Photo by Roger Meissen
July 17, 2025
Each day Bond Life Sciences Center’s occupants collectively contribute hundreds of thousands of steps in the pursuit of science.
Faculty, staff and students can be seen hurrying across its bridges that connect east and west wings of the building, and one can get a full picture of the people contributing to the activity within its walls when they emerge en masse during lunch breaks, fire drills or class changes.
Matt Nelson, a senior engineering technician at Bond LSC, is a constant among these. He starts his day at 7:30 a.m. Every morning, he’s one of the maintenance staff that walk through all five floors of the center, checking if any alarms of devices have sounded.
Nelson began at Mizzou as a full-time custodian and student, which he said paved a path for him to graduate free of student debt. He got into the trades before graduation; working is way up to his role today. Now, he often repairs freezers at Bond LSC, some of the Ultra-Low Temperature Freezers require energy usage equivalent to three households. But he works on all sorts of equipment.
“Working in this role can sometimes be taxing mentally and physically,” he said. “But there are times when you feel like someone’s hero for fixing something that they were told wasn’t repairable or being able to repair equipment quickly and inexpensively.”
Throughout the day, he ping-pongs from Bond LSC to the service building north of the center, often taking a tunnel connecting the two buildings. It’s a pathway for the travel of machinery, air tanks and people. The tunnel is jokingly referred to by the maintenance crew as the “artery of the building,” and Nelson goes through this tunnel 30 times a day, on average.
Nelson said most of his workdays are unpredictable. “It is fast paced, challenging and somewhat unrelenting,” he added.
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