The Grant Imahara STEAM Foundation Created to Honor Legacy of Late ‘MythBusters’ Host

By Greta Bjornson @greatbjornson
Published Oct. 23, 2020, 6:39 p.m. ET

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Following the death of MythBusters host Grant Imahara this summer, his friends and family have come together to create a foundation in the late electrical engineer’s name. The Grant Imahara STEAM Foundation was officially announced today, on what would have been Imahara’s 50th birthday. The foundation aims to “inspire and empower underserved youth to become active in science, technology, engineering, art and math.”

Imahara died of a brain aneurysm in July. While he was widely known for his role on MythBusters, which he left in 2014, he also held positions at both Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Magic, where he worked on films like Star Wars: Episodes I, II and III, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. He also teamed up with Netflix, appearing in their investigation series White Rabbit Project with his former MythBusters co-hosts Kari Byron and Tory Belleci.

Carolyn Imahara, Grant’s mother, along with and his colleagues and friends Don Bies, Anna Bies, Edward Chin, Fon H. Davis, Coya Elliott and Ioanna Stergiades, teamed up to create The Grant Imahara STEAM Foundation. The foundation honors Imahara’s work with students over the years, including his time spent mentoring the Richmond High robotics team for several years for the FIRST Robotics Competition, an international high school robotics competition.

“There are many students, like my son Grant, who need the balance of the technical and the creative, and this is what STEAM is all about,” said Carolyn Imahara said in a press release today. “I’m so proud of my son’s career, but I’m equally proud of the work he did mentoring students. He would be thrilled that we plan to continue this, plus much more, through The Grant Imahara STEAM Foundation.”

The USC Viterbi School of Engineering is also doing their part to remember Imahara. Along with his USC classmate Wade Bick, the Viterbi School of Engineering is organizing a drive to name a study lounge after Imahara. All donations toward the Grant Imahara Memorial Study Lounge will support USC’s Viterbi K-12 STEM Center, which helps bring STEM to under-resourced K-12 schools, teachers and families in Southern California.

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