation from Stanford, Cham began a post-doctoral position at Caltech in the area of neural prosthetics. By then, he had published two books and had begun a career as a speaker at conferences and student events worldwide.

Cham decided to become a full-time cartoonist and now makes his living with the sale of his books, merchandise, and “the Power of Procrastination” lecture series which highlights his comic strip and its characters, explores the pros and cons of being a graduate student, and discusses the pros and cons of procrastination.

Check out the interview, along with other interesting videos, at the College of Engineering's YouTube channel.