Mark Rober is an engineer and an inventor who makes science videos for YouTube. As of April 2026, Goodgoodgood described him as a NASA engineer turned YouTube sensation with over 75 million subscribers. He also started CrunchLabs, a company that makes kits for kids to build things and learn about engineering.

At TED2026, in April 2026, Rober said that for 15 years he had uploaded a free science or engineering video to YouTube once a month. He said that a video about the scientific method would be boring, while a video about a 15-ton Jell-O pool you can bellyflop onto can sneak in all six steps of the scientific method. MIT lists two of his video titles as "Egg Drop From Space" and "Can You Swim in Jell-O?" and says that each video explores some aspect of science or engineering.

Rober has given a TED talk called The Super Mario Effect about learning from failure. He says to treat failure like losing a level in a video game: try again and figure out how to beat the level. A TED page says that when 50,000 of his three million subscribers took part in a basic coding challenge, the data pointed to what he calls the Super Mario Effect.

Rober made sand act like a liquid with a process called a fluidized bed. When the right amount of air moves through the sand, it flows like a liquid, and when the air stops, it turns solid again. He could not find instructions for the sand pool he imagined, so he read industrial patents for ideas, and the designs he studied showed many small air holes rather than one large inlet. He tinkered with the number and spacing of the holes until his design worked, and he turned sand into liquid after 25 attempts. Every project he builds has mishaps and dead ends along the way.

Rober also built an automatic bull's-eye dartboard that predicts where a dart will land and moves itself in half a second to guarantee a perfect shot. It took him three and a half years to build. To make it work, he trained six stepper motors to respond to six infrared cameras and a motion-capture system. He also built a decoy package with four phone cameras inside that records what happens when it is opened.

Rober earned degrees in mechanical engineering at Brigham Young University and the University of Southern California, then joined NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2004. He spent nine years there as a mechanical engineer, and seven of those years were on the team for Curiosity, a rover that went to Mars. He also earned a master's degree from the University of Southern California while working on rover arms and descent-stage jet packs. At JPL, he worked on the Descent Stage of the Curiosity mission, which TED describes as the jet pack that lowered the rover to the surface. In 2012, Gizmodo reported that he started work on Curiosity right away and was responsible for the design of a part that would be important during the science part of the mission.

NASA says Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012 and was the largest robot ever to land on another planet at that time. NASA describes it as car-size and about as tall as a basketball player, with a 7-foot-long arm that places tools close to rocks selected for study. It landed in Gale Crater, a crater with a tall mountain in the middle, whose many layers of rock are made of different minerals from different time periods. NASA says Curiosity set out to answer whether Mars ever had the right environmental conditions to support small life forms called microbes. NASA also says that early in the mission, Curiosity's scientific tools found chemical and mineral evidence of past habitable environments on Mars.

In 2013, CNN reported that Rober had quit his job as a mechanical engineer at NASA and started Digital Dudz, a company making costumes that integrate tablets and smartphones. He sold that company to Morphsuits in 2013, and he worked at Morphsuits for two years. Rober also worked at Apple on product design in its Special Projects group. In 2018, CNBC and Variety reported from patent filings that he had been helping Apple develop virtual reality for entertainment in self-driving cars, and while working at Apple, he kept making YouTube videos as a fun, creative outlet.

Rober said that most people quit their day jobs at 250,000 YouTube subscribers, but he liked his job and kept it as long as he could. He left his job at Apple in 2019 to make his YouTube channel his full-time work. As of December 2022, MIT said his channel had 23 million subscribers and more than 3 billion views.

In June 2023, Rober gave the main speech at the MIT graduation, and MIT's commencement committee chair said his gift for making complex ideas relevant and fun has helped public understanding of science and STEM education.

Rober and the YouTuber MrBeast started Team Trees, which was launched in 2019 with the Arbor Day Foundation. In 2021, Variety reported that it set out to raise $20 million to plant 20 million trees and brought in more than $23 million. The Team Trees website said, as of November 2026, that the project had reached 25 million trees. They also started Team Seas to clean up trash from oceans, rivers and beaches.

CrunchLabs says its engineering factory is a real place in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. It wants kids to learn to think like an engineer, and it says it does not think there is a STEM talent shortage but an inspiration shortage.

Class CrunchLabs gives teachers science lessons for free. The Times of India reported in June 2026 that Class CrunchLabs is a science curriculum designed for students in grades 3 through 8. One unit, called Carnival of Collisions, introduces students to force, motion and collisions through activities and experiments. Goodgoodgood reported that the first round of units were available online in 2026.

In 2026, Rober said that he and CrunchLabs had invested about $60 million in building Class CrunchLabs. He said that 95 percent of the teachers who taught pilot lessons said they wanted Class CrunchLabs to be their full science curriculum. He said that in the program the teacher becomes the hero by engaging students in real science and engineering they care about. He said his dream job is ultimately to be a middle school science teacher.

Words to know

• microbes: small life forms
• Curiosity: a Mars rover
• kits: things to build
• curriculum: science lessons