STEM Gift Drive & Deathcare: An Unlikely Match That Makes Perfect Sense
Many of the things i do outside of my day-to-day work align with and support my practice in deathcare. Serving on the Orange County Commission on Aging and obtaining a Certified Senior Advisor credential makes sense because many of the families i serve are older adults. Serving on The Pride Chamber Board and leading its AgeFWD initiative aligns well because inclusion in deathcare for LGBTQ+ people, as well as for secular and minority religious and spiritual identities, is part of my core commitment in my practice.
How the heck does the STEM Gift Drive fit in? I’ll tell you…
Through the STEM Gift Drive, i help lead a volunteer initiative focused on putting STEM toys, games, and books into the hands of young people and encouraging the next generation of innovators. In deathcare, i help individuals and families understand their funeral, cremation, cemetery, and memorialization options and make plans that reflect their wishes, values, and priorities.
Although one focuses on lives still unfolding & the other deals with decisions surrounding the end of life, they’re more connected than you might think.
Deathcare is, at its heart, a compassion profession. Technology will never replace the importance of sitting with another human being, listening to what matters to them, helping someone navigate difficult decisions, or caring for a family experiencing loss.
Human connection is central to what we do.
The tools, processes, and choices we use to serve those families do not stand still. As consumer wishes evolve and possibilities & opportunities emerge from new technologies, deathcare needs scientists, engineers, technologists, environmental specialists, and other innovators who can help our profession respond.
Consumers are asking for more choices
For generations, Americans primarily understood their disposition choices as casketed burial or flame cremation. Today, consumers are increasingly interested in a wider range of possibilities.
The National Funeral Directors Association reports that 61.4% of consumers are interested in exploring green funeral and natural burial options. It shows that in attitudes toward disposition, more than half of respondents would consider green burial, while approximately 40% would consider natural organic reduction and a similar percentage would consider alkaline hydrolysis.
At the same time, technology is changing how people interact with funeral professionals. The NFDA research found that nearly 30% of consumers complete funeral arrangements entirely online. Yet 44% said they would not feel confident planning a funeral without the help of a funeral director. (NFDA’s 2026 Consumer Awareness & Preferences Report)
I find that combination particularly important.
Consumers want innovation, convenience, transparency, and choices—but they still value knowledgeable, compassionate human guidance in life’s most difficult moments.
The best technology allows us to serve people better.
What does a soil scientist have to do with deathcare?
Quite a bit, as it turns out.
Natural organic reduction, sometimes called human composting, is a controlled process through which human remains are transformed into soil using organic materials and microbial activity.
Developing a process like that raises scientific questions involving decomposition, microorganisms, temperature, oxygen, moisture, carbon, nitrogen, pathogens, and the characteristics and safety of the resulting soil.
One of the researchers who helped explore those questions was Dr. Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, a soil scientist at Washington State University. Her academic background includes soil microbiology, biochemistry, and soil science, and her current research profile specifically includes “composting-based funerals,” or natural organic reduction.
Think about that career trajectory.
A young person becoming fascinated with microbes, compost, agriculture, or soil science probably isn’t thinking, Someday my work might help create an entirely new option in the funeral profession.
But it might. We never know where curiosity will lead, do we?
Chemistry, engineering, and water cremation
Alkaline hydrolysis (or water cremation or aquamation) is another example.
Instead of flame, the process uses water, an alkaline solution, heat, and, depending upon the system, pressure to accelerate the natural breakdown of organic tissue. Behind that process are chemistry, engineering, materials science, environmental science, and sophisticated equipment and safety systems.
The Cremation Association of North America reported that alkaline hydrolysis was legal in 26 states as of March 2026, although legal authorization does not necessarily mean that the service is readily available in every one of those states. (CANA, Alkaline Hydrolysis)
Continued research, better equipment, regulatory development, infrastructure, and public understanding will influence where this technology goes next.
Some of the innovators who will advance technology like this in the future are sitting in classrooms today.
Even going “back to nature” requires science
Green and conservation burial might sound like the opposite of technology, but responsible natural burial involves substantial scientific knowledge.
