How Jerry Hur Balances Award Winning Work With High Octane Car Drifting

How Jerry Hur Balances Award-Winning Work With High-Octane Car Drifting

Distinguished Member of Operations Staff Drives Precision at the Lab, Thrills on the Track

Nobody who knows Jerry Hur would accuse him of drifting. After all, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Flatirons Campus research technician is celebrated for his meticulous work, attention to detail, and adherence to safety protocols-qualities that earned him a 2024 Distinguished Member of Operations Staff award.

It might come as a surprise, then, to learn that one of Hur's hobbies is drifting. No, not like absentmindedness, vagabonding, or a Flatirons Campus tumbleweed. Drifting is a form of car racing that involves intentionally losing traction in the rear wheels, causing the car to slide sideways through turns.

Perhaps competitive drifting is a way for Hur to rev up his adventurous side. At NREL, however, he keeps it safe within the lanes.

Since 2008, Hur has been one of the key behind-the-scenes players at NREL's Flatirons Campus near Boulder, Colorado. With expertise in instrumentation and data acquisition systems, he contributes to on-site and off-site measurement campaigns and helps ensure delivery of the high-quality research data upon which NREL researchers and partners depend.

Above all, he is a leader.

According to Jeroen van Dam, acting research operations director at Flatirons Campus, Hur has provided leadership to Flatirons Campus instrumentation technicians by putting in place methods that are now being widely used by the team around defining minimum drawing standards, instrumentation checklists, deployment kits, and documentation organization.

"Jerry has trained many junior technicians as they progressed through their careers and is always willing to help out and share his knowledge," van Dam said. "He leads by example and has maintained the questioning attitude to not only keep himself safe, but also his coworkers."

Squealing around racetracks aside, Hur takes safety on the job very seriously.

"Jerry has an excellent safety record. This is a feat, considering the type of work he conducts, from climbing meteorological towers and wind turbines to medium-voltage work in grid integration projects," said Hur's manager Arlinda Huskey, group manager of NREL's Manufacturing and Characterization group at Flatirons Campus.

His expertise, leadership, and dedication to safety have resulted in Hur winning lots of awards during his more than 15 years at the laboratory: four President's awards, two Outstanding Team Staff Awards, and a Team of the Month award. But his 2024 Distinguished Member of Operations Staff award is Hur's first individual award.

"Being a technician, you're involved in many large projects, and you get grouped into a lot of the team awards," he said. "I never really anticipated getting an individual award. This one was a surprise."

While being recognized for his dedication to NREL's mission and ideals is rewarding, Hur has also found meaning along the way.

"I like what I do because this is my way of trying to make the world better," he said. "You're supposed to leave a positive legacy for your family, your people."

A Child of Refugees and the American Dream

Refugees who escaped the Laotian Civil War, Hur's parents moved to North Denver in 1979 with Hur's older brother, few possessions, and limited English. Hur, the second of three children, arrived a couple of years later. The children spoke Hmong (the language of a South China hill tribe) at home, along with little bits of English they picked up watching cartoons and talking to relatives.

As members of the local Hmong church, the Hur family soon became part of the Hmong community, which helped them adjust to their new lives in America. Hur's father, who had been a schoolteacher in Laos, eventually got a job with Lockheed Martin as a fabricator. Hur's mother also worked at Lockheed Martin before going to Ball Aerospace.

After graduating from high school, Hur joined the Air Force and became a flight line avionics technician. Over the next seven years, he moved through technical skill levels and the ranks while traveling the world.

At one point, Hur maintained a fleet of 15 aerial refuelers out of Okinawa, Japan, whose area of operation stretched from the east coast of Africa to Hawaii, as far south as Australia, and as far north as Alaska. The last aircraft he worked on were rescue helicopters in the United Kingdom. When the U.S. State Department decided to close Naval Air Station Keflavik in Iceland, Hur was part of the historic relocation.

When he left the Air Force as a staff sergeant, Hur returned home to Denver and started looking for electronics technician jobs. His military service gave him the skills and experience to land a job at NREL, and he joined the laboratory in 2008 as a subcontractor. He became a full-time employee shortly after.

An Innovative Self-Starter and Standout Among His Peers

"Jerry and I started at about the same time, and Jerry got a lot of traction working for people who really saw his talents," said Robb Wallen, an NREL research engineer who has worked closely with Hur for nearly 16 years. "His experience working on helicopter avionics in the Air Force gave him a level of skill that was really appreciated."

Among their many projects, Wallen and Hur developed a medium-voltage data acquisition system that forms the backbone of the Flatirons Campus data collection network for grid integration work on behalf of the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems research platform. The system continuously measures power in high-resolution going in and out of research assets like wind turbines and battery storage to grid simulators and the campus substation. A separate communications network enables the team to manage these assets from their control room.

"I worked with him to design the software and hardware, but Jerry built and deployed all of it," Wallen said. "He's innovative. He's a self-starter. And he's always looking for the next big thing that works better. Jerry's a standout among his peers. He's one of the great folks."

Jerry Hur (left) and Robb Wallen have worked together on many projects throughout their 16 years at NREL, including developing this medium-voltage system for grid integration research. Photo by Agata Bogucka, NREL

Van Dam agrees. "Jerry is one of those hardworking, smart people that everyone wants on their team and who will always be focused on how to get things done," he said.

Getting things done often takes creativity-which is Hur's favorite thing about being at NREL.

"Working with the researchers and having the freedom to be creative and come up with solutions-that's what I really like about working here," Hur said.

In addition to working full time, Hur is earning an associate's degree from Front Range Community College. He has two children-Lily, 23, and Nathan, 20-who live with him and also go to school. Somehow, he finds time for snowboarding, reggae music, and, of course, drifting.

Hur says he is still trying to figure out what his future is going to be. But you do not need a crystal ball to predict that Hur will continue making an impact at NREL while drifting at high speeds through life's twists and turns.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.