Not slowing down
Alumnus Bruce Myrehn goes from tinkering in a garage to the track at Le Mans
Just six years into alumnus Bruce Myrehn’s career, his employer, global pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, sent him to Japan to lead the team designing and building its first injectable manufacturing plant in the country. He was the only American on the team full time.
“The advantage of young engineers – you come in with big ideas and you just really don’t know what you can’t do,” Myrehn said. “And that makes you perfect for changing things for the better.”
Myrehn had an “obsession for anything with an engine” while growing up in Indiana, where he spent a lot of time “tinkering” in the family garage alongside his dad, who told him, “You should be an engineer, they’re the ones who build things.”
As a dual degree student, Myrehn earned bachelor’s degrees in economics from DePauw University and in mechanical engineering from Washington University in St. Louis. He planned to work in the automotive industry, but faced a turbulent automotive job market after graduating in 1984.
Knowing he could continue to pursue his passion for cars as a hobby, he accepted an offer from Lilly to work as a plant engineer. It was the start of a 30-year career with the company, one that would provide him with experiences across the globe.
Although it wasn’t exactly how he pictured his career at first, Myrehn said he “kept an open mind and worked hard” as he started in instrumentation, looking for alternative ways to maintain the company’s computers. Within one year, he says, he had saved the company a million dollars in maintenance costs. During his early years at Lilly, he took night classes to earn a master’s in finance (MBA) from Indiana University.
Myrehn then moved on to bigger roles as an engineering comptroller and as a department head in charge of maintaining Lilly’s facilities in Indiana.
And that’s when things really gained speed: Myrehn moved to Japan and, once the design and build of the new facility was complete, his young family – wife, Kim, and children Ryan and Megan – joined him in 1995, just before he was named the site head for the manufacturing facility.
After the family returned to the U.S. in 1998, Kim gifted him a three-day racing school for their wedding anniversary.
“It went better than either of us expected,” he said.
Myrehn was invited to attend an advanced racing school. He soon had his competition racing license and began a stint as an instructor for the Central Indiana Porsche Club.
He hit the road again in 2001 – this time to France, where he was given one year to turn around a Lilly facility manufacturing injectable insulin devices.
“These were tough jobs, but it goes back to tinkering as a kid,” Myrehn said. “The basis is looking at a system and seeing what is working and what isn’t, then making adjustments and enabling the team to perform better.”
When his family visited him in Strasbourg, France during the summer, he raced go-carts with Ryan, instilling in his son a love of racing that would help shape his future career. Today, Ryan is a pit reporter for IndyCar Radio and the lead announcer for SRO America's TV coverage.
“So, I had a pretty unique bucket list item,” Myrehn said. “I wanted to compete in a race where my son was the announcer.”
When Myrehn discovered that the last JCW Mini Cooper race of the 2022 season was to be held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, he rushed to get his SRO Motorsports license and checked that item off his list.
It was at that race where a familiar name caught his eye.
“I was walking along, and I saw a WashU Racing tent,” he said. “I stopped right there in my tracks and went to check it out.”
He was approached by fellow WashU mechanical engineering alumnus Mark Silverberg, who works closely with the WashU Racing team. As the two alumni reflected on their overlapping time at WashU, Silverberg asked him a random question: Do you remember a student band named Eddie Viscosity & the Dimensionless Parameters?
“I said, ‘Why yes, I do. In fact, I played the guitar and sang as one of the Dimensionless Parameters in that band,’” he said.
Created with his roommates for an engineering talent show, the band won the competition two years in a row.
He now appreciates the rigors of his WashU engineering education.
“The curriculum at WashU was so tough, but it taught me more than textbook stuff — it taught me how to do hard work and how to take on new, difficult things,” he said.
His chance encounter with Silverberg led Myrehn to have a new connection to WashU – through its students. He travels to Detroit each year to see the team compete at the Formula SAE Michigan race, and last winter he returned to WashU for the first time in decades to meet with the team and see the campus.
“It’s great to spend time with the students,” he said. “They are capable of solving their own problems, but we talk about careers and how what they’re doing might relate to the real world.”
When it comes to his own racing endeavors, Myrehn shows no sign of slowing down.
In June 2025, he was presented with a “chance-of-a-lifetime” opportunity: An open spot in the Ford Mustang Challenge Le Mans Invitational.
“My goal was to not finish last, have a great time and come out of it without any damage,” he said. He succeeded with a “solid, mid-pack” finish among a field of professional racers. Kim and Ryan were there to support him from the sidelines before Ryan later broadcast the main event, the 24 Hour of Le Mans.
Cruising around the legendary Circuit de la Sarthe behind the wheel of a LAP Motorsports-entered Mustang Dark Horse R, he marveled at being “just an engineer from Indiana, but now one of 39 drivers from all over the world who got to race Ford Mustangs at Le Mans.”
Myrehn’s car detailing included a special addition — a WashU Racing decal sticker gifted by the students.
Looking back, he says, his time as an engineering student at WashU was a catalyst for a career that has unfolded in unexpected ways.
“My mechanical engineering degree from WashU was my ticket to this crazy and fulfilling life,” Myrehn said. “It’s where I learned how to learn, solve problems and work with others to make things happen.”