Understanding soil, drainage, groundwater, ecosystems, native plants, decomposition, land conservation, and habitat protection can all be important in developing and maintaining natural burial grounds.
Technology can play a role, too. For example, some natural cemeteries use GPS rather than conventional monuments to identify gravesites.
The future of deathcare doesn’t mean making things less human. We can use innovation to help us do something simpler, more environmentally sustainable, or more closely aligned with someone’s values.
Science beneath the surface: Neptune Memorial Reef
One of my favorite examples is Neptune Memorial Reef, an underwater cremation memorial and artificial reef off the coast of Key Biscayne—and one of the memorial properties within the company i work for.
Creating and sustaining something like the Reef requires much more than an idea for an unusual memorial. Marine biology and ecology help us understand how artificial structures become habitat for fish, coral, and other marine life. In fact, an “insider fact” i know -Marine Biologists examine every NMR placement design for habitat suitability. Engineering and materials science inform structures designed for a demanding underwater environment, while ocean science, environmental planning, mapping, and monitoring all play a role in how an artificial reef is developed and maintained.
Today, Neptune Memorial Reef is not only a place of memorialization, but also an artificial marine habitat visited by marine biologists, ecologists, students, researchers, and divers.
It is a beautiful example of what can happen when science, environmental stewardship, technology, and deathcare meet—creating a memorial option that previous generations could scarcely have imagined.
Technology helps me serve – today.
Tomorrow is important, but tech already helps me serve families better every day.
Secure digital systems help protect client information while also allowing me to bring the planning process to people where they are. I can enlarge presentations and documents for clients who have difficulty seeing, meet with someone in their home when getting to a funeral home is difficult, and include an adult child who lives out of state in a conversation about mom or dad’s plans here in Central Florida.
Digital tools also make it easier to share information, compare options visually, review documents, coordinate with multiple family members, and keep planning information organized and accessible.
For me, the value of technology is that it can make the process more accessible, flexible, and responsive to the person who needs my help.
It not only creates emerging options – like Neptune Memorial Reef and green burial – that may better align with a client’s wishes, values, environmental priorities, or vision for how they want to be remembered; it also allows me to share options with them in ways that are engaging, meaningful, and practical.
My connection to the STEM Gift Drive
I was leading the STEM Gift Drive long before i entered the deathcare profession, and its relevance to my new work became evident to me immediately.
When we give a young person a chemistry set, engineering challenge, microscope, robotics kit, science book, or coding game through the STEM Gift Drive, we have no idea where that spark of curiosity might eventually lead.
That’s the point.
We’re not choosing or even suggesting careers for young people. We are helping give them opportunities to discover what interests them and to see themselves as people who can ask questions, solve problems, test ideas, and create things that don’t exist yet.
Some will become doctors, programmers, engineers, climate scientists, robotics specialists, or researchers working in fields we already recognize. Others will apply their knowledge in places none of us would predict.
Maybe someone fascinated by ecological solutions will help develop the next generation of environmentally sustainable disposition options.
Maybe a chemist or engineer will improve alkaline hydrolysis, or even create new options we haven’t imagined.
Maybe a software developer will create tools that make funeral planning more accessible to people with disabilities, connect geographically dispersed families, or help consumers better understand complicated choices.
And perhaps someone will develop a dignified deathcare option that doesn’t exist yet.
Innovation in service of compassion
I don’t want, and i don’t think the families i serve would want, a “deathcare factory” where technology replaces the relationship between a professional and a grieving person.
Our responsibility is still profoundly human: listen, educate, care, and help people make decisions that reflect who they are.
But the options available during those conversations depend partly on people willing to imagine something better and to give professionals more meaningful and diverse options to offer.
So you see, my work with the STEM Gift Drive connects naturally to my work in deathcare.
Compassion helps us understand what people need. Innovation helps us create more ways to meet those needs.
Somewhere among today’s young people may be the future scientist, engineer, environmentalist, or technologist who looks at something we’ve done the same way for generations and asks:
“Could we do this differently?”
Our profession—and the families we will serve in the future—need people willing to find out.
I’ll leave you with a challenge:
How would the STEM Gift Drive be relevant in YOUR industry?
